Presently, I’m determined to be interested in less and less. But in less, more and more. Throughout life, one may experience an oscillation between expansion and contraction. First, a broadening of enthusiasms, an opening up to possibilities, and an unusual receptiveness to new ideas. And, then, a pruning away of the once illuminating but, now, inappropriate, the genuinely helpful but, now, irrelevant, and the fascinating but, now, distracting. In order to achieve something, many things have to be cast off. One of the benefits of maturity is the ability to discern the domain of the ‘something’ with greater perspicuity.
Focus is required not only in the one’s life (creative and otherwise) but also in the daily operations of such, moment by moment. The interference from social media, email, messages, and calls — the incessant ‘dings’, ‘blips’, and ‘tings’ from desktop, laptop, tablet, and smart-phone devices, our insatiable desire to know what others are doing/have done, and addiction to online shopping — have created a technologically inspired attention deficit disorder on an alarming scale. The boundaries between activities have become permeable. For example, I too often find myself drawn to an incoming email related to School matters and from attending to the research at hand. In this respect, keeping teaching, research, and administration separate (say nothing of balancing this triumvirate) has now become a task in itself. Unchecked, they leak into one another.
9.00 am: I have set myself a deadline by which all the Art/Sound submissions will be assessed and the feedback dispatched:
On the window, to my left, rainfall attracted my attention and my mind to another time and a different circumstance when, likewise, the spit and rattle of droplets on those same panes drew my gaze away from the computer screen.
12.28 pm: The ‘new people’ arrive at the house across the road. Same premises; different custodians.
1.30 pm: Off again: ‘On the mark … get set … go!’ When my mind needed a moment’s respite, I’ve directed it towards the problem of devising a method for learning the notes on a guitar fretboard in a memorable, workable, and an efficient way. The key is to recognise patterns of formation, which have more to do with the tuning and construction of the instrument than they do with music theory:
But no method can be effortlessly implemented. Commitment and tenacity are also required. (Be suspicious of any system that short circuits necessary hard work. Discipline is always demanding.)
Back to it. In my ideal university, all students would study philosophy, regardless of whatever else they undertook. This is because they need to be taught how to think logically and to structure and support a sustainable argument. This has nothing to do with intellectual capacity, and everything to do with intellectual training.
3.50 pm: The light declined:
4.00 pm: I declined. (Kept going; knees buckling.) ‘One more “script” before dinner, perhaps’.
6.15 pm: Post-dinner. Theory session 1. (An implementation of today’s fretboard musings.) I’ve resurrected my old Traveler Guitar for theory exercises. 7.00 pm: Marking bad or barking mad? Hopefully, the latter on this occasion.