I feel a bit melancholic today. Not in the sad way, more in the in tune with your emotions kind of way. I have these days, when I read, see and listen to things and they all leave great impressions in me. Sometimes you are more receptive to art than other days. Today is one of those days. It is not ideal when i am suppose to group academic methods for a forthcoming article. But it can't be helped, so I am trying to multi-task as good as I can. But art always takes over, and even though I just went downstairs to get a Speculaas Torondo cookie (the girl selling it to me thought that I should be ashamed for not having tried it yet even though I've been in the Netherlands for so long) the focus which has served me so well throughout the week is nowhere to be found. That is why I give you my favorite Noah And The Whale song. They were here in Amsterdam this Monday but I was not.
The magic of reading is difficult to describe, the active creation of a story from your own personal experiences is something both personal and internal. Italo Calvino comes very close to explaining this in his book If On A Winter's Night A Traveller:
“Reading,” he says, “is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once and no longer, past, lost, unattainable in the land of the dead...” “Or that is not present because it does not yet exist, something desired, feared, possible or impossible,” Ludmila says. “Reading is going towards something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be....”
Otherwise in Airportlineland, it's Monday after a weekend that involved most things that makes life better than most other things. Exept sleep, I somehow missed out on sleep. Not ideal for group work.
Today I was supposed to be a wonder of efficiency. After securing a supervisor for my thesis, not falling once in yoga, and getting praise for an outstanding performance during floorball practice on Monday I decided that Tuesday would be a day of productivity as well. It started well with me getting up at 9.30 (sadly this is early for me these days), but now, three hours later not much has come out of this early rise. All I’ve done is to watch a Cot Copy concert on pitchfork.tv, read about the Swedish governments cultural proposition, watched the video to M. Ward’s Hold Time three times, read the Swedish author Bodil Malmstens blog where she writes ‘never trust anyone over 30’ and boiled porridge which floated out all over the microwave. And now I’m writing this. I’m great at dodging the OECD-report I have to have read before a meeting at 2.30. I’m great at being productive in the wrong places.
