Hey <<Name>>! If you missed last week's edition – how to tame trolls and handle negative comments, 10½ great reads from the annual TED Bookstore, Ann Patchett on writing and life, Edna St. Vincent Millay's love letters, and more – you can catch up here. And if you're enjoying this, please consider supporting with a modest donation.
"When we really see each other, we want to help each other."
"It would be a terrible calamity," Henry Miller wrote in his meditation on the beautiful osmosis between giving and receiving, "for the world if we eliminated the beggar. The beggar is just as important in the scheme of things as the giver. If begging were ever eliminated God help us if there should no longer be a need to appeal to some other human being, to make him give of his riches." And yet, we live in a culture that perpetuates the false perception of a certain power dynamic between giver and receiver, and – worse yet – stigmatizes the very act of asking as undignified.
Last week, I had the pleasure of spending some time with the wonderful Amanda Palmer who, besides being an extraordinarily talented musician, is also a fellow champion of open culture and believer in making good work freely available, trusting that those who find value in it will support it accordingly. Disillusioned with the questionable success standards of the music industry, she recently left her record label and set out to self-release her next album in what became the most heartily funded music project in the history of Kickstarter – but not without some harsh criticism by those too attached to the crumbling comforts of the Olden Ways. In this brave talk, easily my favorite TED talk of all time, Amanda invites us to reclaim the art of asking from the insecure grip of shame and celebrate it instead as the sublime surge of mutuality that it is:
Through the very act of asking people, I connected with them. And when you connect with them, people want to help you. It's kind of counterintuitive for a lot of artists – they don't want to ask for things. It's not easy to ask. … Asking makes you vulnerable.
[…]
I don't see these things as risks – I see them as trust. … But the perfect tools can't help us if we can't face each other, and give and receive fearlessly – but, more importantly, to ask without shame. … When we really see each other, we want to help each other. I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is, 'How do we make people pay for music?' What if we started asking, 'How do we let people pay for music?'
Given how close to home Amanda's eloquent words strike, I chatted with her about what seems to be the greatest challenge to this cultural shift toward destigmatizing – see our conversation here.
To partake in the architecture of this new paradigm and revel in the two-way street of this glorious mutuality, support Amanda's music and ethos on her site, where you can download her fantastic new album – for free or for however much you'd like – and go see one of her shows if you get a chance. For more of her spirit of fierce openness, follow her Twitter.
:: WATCH / SHARE ::
"Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice."
"The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book," Vladimir Nabokov wrote in his treatise on what makes a good reader. "Part of a reader’s job is to find out why certain writers endure," advised Francine Prose in her guide to reading like a writer. "My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate." Henry Miller confessed in his reflections on a lifetime of reading. But how, exactly, does one read a book, and read it well? That's precisely what Virginia Woolf addressed in a 1925 essay titled "How Should One Read a Book?," found in The Second Common Reader (public library; public domain) – the same collection of 26 exquisite essays that gave us Woolf's critique of criticism and a Literary Jukebox treat.
Woolf begins with the same disclaimer of subjectivity that John Steinbeck issued half a century later in his six timeless tips on writing. She writes:
The only advice … that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I feel at the liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess. After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day; but is Hamlet a better play that Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions – there we have none.
She cautions against bringing baggage and pre-conceived notions to your reading:
Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticize at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite.
Woolf reminds us of the osmotic skills of reading and writing:
Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties with words.
To exercise the imagination, she argues, is itself a special skill:
To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist – the great artist – gives you.
As a hopeless lover of old diaries and letters, I was particularly taken with Woolf's insight into the appeal of such literary voyeurism – especially given Woolf was a notable diarist herself:
How far, we must ask ourselves, is a book influenced by its writer's life – how far is it safe to let the man interpret the writer? How far shall we resist or give way to the sympathies and antipathies that the man himself rouses in us – so sensitive are words, so receptive of the character of the author? These are questions that press upon us when we read lives and letters, and we must answer them for ourselves, for nothing can be more fatal than to be guided by the preferences of others in a matter so personal.
But also we can read such books with another aim, not to throw light on literature, not to become familiar with famous people, but to refresh and exercise our own creative powers.
Woolf moves on to the intricacies of poetry, adding to other famous meditations on what a poem is and what makes it good:
The impact of poetry is so hard and direct that for the moment there is no other sensation except that of the poem itself. What profound depths we visit then – how sudden and complete is our immersion! There is nothing here to catch hold of; nothing to stay us in our flight. ... The poet is always our contemporary. Our being for the moment is centered and constricted, as in any violent shock of personal emotion. Afterwards, it is true, the sensation begins to spread in wider rings through our minds; remoter senses are reached; these begin to sound and to comment and we are aware of echoes and reflections. The intensity of poetry covers an immense range of emotion.
