Weeknote 24+25/2024
Camera jiggery-pokery, poetry anthologies, magical feuds, and ancient sages.
All you have to do is look at a tree—any tree will do—to see how badly our disciplines serve us. Evolutionary theory, botany, geography, physics, hydrology, countless poems, paintings, essays, and stories—all trying to make sense of the tree. We need them all, the whole fragile, interdependent ecosystem. No one has got it right yet.
Verbs
Reading: The Fire of Joy, Clive James
I picked this up whilst in Durham last week and spent the whole train journey back to London reading it, writing in it, and underlining in it. It’s totally brilliant. The incredible critic, writer, poet, commentator, and cultural icon Clive James, shortly before his death in 2019, assembled this very personal anthology of poetry. Each poem holds some particular significance for James and there’s a short text after each where he talks about the poem, both from a personal perspective and from a critical perspective, in a way that unerringly opens up the poem in ways you’d just never have seen without his patient guidance. I’m looking forward to reading his commentary on Shakespeare’s sonnets, too, as I enjoyed this book so much.
Watching: The Prestige (2006)
It might be nearly 20 years old, but Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige is still an intricate, spell-binding film. It happened to come on one night whilst I was flicking through terrestrial TV when I was in the UK and I had forgotten just how good it is. Based on the novel by Christopher Priest, The Prestige is a dark and complex Victorian mystery powered by typically excellent performances from frequent Nolan collaborators Christian Bale and Michael Caine. I don’t think I will ever not be surprised by remembering Bale is actually British and there’s a real sense of warped English history here that provides all the gritty, Dickensian ambience for the film. There’s not a lot of real competition for great films about stage magicians (Now You See Me?) but that still leaves Nolan sitting at number one for me - plus it’s got David Bowie in it playing Nikola Tesla, I mean. Really!
Using: Continuity Camera
Not the most exciting of things, but something I’ve found to be incredibly handy, is Apple’s continuity camera - a feature of Macs and iPhones that allows me to use the really good camera on my iPhone 13 as a webcam rather than the pretty lacklustre built in camera on my MacBook Pro. Last week I was travelling in the UK but also had to host and run an online workshop as part of a conference. Normally I would be at home in my office making use of a usb microphone, HD webcam, and a widescreen external monitor but with only my iPad and MacBook Pro with me it made a huge difference to be able to use my iPhone 13 as the camera. The picture is much sharper, clearer, and higher resolution and it works so well with MacOS that the whole process is a total breeze. I’ve even now bought a small mount to make it even easier to affix my iPhone to my laptop or even to my monitor at home.
Studying: The Art of Chinese Philosophy, Paul Goldin
Whilst I taught Laozi’s Tao Te Ching for a number of years, my knowledge of some of the other major figures in the history of Chinese philosophy is much patchier. As far as I can remember, Chinese philosophy never really made an appearance when I was at university and it’s something I’ve only really come to know and have an interest in much more recently. I’ve been working my way through Goldin’s book, which takes a look at eight of the key thinkers/texts from the ancient Chinese philosophical tradition, and pulls out some of the really crucial threads of their thought. It’s already shown me a number of figures whose works I want to explore in much more detail (Zhuangzi and Xunzi for example) as well as giving me a much better understanding of how all of these texts and ideas stand in relation to one another. This has been a great introduction and overview and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone with interest in that direction.
Words
The last two weeks have seen a fair bit of travel - mainly through the UK - as well as some work engagements, personal celebrations, and the final, definite, no more, tail-end of all of my exam marking for this session.
The gorgeous photo above comes from my time in Durham in the UK where I was for an alumni event at my university college. My college is closing down for a number of years at its current site in order to undergo extensive renovations so this event was a chance for alumni to come back to the college and see off some of the old buildings that will sadly be no-more. It was a great event and a lovely weekend to be in Durham as the weather, whilst not exactly roasting, was bright and sunny nonetheless. It was tinged with sadness, as we got to say good bye to two places that hold enormous significance for my university years - the college theatre and the college bar. If I wasn’t in one, I was probably in the other, and it was bitter sweet to have a last drink and a last hurrah in a space the was resonant with memories for so many of us.
Down from Durham, I spent a week in Kent seeing friends and family, having pub lunches, pub dinners, and pub… well, not breakfasts. It was strange going from the heat of the start of summer here in Serbia to the cold and rain of what claimed to be summer in the UK. Rain or not, there was also a wonderful family celebration towards the end of the week which I was hugely happy to be able to attend, and some very special time was had for all of us who were there.
Last of all, LXDCON24 rolled around I had a great time presenting my workshop on using RPG and TTRPG’s to design learning experiences. The workshop was, I think, a great success with some wonderful feedback from the participants and the hosts. Many of the participants followed up with me later via email or LinkedIn and some great new connections have been forged as a result. I’ll hopefully take some time next week to write up a blog post all about the conference, the workshop, and the ideas I shared with everyone.
- Mitch.