Typecast
Nihilist.org.uk is the website of New Escapologist‘s typographer, Tim.
Here, you can see his other typographic projects, including his latest: A year in Pyongyang by Andrew Holloway.
I can personally vouch for Tim’s own account of a trip to North Korea in 2002: an amazing book available for a couple of quid through Lulu.
“His dreams are about professional advancement”
The forthcoming Issue Five of New Escapologist features an essay by Reggie Chamberlain-King about composer, pianist and bona-fide Bohemian, Erik Satie.
Among Satie’s pieces (which often have brilliant names along the lines of Flabby Preludes for a Dog and Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear), is “Sonatine Bureaucratique“: a musical satire of a bureaucrat’s walk to work. The lyrics on this video rendition are great, and someone has also set some office CCTV footage to Satie’s music. The result is very funny:
In Our Time: Bohemianism
Bohemianism meant a life lived for art, it meant sexual liberation and freedom from social constraint, but it also meant dodging the landlord and burning your poems to stay warm. How did the garret-philosophy of the Parisian Latin Quarter take over the drawing rooms of Bloomsbury and Chelsea, and why did a French war with necessity emerge as a British life-style as art?
Here‘s a nice Radio 4 documentary about Bohemianism; the subject of our pending fifth issue. Given that this was last broadcast in 2003, I am amazed that it’s available to listen to online. Thanks, BBC.
Just Right
If something takes a physical form, it must fill a need. These needs can be emotional needs or the needs of day-to-day life. I need a broom to sweep my apartment, but I also need that painting by my friend Pete on my wall because it reminds me of my friends in Chicago and also what it was like when I was first setting up my design practice. When we choose to have physical objects in our life, we need to make sure the need is real.
Graphic designer, Frank Chimero has a great take on minimalism, or, as he sees it, ‘just-right-ism’.
Most perceptively, he writes (as we often do at New Escapologist) that the real end of minimalism (or just-right-ism) is freedom:
Fundamentally, I think the satisfactory outcome for all of this is freedom, meaning the ability to say both yes and no. I think often times we cast freedom as merely the ability to say yes to the things we want, but letâs face it: itâs usually easy to exercise that freedom if youâre a lucky citizen of a modernized country. Weâre a culture prone to indulgence, and usually the times we deny ourselves the freedom of doing or having the things or experiences we want are the instances that courage is required to commit. These would be things like quitting your job and starting your own business, or booking a 3 week romp in southeast Asia. That courage is something that Appropriatism, or any other mode of thinking, canât give you. One just needs to summon it in themselves.
What I mean by freedom is the ability to say no. I donât consider this a negative way of thinking, but rather a very positive way to have permission to opt out of the things we donât want to do. I feel we need to acknowledge the value of the freedom derived from simplifying and eliminating the useless things in our life. This means having an understanding of whatâs important.
The whole article is here and is well worth a read.
Thanks, Neil, for the link.
An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 22.
It’s been a busy month for this Escapologist. Can’t help feeling that life would have been less exhausting if I’d kept my job. Of course, it wouldn’t have been half as fun, as this diary entry will hopefully show.
When my partner and I first met, she half-jokingly told me that her life’s ambition was to pet a penguin. Romantic idiot that I am, I’ve been looking for penguin-petting opportunities ever since.
It seems to be a fairly popular ambition, but difficult to achieve. Most wildlife sanctuaries forbid it. The little zoo in my home town of Dudley wouldn’t make an exception and a zoo in Edinburgh, famous for a pretty undignified ‘penguin parade’, would not permit it either. In fact, there are probably only two or three places in the world – short of visiting Antarctica – that allow laypeople to handle the proud flightless birds.
A behind-the-scenes research centre at Florida’s Sea World theme park extends a rare opportunity to meet penguins. When we went to Florida this month, ostensibly for a family wedding, I was able to arrange the long-anticipated penguin encounter as a special treat.
The King Penguin we met was a very regal little bird but didn’t seem to mind being touched by humans at all. He was also a very solid and muscular fellow. I hadn’t anticipated how soft and feathery he would be either: I’d imagined his texture would be ‘fatty’, like a wet suit or certain types of fish. It goes to show that you have to experience these things to know. Later, I also had the privilege of meeting a puffin.
Tom Mellors on Free Will
This is a guest post by New Escapologist contributor, Tom Mellors.