But despite this mystical mesmerism of the experience itself, Woolf reminds us, the true gift of reading takes place in that incubation period wherein ephemeral impressions become integrated and manifest as deeper ideas:
The first process, to receive impressions with the utmost understanding, is only half the process of reading; it must be completed, if we are to get the whole pleasure from a book, by another. We must pass judgement upon those multitudinous impressions; we must make of these fleeting shapes one that is hard and lasting. But not directly. Wait for the dust of reading to settle; for the conflict and the questioning to die down; walk, talk, pull the dead petals from a rose, or fall asleep. Then suddenly without our willing it, for it is thus that Nature undertakes these transitions, the book will return, but differently. It will float to the top of the mind as a whole.
In a testament to the notion that all creativity builds on what came before, echoing her own teenage insight on imitation and the arts and resonating with Henry Miller's contention that "the vast body of literature, in every domain, is composed of hand-me-down ideas," Woolf observes:
We may be sure that the newness of new poetry and fiction is its most superficial quality and that we have only to alter slightly, not to recast, the standards by which we have judged the old.
She argues – beautifully – for the cultivation of taste, a concept we've seen paralleled in science, pointing to the very tuning of this compass for excellence as the ultimate existential reward of the art of reading:
It would be foolish … to pretend that the second part of reading, to judge, to compare, is as simple as the first – to open the mind wide to the fast flocking of innumerable impressions. To continue reading without the book before you, to hold one shadow-shape against another, to have read widely enough and with enough understanding to make such comparisons alive and illuminating – that is difficult; it is still more difficult to press further and to say, 'Not only is the book of this sort, but it is of this value; here it fails; here it succeeds; this is bad; that is good.' To carry out this part of a reader's duty needs such imagination, insight, and learning that it is hard to conceive any one mind sufficiently endowed; impossible for the most self-confident to find more than the seeds of such powers in himself. Would it not be wiser, then, to remit this part of reading and to allow the critics, the gowned and furred authorities of the library, to decide the question of the book's absolute value for us? Yet how impossible! We may stress the value of sympathy; we may try to sink our won identity as we read. But we know that we cannot sympathize wholly or immerse ourselves wholly; there is always a demon in us who whispers, 'I hate, I love,' and we cannot silence him. Indeed, it is precisely because we hate and we love that our relation with the poets and novelists is so intimate that we find the presence of another person intolerable. And even if the results are abhorrent and our judgments are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminant; we learn through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing it. But as time goes on perhaps we can train our taste; perhaps we can make it submit to some control. When it has fed greedily and lavishly upon books of all sorts – poetry, fiction, history, biography – and has stopped reading and looked for long spaces upon the variety, the incongruity of the living world, we shall find that it is changing a little; it is not so greedy, it is more reflective.
In a passing remark, as she frequently does, Woolf articulates a truth that extends far beyond literature and applies to just about every aspect of life:
Nothing is easier and more stultifying than to make rules which exist out of touch with facts, in a vacuum.
One of her most important points deals with the collective influence we exert as an audience on the nature and quality of what is being written:
If to read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of imagination, insight, and judgment, you may perhaps conclude that literature is a very complex art and that it is unlikely that we shall be able, even after a lifetime of reading, to make any valuable contribution to its criticism. We must remain readers; we shall not put on the further glory that belongs to those rare beings who are also critics. But still we have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print.
This point, while timeless, is timelier than ever today, when we choose – with our clicks, with our subscriptions, with our sharing, with your loyalty – the types of writing and media that get produced. At a time when the reader is being reduced to a monetizable pageview-eyeball, there's only so much pagination, so much "sponsored content," and so many slideshows we can take – the hope is that slowly, if painfully, the media landscape will begin to shift to reflect, and respect, the art of reading and begin to treat the reader as a true "fellow-worker and accomplice."
Woolf reminds us, gently yet assertively, of the value of the amateur in driving culture forward:
If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people reading for the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this improve the quality of his work?
Ultimately, Woolf – an eloquent champion of the joy of reading – considers reading not a means to some intellectual end, but an intellectual and creative reward in itself:
I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards – their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble – the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, 'Look, those need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.'
Complement The Second Common Reader with a history of reading.
:: MORE / SHARE ::
"Every tiny atom in your body came from a star that exploded long before you were born."
"Everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was … lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," Carl Sagan famously marveled in his poetic Pale Blue Dot monologue, titled after the iconic 1990 photograph of Earth. The stardust metaphor for our interconnection with the cosmos soon permeated popular culture and became a vehicle for the allure of space exploration. There's something at once incredibly empowering and incredibly humbling in knowing that the flame in your fireplace came from the sun.
