Connections (Boredom, Burke, Bridges)
Am leaving up this evidence of having gone off deep end. Think I was trying to say I had fun rummaging through a lot of rubbish...
Today, I was bored, and started cleaning out my study. And then I wasn't bored.
ONE
In secondary school I used to have a quarterly ritual which, depending on the tolerance levels of the person sitting next to me, they would find highly amusing or revolting.
Basically, every term we were shifted to different seats, so we'd have to clear out our fliptop desks from the term before. Now, in the usual demographics of the classroom, there would be empty desks and full desks; desks decorated with Hollywood pin-ups and desks stuck with formula sheets; desks with clothes/kit stored in them or with nothing but books; organised desks... messy desks.
Mine inevitably fell into the last category. And since I was as capable of filing as I was of flying, I endeavoured to raise banal 'mess' to an art form. A few simple rules -
1. The lid of the desk should never be raised more than 20 degrees, masking its contents (and the state thereof).
2. Items* should be vigorously chucked into the desk. No other methods of emplacement are viable.
2a. *Items are to include incomplete assignments, copied assignments, worksheets for absent classmates, unfinished snacks, and above all, scribbled notes and sketches of the teacher with hilarious speech bubbles.
3. The inventory of newly emplaced items is to be forgotten as rapidly as possible, generally not a problem.
4. The desk is only to be opened for the purposes of item emplacement, NOT item removal, until such time has passed as to reach the end of term.
- generated chaos of fantastic multifractal complexity. Here was the saga of friendship and rivalry, bad grades and great extracurricular projects, a missing racquet jacket, a spider's nest. Other desks had dusty corners. Mine was a yawning Rift Valley, a Heart of Darkness!
Non-representative schematic diagram of complexity versus photoshopility. Not to scale.
TWO
Sense of perverse achievement aside, there was real wonder when finally pushing the lid up to its full 95 degrees. Because, as true connoisseurs know, freshness is not about new objects. It's about new arrangements. Rubbish is never so attractive as when abandonment and decay have rendered it impossible to identify. And then the archaeologists are driven to do just that, speculating about glamorous historical possibilities.
As a detour, let me mention a modern artist who buried a chest of instant noodle cartons, empty oil paint tubes and other unmentionables, came back after x months and photographed them. At his exhibition, standing in front of a six-foot-wide colour print of mouldering cardboard, I told him barefacedly: "I get it."
THREE
'Rubbish', of course, is just stuff you don't happen to need at the moment. In our world of disposable goods we lose sight of the fact that newness/exclusivity can be illusory. Everything we eat, drink, wear and think about has gone through something else's bowels (Earth or otherwise). Moby puts it in romantic terms when he says 'we are all made of stars'. At least I think he's talking about supernovae, and not about celebrity culture alone. But in between the Big Bang and us are the alimentary systems of countless bacteria, worms and grazing herbivores. What comes around must first go around, if you get what I mean. Only after ingestion, fermentation and reconstitution of the old, do you get something 'new'.
A relatively small bang.
FOUR
Speaking of reconstitution, as a kid I loved a documentary series called 'Connections'. Quirky in both its content and visual style, it cut rapidly from one historical episode/location to another, examining how seemingly diverse breakthroughs (or duds) in science and engineering were actually related. (For example, chemotherapy came about out of fabric dyes.) Compared to the linear structure of most 'educational' programmes, it was a revelation, and its writer-presenter James Burke was (is!) a real hero of mine.
Burke himself might call it a historical fluke that Connections pioneered non-linear presentation of knowledge. It pre-empts (but of course didn't predict or produce) the internet revolution. Nowadays we follow our lines of enquiry through Google or Wikipedia, jumping from one track to another, till we end up far from our original station. But before the Web and search engines, you seriously had to admire Burke, who'd amassed so much knowledge that he could create his own maps of discovery. And more importantly, share them with kids sat in front of a TV.
No, it didn't take much imagination to realise that someone who could link the quest for longitude to the invention toilet roll must know a lot of stuff indeed.
As a child you're acutely aware of how little you know, and that everything you are allowed to know is drip fed through a very narrow tube.