In a recent article in the Independent entitled âThe uncomfortable truth about mind control: Is free will simply a myth?â, Michael Mosley argued that, although we donât like to admit it, the notion that humans have free will is a delusion.
Mosley cites the work of psychologist Stanley Milgram to back up his argument. Milgram is famous for a controversial experiment in which volunteers were enlisted to take part in a âmemory and learning experimentâ. According to Mosley, Milgram wrote that the experiment was intended to answer the question: âHow is possible, I ask myself, that ordinary people who are courteous and decent in everyday life could act callously, inhumanely, without any limitations of conscience.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Books of 2010
For want of a better place to record this, here are the books I read in 2010.
Interview with Yesterday Girl
Information technology, cleaner industry, women’s rights and advances in medicine: our vast inheritance from postwar Democratic Capitalism is undeniable. Yet we’ve arguably thrown a few babies out with the bath water. As individuals, we’re all too often lonely, unhealthy and anxious. As a society, we’re demanding too much from our human-made economy and our natural environment. As workers, we’re lethargic, subservient and unsatisfied. Thank goodness for people like Jennifer Siggs, who promotes a return to an old-fashioned charm at her blog, Yesterday Girl.
As a society, we’ve turned our backs on certain ideas, trends and aesthetics in favour of completely new and fashionable ones. Sometimes this might be for the best, but I bet we’ve made some mistakes too. What, most of all, do you think it was a mistake to turn our backs on?
The thing that saddens me most about society in general today is the lack of community spirit. I know in some areas this still exists, but as a whole I think we’re less likely to know our neighbours, as perhaps people did fifty years ago. It’s not just neighbours, but that whole idea of being able to say ‘good morning’ to someone when you pass them in the street without fearing that they might find you a little strange. Being scared to talk to people at the bus stop, or on a train, general friendly chit-chat between strangers that years ago was commonplace, now is something feared by the majority.That is why when people are in need of help when out in public, often they remark afterwards that people just turned their heads and pretended they didn’t see. This may be just a consequence of increased crime over the years,and distrust of anyone unfamiliar, or perhaps increased crime in some parts stems from a lack of community and personable relationships. Who knows? But this is definitely one way I feel society has changed for the worst.
Cribbage, anyone?
I’m writing a short essay about pub games. These simple ways of spending time are actually quite rebellious. The first ever attempt to enforce legislation upon pubs was not against the alcohol but against the games: Henry VII saw pub games as a distraction from more productive, patriotic activities such as archery practice and so he went against them.
Today, pub games can be a middle finger to The Corporation in that a dart board can provide pleasure for decades, and doesn’t require any batteries, apps or expensive upgrades. Some games, like word association or coin tossing, don’t require any special equipment whatsoever. Others, such as a ring-toss or a trivia quiz, will also involve several people or even the whole pub: a contrast to the lonely-making technologies of iPods and Wii-fit and the likes.
Instead of marinating in our Claustrospheres and consuming phosphur dots, let’s go to the pub and reinstate low-tech games.
Diary of an Escapologist. Part 21.
Here in Monreal, the idea of a white Christmas is meaningless. There’s already two feet of snow on the ground and it won’t go anywhere until March or April.
As a Brit, it’s amazing to witness the ease with which Montrealers adapt to the snow. Because of its predictable regularity, people simply aren’t bothered by it. There aren’t even many special measures taken: people and cars just cut their own way through the snow. Some quieter streets have the snow removed by bulldozers. Nothing closes down. Nothing grinds to a halt. The problems faced in the UK whenever it snows could be avoided with some very simple advice: individuals need to reassess the meaning of ‘wrap up warm’ and governments need to at least partially subsidize central heating. British suburbia’s obsession with gritsalt is a red herring.
Personally, I love the snow. I’ve been playing in it. I’ve not even curbed my resolution to walk everywhere. I honestly thought I would begin using public transport once the snow arrived, but I’ve found in practice that it’s not a big deal. I simply wear warm clothes and big boots. The sub-zero temperature transpires not to be a problem: I actually find myself overheating from the exertion of walking against the snow and need to remove my hood periodically to let off heat. The real challenge in walking long distances in the snow is the physical work involved. You use different leg muscles in the snow: muscles that aren’t accustomed to being used. Since one of the objectives of walking everywhere is to get exercise, the snow actually adds value. It’s fun too. I like to imagine I’m Scott of the Antarctic.