That's precisely the kind of cosmic awe environmental writer Elin Kelsey and Toronto-based Korean artist Soyeon Kim seek to inspire in kids in You Are Stardust (public library) – an exquisite picture-book that instills that profound sense of connection with the natural world. Underpinning the narrative is a bold sense of optimism – a refreshing antidote to the fear-appeal strategy plaguing most environmental messages today.
Kim's breathtaking dioramas, to which this screen does absolutely no justice, mix tactile physical materials with fine drawing techniques and digital compositing to illuminate the relentlessly wondrous realities of our intertwined existence: The water in your sink once quenched the thirst of dinosaurs; with every sneeze, wind blasts out of your nose faster than a cheetah's sprint; the electricity that powers every thought in your brain is stronger than lightning.
But rather than dry science trivia, the message is carried on the wings of poetic admiration for these intricate relationships:
Be still. Listen. Like you, the Earth breathes. Your breath is alive with the promise of flowers. Each time you blow a kiss to the world, you spread pollen that might grow to be a new plant.
The book is nonetheless grounded in real science. Kelsey notes:
I wrote this book as a celebration – one to honor the extraordinary ways in which all of us simply are nature. Every example in this book is backed by current science. Every day, for instance, you breathe in more than a million pollen grains.
But what makes the project particularly exciting is that, in the face of the devastating gender gap in science education, here is a thoughtful, beautiful piece of early science education presented by two women, the most heartening such example since Lauren Redniss's Radioactive.
A companion iPad app features sound effects, animation, an original score by Paul Aucoin, behind-the-scenes glimpses of Kim's process in creating her stunning 3D dioramas, and even build-your-own-diorama adventures.
Pair You Are Stardust with particle physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss's explanation to kids of why we are, indeed, all made of stardust.
:: MORE / SHARE ::
On harvesting the fruit of freedom of thought.
"Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life," E. B. White wrote of the role and responsibility of the writer.
In The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (public library) – the anthology that gave us The Great Explainer's insights on the role of scientific culture in modern society, titled after the famous film of the same name – Richard Feynman adds to history's famous definitions of science and considers the responsibility of the scientist as just about the polar opposite: to be continuously informed and shaped by life, free of the despotism of opinion and the addiction to rectitude.
Speaking to the notion that "every child is a scientist," Feynman champions the true responsibility of science education – a responsibility and purpose sadly belied by the current education system – and argues:
When we read about this in the newspaper, it says, 'The scientist says that this discovery may have importance in the cure of cancer.' The paper is only interested in the use of the idea, not the idea itself. Hardly anyone can understand the importance of an idea, it is so remarkable. Except that, possibly, some children catch on. And when a child catches on to an idea like that, we have a scientist. These ideas do filter down (in spite of all the conversation about TV replacing thinking), and lots of kids get the spirit – and when they have the spirit you have a scientist. It’s too late for them to get the spirit when they are in our universities, so we must attempt to explain these ideas to children.
He then moves on to the broader role of science as a cultural force. The idea that ignorance is central to science – as well as film, media, and design – is an enduring theme, but Feynman lives up to his reputation and articulates it more beautifully and eloquently than anyone:
The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty– some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.
Echoing Rilke's counsel to "live the questions," Feynman traces the roots of science to the vital anti-authoritarianism of brave minds like Galileo and reminds us:
Now, we scientists … take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure – that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes that this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle. Permit us to question – to doubt, that’s all – not to be sure. And I think it is important that we do not forget the importance of this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. Here lies a responsibility to society.
With his signature blend of graceful language and uncompromising conviction, Feynman echoes Bertrand Russell's contention that "without science, democracy is impossible" and aims at the bullseye of the scientist's responsibility:
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. There are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the men of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant; if we suppress all discussion, all criticism, saying, 'This is it, boys, man is saved!' and thus doom man for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.
It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress and great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress that is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.
Pair with Feynman's timeless commencement address on integrity and Stuart Firestein's fantastic Ignorance: How It Drives Science, one of the best science books of 2012.
:: MORE / SHARE ::
From ancient witchcraft to the camera obscura to the iPhone, or why Victorians always looked stern.
It's estimated that roughly 380 billion photographs are taken in the world each year -- more photos per day than in the entire first 100 years after the invention of photography. But what, exactly, ignited that boom of visual culture? In this lovely short animation, Bulgarian-born Boston-based photographer Eva Koleva Timothy -- who gave us the wonderful Lost in Learning project -- traces the evolution of photography through innovations in science, technology, and policy, from the Arab world of the 9th century to Leonardo daVinci to George Eastman and beyond.
Complement with 100 ideas that changed photography, the history of image manipulation before Photoshop, and some innovation lessons from the story of Polaroid.
:: WATCH / SHARE ::
