Have you noticed a change in tone in this blog? Are we veering toward the serious and leaving the laugh lane behind?
Well, not exactly behind, because the main site will continue to be the official site of the International Institute of Not Doing Much.
I have been struggling in my slowness. I am on the fifth revision of a piece about how Dr. Emile Lenteur discovered Relaxons. You know, those particles given off by slow people that calm the harried and hurried. But I digress.
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The whole point about this blog in the first place was to discuss slow. I see that there are more readers in Mexico and Spain for both the main site and this blog. This makes me happy, but what can that mean? The main site is about humor, and it plays with language: the English language. So how does that come across in translation?
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Apart from an aspiration (sadly not realized) to a life fulfilling idleness, slowing down has been a transformative experience for me. Some would say I never sped up, but to them I say, “bah!”
I’ve been reading about the subject for a few years now. It was a little book I found in a second-hand bookstore, Leisure, The basis of culture written by Josef Pieper. That book started me of on my slow journey. I found myself investigating philosophy, psychology, and creativity.
Slow is an integral part of the creative process. I even started a philosophy group. We met every two weeks for five years. We poked and prodded our assumptions. We did drink a lot of tea. We demonstrated tolerance. At least I did, as there were a number of otherwise fine human beings who preferred to drink coffee instead of tea. This is the downside of a Brit living in America. I can’t get them enthused enough about tea. This taught me that people are different and toleration, like patience, is a virtue.
Last week, I was thumbing through my Oxford Companion to Philosophy and came across a short entry on Nishida Kitaro, a twentieth century Japanese philosopher and founding father of the Kyoto School. I hunted around on Amazon and found some works of his. None were in my fine local library. But the reviews were daunting. Difficult is the word that comes to mind.
I am all for having a go at understanding something new, but I am really not into intellectual flagellation. I already did that when I majored in pretension at art school. But this short entry made me curious. What could be self-identity of absolute contradictories?The Japanese have an idea of “nothingness” that we don’t have in the West. I needed to find out more.
I did find an essay on Nishida by Takeuchi Yoshinori that I think even I can grasp. Next, I am going to talk about slow and Action-Intuition; and how that relates to the creative process. Whether you write, paint, put on plays or whatever creative endeavor you are interested in, there is a good reason to slow down.
Anyone for Zen?
Tags: Talk Back by Christopher
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