“Negativity is the enemy to creativity. So if you want more ideas flowing, happiness in the doing, happiness in the doing, happiness in the doing. I love, capital L-O-V-E, building a thing that ultimately has to feel correct before it’s finished, and that feeling correct is like a drug. It’s like a thing that kicks you and makes you feel so good, You almost pass out. You fall off your feet.”
– David Lynch, to Melena Ryzik of the New York Times
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I went on a book buying binge yesterday afternoon from the comfort of my kitchen table. Here are the books I now have lined up on my Kindle to read. It’s an odd mix… a little bit like October.
Life by Keith Richards
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
London Fields by Martin Amis
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf (it’s free for Kindle!)
When we left the restaurant, the sky was a brilliant splash of colours. The kind of air that felt like if you breathed it in, your lungs would be dyed the same shade of blue. Tiny stars began to twinkle. Barely able to wait for the long summer day to be over, the locals were out for an after-dinner stroll around the harbour. Families, couples, groups of friends. The gentle scent of the tide at the end of the day enveloped the streets.
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami (rereading this – one of my favourites)
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No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.
Why then, is writer’s block endemic?
The reason we don’t get talker’s block is that we’re in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.
We talk poorly and then, eventually (or sometimes), we talk smart. We get better at talking precisely because we talk. We see what works and what doesn’t, and if we’re insightful, do more of what works. How can one get talker’s block after all this practice?
Writer’s block isn’t hard to cure.
Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.
- the marvelous Seth Godin, writing about the myth of writer’s block .
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Thoughtful career advice from designer Jessica Hische, illustrated smartly by Chris Piascik. Isn’t it lovely?
My procrastination techniques include – making coffee, organising my room, planning exotic holidays, writing fiction, watching Come Dine With Me while writing up notes… It’s all an endlessly inspiring loop though. Writing is my passion, and whether that manifests as writing perfume reviews (check!), crafting websites at a digital agency (check!), or noodling away at a cookbook (one day!) – it’s all good. Knowing what I really love to do is a real blessing. How do you guys while the hours away?
{via Fancy! NZ Design Blog}
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- Emily Christensen, who makes beautiful, conscientious clothes under the label Filly.
Her house is pretty too.
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“A lot of people think it’s mad to take time to bake,” she says, “but for me it’s a way of showing love for people I care about. This type of cooking is not essential for health, but it might be essential for mental health.”
I love this quote from Alexa Johnston, baking queen. And I think many of my friends agree. Baking for each other on birthdays and for parties is how we show affection for each other – whether that’s with an extraordinary narhwal cake, macarons or simply a big loaf of banana bread. Tomorrow I think I’m going to try and make ginger kisses for a certain someone… despite the fact I’ve never attempted them before, and my ardent dislike of ginger!
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Photo by autanThere came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
Holy moly I love this quote. It make me want to burst out, and take on the entire world. Shall we?
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And This Is You
You wake up rooms. When you walk in the door, everything cheers. Welcome! Whatever you look at swoons in the glow of your attention: people, tables, memories, spoons. Yes. Even spoons. The spoon you ate your soup with was instantly in love, lived only to serve you, to be with your hand, to touch your lips—it’s still, to this very day, writing poems that mourn your loss. Everything aches for your lively gaze. The whole room is tense, trembling, waiting to arise in your view. The menu sings. The smug table mocks the others. Your glass of wine gasps with every single sip. And the floor—the wooden floor’s past and future cohere with meaning in the event of propping your stance, your walk, and the booth in which you sit. It recalls its origins, built by cursing men with swinging hammers, aware of its inevitable demolition, all unquestionably justified by the presence of your feet. And the people, men and women alike, see you and forget themselves. They are ghosts with no memories. They can’t look you in the eye. They feel like weeping and can’t say why. The flickering candle is humbled, silent, content to merely light the way.
Don’t wonder who this is about. It’s about you. You wake up rooms.
[From the BHJ, photo from here]
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It is difficult to establish any relationship between the price of books and the value one gets out of them. “Books” includes novels, poetry, text books, works of reference, sociological treatises and much else, and length and price do not correspond to one another, especially if one habitually buys books second-hand. You may spend ten shillings on a poem of 500 lines, and you may spend sixpence on a dictionary which you consult at odd moments over a period of twenty years. There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one’s mind and alter one’s whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later: and the cost, in terms of money, may be the same in each case.
From George Orwell’s rather grand Books v. Cigarettes essay. (This will come as a surprise to you all but…) I think the value lies in books. I love dipping in and out of favourite passages, and turning to people far more knowledgeable than I for advice. Books are definitely my vice. If only there were enough hours in the day to read all the ones I buy. Read the entire text here.
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Junky by William S Burroughs is an interesting tale, traipsing around New York and imbibing anything he could get his mitts on. It was good to read John Wyndam’s The Chrysalids in the Amsterdam sunshine, however I wish I had read it ten years ago though (its perfect for a dreamy teenager). I finally finished the last few pages of On the Road
My current read? Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxely. I bought this in a Berlin market yesterday for 3 euros, and was given a free idea (“Like a fortune cookie, but no cookie!”) from the seller. It made me very happy…
As you can imagine I was swooning all over the place when presented with a fistful of colourful papers to choose from. This one called me, it roughly says: “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” – André Gide
An apt metaphor for all 4 books, and my trip.
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“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
— Haruki Murakami
[via Hello Lolla]
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Coveting possessions is unhealthy. Here’s how I look at it:
All of the computers on Ebay are mine. In fact, everything on Ebay is already mine. All of those things are just in long term storage that I pay nothing for. Storage is free.
When I want to take something out of storage, I just pay the for the storage costs for that particular thing up to that point, plus a nominal shipping fee, and my things are delivered to me so I can use them. When I am done with them, I return them to storage via Craigslist or Ebay, and I am given a fee as compensation for freeing up the storage facilities resources.
This is also the case with all of my stuff that Amazon and Walmart are holding for me. I have antiques, priceless art, cars, estates, and jewels beyond the dreams of avarice.
The world is my museum, displaying my collections on loan. The James Savages of the world are merely curators. As I am the curator of their things, and thus together we all share the world.
Words from a sage named Pastabagel.
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Hello! My name is Amber Parkin. I'm a New Zealander living in London. I'm a writer obsessed with fondue, chesterfield sofas, vintage dresses, foxes, and 35mm.
Here I like to talk about fashion, design, food, travel, writing & books, and culture. Everything else (including my photography) goes into my digital notebook.
If you'd like to email me the address is amber@codeforsomething.com
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