The most inspiring read during my hiatus was probably Austin Kleon´s two books on creativity, art, and publishing: "Steal Like An Artist" and "Show Your Work". Kleon works as he teaches, and books like these are all about the personality of the author, the right place, and the right time, I think. It´s not like they tell you anything new - but it´s the way they tell it. They were perfect for me a couple of months ago and really got me out of my slump.
I love the way Kleon works visually, and he reminded me that I was an enthusiastic mind-mapper from my early teens until I started History A at the university in 1994. That course was so packed with chronologically presented information that I just had to write as fast as the teacher talked; we had to learn the entire history of the world (more or less) in six months (priming for further history studies). For some reason, that threw me off mind-mapping, until now. I have now started to draw again, and play, which is good for me, I think. I certainly sleep better, and that must be a good sign.
Kleon has also published a book of Newspaper Blackout poems, and includes a few in his other books. Inspired, I made some based on Proust (ok, I was procrastinating reading him).
the little reading i've done in another language (french, during school) makes me admire anyone who reads in a secondary language. proust? lol wow! i would never have made it through the first page of proust in french. i hope this goes more smoothly for you.
ReplyDeletethe blackout poems look like fun :)
The blackout poems are surprising. I always end up with something that sounds almost like a fortune teller´s assessment of my situation right now.
DeleteIt's good that you found a Swedish translation. I'm embarrassed to say I rarely read anything in my mother tongue, Proust is out of question - the sentences are so winding; I'd be even more confused than I was by the English version. I wonder if they sound that way only in translation or even in the original French.
ReplyDeleteI am sure his sentences are like that in French as well, but I know far too little of that language to even think about giving it a try.
DeleteI personally started reading in English because the books I wanted to read were not translated to Swedish. I seem to remember there was some complaining among critics a few years ago that less literature was being translated from English, as so many prefer to read the original language. Seems like a good thing to me, that more resources could be spent on translating from other languages. I don´t suppose much is translated from Indian, for example.
Love the black-out Proust!!! I used to play that game with some of my grandmother's Latin text books from her college days (1920's) when I was taking Latin in college. (1970's) Talk about Nerd Humor--but it was fun. I also did that with some really early Art books from the 1920's where they pontificated about high art in ways that we find eye-rolling now.
ReplyDeleteSounds like fun with the Latin, a great way to play your way into a new language! I found it such a gratifying exercise; perhaps I should toy with my German & French books...
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