Have a listen to Burke's lecture for the Smithsonian:
Part 1
Part 2
FIVE
That kids will always try to acquire verboten information is the reason why parents these days subscribe to crap internet providers like AOL (for the parental controls).
Let's get this straight: AOL is not crap because it allows parents to censor content for their kids. It's crap because it controls everyone's surfing habits with insidiously placed links and flashy graphics, sending you down profitable avenues towards its partner companies. Yes, of course this is the commercial reality of life and there's no need to wax lyrical on it. Google, once the emblem of egalitarian computer nerds and freethinkers, is now seeking to displace Microsoft in both money and influence.
And of course there is the issue of self-censorship of Google in order to get a toehold in China. But then the outrage over this isn't wholly altruistic either. The naysayers are not so much driven by the wish to protect Chinese citizens' freedom to know, as their freedom to absorb Western culture, and by extension, alter the current trade imbalance with the East.
SIX
While I was cleaning out my study, I realised how much stuff I'd bought in the last four years - things AND ideas. And how, like that act of chucking stuff into the desk and forgetting about it, and then coming back and rediscovering it, it's acquired a whole life of its own. While we are engaged in the process, most of what we read, watch and play with appeals to us in a narrow aspect. In fact, the more organised we are, the more efficient at prioritising, the more we filter out. This is neither good nor bad in itself; it depends on context.
But now and then, especially when you look at discarded items, you make connections between previously unrelated areas. I think that's important. It doesn't matter if the link is tenuous, metaphorical, impractical, self-engrossed. It is enough for it to be delightful, to activate little logic gates that set up new possibilities. That a maths book should be connected to a play to a philosophical essay for kids to prime numbers to music to revolution and to the World Cup is pretty nifty.
Fancy a cuppa over a game of bridge?
SEVEN
Anyway, before I move on next 'term', there's hope beyond simply having a bigger, more cluttered desk. The freedom to make numerous varied connections is a sign of growth (even if one subscribes to the occasionally depressing theory of memes), much more so than physical ownership of things containing other people's ideas, or the ability to follow linear procedures, no matter how specialised.
By the way, I must find that old Connections computer game I had. And probably a 486 to play it on.
Old school.
Today, I was bored, and started cleaning out my study. And then I wasn't bored.
ONE
In secondary school I used to have a quarterly ritual which, depending on the tolerance levels of the person sitting next to me, they would find highly amusing or revolting.
Basically, every term we were shifted to different seats, so we'd have to clear out our fliptop desks from the term before. Now, in the usual demographics of the classroom, there would be empty desks and full desks; desks decorated with Hollywood pin-ups and desks stuck with formula sheets; desks with clothes/kit stored in them or with nothing but books; organised desks... messy desks.
Mine inevitably fell into the last category. And since I was as capable of filing as I was of flying, I endeavoured to raise banal 'mess' to an art form. A few simple rules -
1. The lid of the desk should never be raised more than 20 degrees, masking its contents (and the state thereof).
2. Items* should be vigorously chucked into the desk. No other methods of emplacement are viable.
2a. *Items are to include incomplete assignments, copied assignments, worksheets for absent classmates, unfinished snacks, and above all, scribbled notes and sketches of the teacher with hilarious speech bubbles.
3. The inventory of newly emplaced items is to be forgotten as rapidly as possible, generally not a problem.
4. The desk is only to be opened for the purposes of item emplacement, NOT item removal, until such time has passed as to reach the end of term.
- generated chaos of fantastic multifractal complexity. Here was the saga of friendship and rivalry, bad grades and great extracurricular projects, a missing racquet jacket, a spider's nest. Other desks had dusty corners. Mine was a yawning Rift Valley, a Heart of Darkness!
Non-representative schematic diagram of complexity versus photoshopility. Not to scale.
TWO
Sense of perverse achievement aside, there was real wonder when finally pushing the lid up to its full 95 degrees. Because, as true connoisseurs know, freshness is not about new objects. It's about new arrangements. Rubbish is never so attractive as when abandonment and decay have rendered it impossible to identify. And then the archaeologists are driven to do just that, speculating about glamorous historical possibilities.
