Last time I said this would be weekly. I think I’m more likely to do monthly instead.
The general vibe of this place is best captured here by McCartney:
Q: ‘What’s the most important thing that you value?’
…’personal peace in whatever you do. I mean that could mean with the kids and the family, you know, which is mainly what it means. But in work too, just to be generally kind of at ease with whatever you’re doing, you know, rather than feel like you’ve got a knot in your stomach.’
(Incidentally that whole documentary series made by a breathless345 on youtube is just great).
Partly what I’m doing here is working through David Perell’s 50 days of writing emails. Letting my attention grab whatever it wants, then putting it all together and noticing what comes out. No goals, no schemes, no to-dos - because that’s a miserable way to live. It will be a mess for a while, at least while I figure out what it is. The idea is that that there’s no such thing as writer’s block - just not having enough notes, so start with an abundance of notes.
There was an episode of Always Take Notes with William Dalrymple where he talks about the system for writing history books he got from Antony Beevor. You arrange your notes so that when it actually came to the writing you’re mostly just slotting things together, rather than being faced with the blank page.
He keeps a dateline. He keeps three sets of card indexes - people, places, and topics. When he comes across a quote or passage or whatever about a person, that person gets a card. Depending on how you store your cards, that person might have multiple or you might just have one long digital file on them (for some reason I got hung up worrying about why he had multiple cards, not realising it’s because they are actual physical index cards). Same for a place you’re writing about - whenever you find some beautiful description or quote from a visitor, in it goes. Topics more or less covers anything that isn’t a person or place. He gives the examples of ‘Chinese influence on Southeast Asia’ and ‘Jain Mathematics’.
The whole point being that the writing itself should be fast: ‘you must have all your materials around you, and you must write at white heat’.
He explains:
‘And if you have all the quotes already diced up and cut into your dateline, and a series of cards, maybe 10, maybe 20, about every major character, and a small amount of detail about the minor characters, and have all the descriptions of a place to hand when you want to describe Delhi in 1750, or Constantinople in the 6th century, or Beijing during the Tang dynasty... When you have that you can just reach for your cards, and reach for original sources which will hopefully be in you library or in your laptop or wherever. If you can move at pace and produce 2-3000 words a day the book will get going…And that’s the discipline.’
Collecting stuff over a month and writing about it here seems very doable in this frame.
Links
It’s the end of January so it’s only appropriate that I bring up Charles I’s speech from the scaffold on a cold morning in 1649 in front of the Banqueting House on Whitehall. The height of manliness.
Golfers might already know about No Laying Up, a podcast and youtube channel made by a group of friends about golf - from the professional game to course reviews and everything else. Their stuff is great, and this was a particularly great edition of their Wild World of Golf series. Exactly what the game should be about. Non-golfers - you probably won’t like it.
Simon Sarris on Long Distance Thinking
Why conversations with Tyler is so great
Clive James on the Beatles - a wonderfully counterintuitive and virtuosic piece of writing:
‘The face kept in the jar by the door just wasn’t startling enough to justify the sense of strain. It was instructive that people who had never recognized their faultlessly poetic handling of non-poetic language should at this stage begin to welcome them as poetically inventive writers. In cold fact, though, neither Lennon nor McCartney has a very special command of imagery. Imagery is preeminently an intellectual property, and they had not become intellectuals — although they had certainly ceased by now to be true primitives.’
A great trick for using the hole in the tongue of shoes - I’ve always had a problem with wandering tongues in my shoes.
Dana Gioia’s videos on how, when, and why to write are great.
I tried MDMA over the new year and it was a very pleasant experience. Learning more about it from Sasha Chapin was fun.
I learned about the pale of settlement after watching Fiddler on the roof for the 80th time and reading around the origins of the shtetl and yeshiva.
The time between Christmas and New Year is all about world’s strongest man and the darts. Here is a video of 9-dart finishes to astound.
Ted Gioia on burnout, something I alluded to in the first part of the letter:
‘In other words, the enemy is hard to find because we have internalized it. We are told to be “entrepreneurs of the self.” We can’t blame the boss or master or patriarch any more, because we play those roles in our own lives, constantly whipping ourselves up to greater and greater levels of achievement—or, increasingly, falling into some psychical or nervous disorder because we feel incapable of keeping up with the pace of this unending round-the-clock game.
The word that best describes this chronic situation is burnout. And it’s a word we’ve grown used to hearing often nowadays. And will continue to hear, because everything in both our public and private lives converges on it.’
It’s always good to read somebody’s foundational statement of beliefs - Capel Lofft’s were interesting. Maybe one day I’ll have a go at this.
Making an inland sea in Australia - this is obviously a fantastic idea.