As a detour, let me mention a modern artist who buried a chest of instant noodle cartons, empty oil paint tubes and other unmentionables, came back after x months and photographed them. At his exhibition, standing in front of a six-foot-wide colour print of mouldering cardboard, I told him barefacedly: "I get it."
THREE
'Rubbish', of course, is just stuff you don't happen to need at the moment. In our world of disposable goods we lose sight of the fact that newness/exclusivity can be illusory. Everything we eat, drink, wear and think about has gone through something else's bowels (Earth or otherwise). Moby puts it in romantic terms when he says 'we are all made of stars'. At least I think he's talking about supernovae, and not about celebrity culture alone. But in between the Big Bang and us are the alimentary systems of countless bacteria, worms and grazing herbivores. What comes around must first go around, if you get what I mean. Only after ingestion, fermentation and reconstitution of the old, do you get something 'new'.
A relatively small bang.
FOUR
Speaking of reconstitution, as a kid I loved a documentary series called 'Connections'. Quirky in both its content and visual style, it cut rapidly from one historical episode/location to another, examining how seemingly diverse breakthroughs (or duds) in science and engineering were actually related. (For example, chemotherapy came about out of fabric dyes.) Compared to the linear structure of most 'educational' programmes, it was a revelation, and its writer-presenter James Burke was (is!) a real hero of mine.
Burke himself might call it a historical fluke that Connections pioneered non-linear presentation of knowledge. It pre-empts (but of course didn't predict or produce) the internet revolution. Nowadays we follow our lines of enquiry through Google or Wikipedia, jumping from one track to another, till we end up far from our original station. But before the Web and search engines, you seriously had to admire Burke, who'd amassed so much knowledge that he could create his own maps of discovery. And more importantly, share them with kids sat in front of a TV.
No, it didn't take much imagination to realise that someone who could link the quest for longitude to the invention toilet roll must know a lot of stuff indeed.
As a child you're acutely aware of how little you know, and that everything you are allowed to know is drip fed through a very narrow tube.
Have a listen to Burke's lecture for the Smithsonian:
Part 1
Part 2
FIVE
That kids will always try to acquire verboten information is the reason why parents these days subscribe to crap internet providers like AOL (for the parental controls).
Let's get this straight: AOL is not crap because it allows parents to censor content for their kids. It's crap because it controls everyone's surfing habits with insidiously placed links and flashy graphics, sending you down profitable avenues towards its partner companies. Yes, of course this is the commercial reality of life and there's no need to wax lyrical on it. Google, once the emblem of egalitarian computer nerds and freethinkers, is now seeking to displace Microsoft in both money and influence.
And of course there is the issue of self-censorship of Google in order to get a toehold in China. But then the outrage over this isn't wholly altruistic either. The naysayers are not so much driven by the wish to protect Chinese citizens' freedom to know, as their freedom to absorb Western culture, and by extension, alter the current trade imbalance with the East.
SIX
While I was cleaning out my study, I realised how much stuff I'd bought in the last four years - things AND ideas. And how, like that act of chucking stuff into the desk and forgetting about it, and then coming back and rediscovering it, it's acquired a whole life of its own. While we are engaged in the process, most of what we read, watch and play with appeals to us in a narrow aspect. In fact, the more organised we are, the more efficient at prioritising, the more we filter out. This is neither good nor bad in itself; it depends on context.
But now and then, especially when you look at discarded items, you make connections between previously unrelated areas. I think that's important. It doesn't matter if the link is tenuous, metaphorical, impractical, self-engrossed. It is enough for it to be delightful, to activate little logic gates that set up new possibilities. That a maths book should be connected to a play to a philosophical essay for kids to prime numbers to music to revolution and to the World Cup is pretty nifty.
Fancy a cuppa over a game of bridge?
SEVEN
Anyway, before I move on next 'term', there's hope beyond simply having a bigger, more cluttered desk. The freedom to make numerous varied connections is a sign of growth (even if one subscribes to the occasionally depressing theory of memes), much more so than physical ownership of things containing other people's ideas, or the ability to follow linear procedures, no matter how specialised.
By the way, I must find that old Connections computer game I had. And probably a 486 to play it on.
Old school.