Paul Graham on Taste - typically tasteful, and so fun to see someone argue for something obvious. Feels like we’ve been distracted as a civilisation for 50 years, wasting our time on questions like whether good taste exists, because the world is more interesting than agonising over exactly what we mean when we say certain things.
And another for some reason counter-intuitive argument about buying things and not experiences - something that really struck me and made me understand myself a bit better. Interesting how small a point can be and yet have such a big effect. Propoerly liberating:
‘[The distinction is too tightly drawn]…tools and possessions enable new experiences. A well-appointed kitchen allows you to cook healthy meals for yourself rather than ordering delivery night after night. A toolbox lets you fix things around the house and in the process learn to appreciate how our modern world was made. A spacious living room makes it easy for your friends to come over and catch up on one another’s lives. A hunting rifle can produce not only meat, but also camaraderie and a sense of connection with the natural world of our forefathers. In truth, there is no real boundary between things and experiences. There are experience-like things; like a basement carpentry workshop or a fine collection of loose-leaf tea. And there are thing-like experiences, like an Instagrammable vacation that collects a bunch of likes but soon fades from memory.’
Some interesting extra context if you watched Get Back.
Fitting that Miroslav Klose’s record-breaking goal was scored in the most Klose way possible…or was it? Would be fun to trawl through Klose’s international goals and get some idea if his reputation is deserved - the goalhangers goalhanger
The view from the Netherlands on English sports
Razib Khan’s rebuttal to that awful E.O. Wilson obituary in Scientific American. A wonderful piece of writing.
A great piece of writing about Priyamvada Gopal
Guitar players should subscribe to Anyone Can Play Guitar on youtube. I’ve been working on my triads this month.
A wonderful series documenting an entire guitar build from Kinkade guitars in Bristol. The sort of thing that would never be on telly, and why I’m so glad that youtube exists.
And another reason why I’m grateful for youtube.
Shakespeare Navigators is an astonishing free resource.
Food
I’ve started using Old Dough for my weekly bake - it’s ideal. Better flavour and texture, and easier routine to maintain.
I ordered from Swaledale for the first time this month - trotters, liver, bone marrow - all the good stuff. Great value and quick delivery and I recommend.
It’s game time, and if you live in East Anglia you should know about the Radwinter Game Company.
My wife and I eat a lot of kimchi, and these pancakes were a big hit.
I’m trying to up my offal intake. One of my favourite recipes is fegato alla veneziana, made here beautifully by Jeremy Lee, who you should follow if you’re in to food. Another of his beautiful recipes this month was his ginger and marmalade pudding. His catalogue of stuff in the guardian is a major resource, and I can’t wait for his cookbook to come out this year.
This cheese and onion pie from Simon Hopkinson is a family favourite in our house. You really should use lard, but cheddar is fine instead of Lancashire if you can’t find it.
I got a manual food slicer from Graef for Christmas and it’s fantastic. Big recommend if you like to cook your own ham or slice your own bread.
Norfolk Plough Pudding - a marvel.
Love the way Yang bones a chicken.
Reading
Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life
‘It is perhaps a cliché to say that our humanity is displayed best and enjoyed most when faced with serious limitations, but it is true for all that. Without distractions, we notice what is around us. Without rewards, living closely with others, we see how our activities and actions meet or fail to meet real human needs. We become more able to focus on what matters.’
The Lost Art of Playing Golf
‘When golf goes from something that you do to something that you are then the stakes become very high. Your identity is on the line every time you tee up the ball. That’s not a good place to be.’
‘To be childlike is to have a simple fascination in getting the ball into the hole and to love the task of doing so. To be childish is to expect a certain outcome will come your way, that you ‘deserve’ to hole the putt or that you shouldn’t miss from a certain distance.’
Alchemy
‘Irrational people are much more powerful than rational people, because their threats are so much more convincing.’
Film/TV
Munich: The Edge of War
Slow start, way too much time with the bloke from 1917 - why was the scene with his wife in it? All the German bits were much more interesting. In the end we enjoyed it, but probably won’t watch again. Worth it entirely for reminding me of Churchill’s eulogy in the house for Neville Chamberlain brings me to tear’s often:
‘It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.’
High Fidelity
Pretty good - very very English, in a good way. It has a good ending, which is probably the thing I care about most in films.
White Lotus
Pretty great, though I drifted off a few times. Great opener, and brilliantly uncomfortable at times. Another case of perfect description of the problems with modern western lifestyles and only vague hints at something better/different, none of which include traditional western solutions for malaise.
Mezzotint
Mostly fantastic BBC adaptation of the MR James story. Like everyone else I found the end a bit jarring and unnecessary.
Threads
The Phantom of Heilbronn:
How the Palace of Westminster burned down
It’s all about contrast