‘Young literary men in KL’

They might be writing somewhere in a dark room. The keys on their laptops only half-lit from the glow of the monitors.  

They might be writing. They should be writing.

“Who is going to listen to all these words in my head?”

Ideas, ideas, what do you do with all these ideas?

“You analyse too much”

Do they have a life inside of my head, does that make them real? 

“What is wrong with you?”

shut up

There wasn’t any space left for them to speak, so they left the hall. They didn’t write to rule, they thought originality was worth a shot, but they were wrong. Why don’t they just follow? 

“Can you write it so that it says something like this:....”

Literary young men is a concept, a fine shorthand, for the idealised male that no one really wants. As pc as diversity and multiculturalism. 

Do you get what it really means? 

It’s chaos and disruption and doubt and fickleness and weight.

Give it up, give it up

useful research for better ads

Dan Hill explains that an ad’s recall is aided by appealing to what is important to the audience.

He points to Apple’s campaigns as examples of emotionally-relevant campaigns that creates repeated success for the company.

Hill’s book ‘About Face’ talks about this and other criteria of successful ads he found through facial coding research.

Some findings seem like common sense. It is almost obvious that constant repetition would make an advertisement more persuasive, as would crafting your message around things and emotions that are familiar to your target audience.

Others, not so much.

Like don’t put your logo in the lower left corner because that’s the last point the eye travels to.

Definitely worth reading if you’re a communicator.

hear dead rockstars speak through book

in the glorified survey taking that are radio interviews, it's difficult to come up with something new when so many people have done it so many times in so many ways.

It could be said whatever new thing that could be done, has been done, if not already done to death.

That's, of course, no excuse for stealing off the masters.

A book that I have found incredibly inspiring is Rolling Stones Magazine's compilation of interviews with personalities, past and present.

If you're even the slightest bit of a music nut (geek/nerd/freak - choose preferred), your eyes would pop with wonder at first glance of the table of contents. There's an interview with Pete Townshend, an interview with Warhol (with Truman Capote as interviewer, sort of), Kurt Cobain's last moments, and John Lennon.

It's very good reading. Naturally, the requisite trivia is there but the articles' impact come from the way they are composed.

There is a naturalistic tone consistent in all in the interviews which allows each interview subject a voice that is unmistakably theirs. They drone, they get distressed, distracted, passionate, these larger than life personas jump off the page and after each interview you sit and think to yourself, 'I get why this guy's a superstar now.'

Best of the lot
If you're not going to read the whole book, definitely don't skip on these ones

• Kurt Cobain's interview - brooding, disturbing, and resigned. Interview was conducted not long before his suicide
• Andy Warhol - madcap interview, or more appropriately record of two culture icons, Warhol and Capote, bumping into each other
• Jim Morrison

'Nobody knows' what goes on in creative industries

I'm currently trudging through a book called 'Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce' (pdf link) by Richard E. Caves.

It reads like an economic text and it's fascinating. The book pieces apart the creative industries; art, cinema, music, and places them in economic contexts to give an explanation on why people consume creative products the way they do.

And the answer?

'Nobody knows.'

Not the big studios or small, not the avant garde artists living in lofts, not even the rap mogul with bejeweled teeth.

The masses tastes are as whimsical as they are profitable, which makes every commercial production more or less an educated guess.

If they turn out to be a hit, great, money and fame flows. If they don't, well there's no way you're ever going to recoup all those hours lost in the studio.

half-wit sons of aristocrats

peristiwa

Shahnon Ahmad, Bermula dari kampung halaman, Weltanschauung: Suatu Perjalanan Kreatif.

Confessions of a sinner

It’s a book that chased me around. Recommended, referenced, and mentioned, so I read it. I bought myself the abridged Penguin version with the pretty cover that said ‘God grant me chastity and continence but not yet.’

An awfully familiar line around here. Something you'd say to yourself to silence your conscience when you habitually do something wrong.

This saint had a mistress and a son born out of wedlock. He had a mother too, and she never stopped praying for him. He knew this of course but was determined to do things by enquiry and reason, more so than faith. Thus he harboured Manichean views before he turned Catholic.

At this point of reading the book, I am reminded of the saying that it is better to be stupid in truth rather than rationalising error. Sometimes being too intelligent just doesn’t pay. There are catalogues of views, opinions and thoughts right in front of us, each offering their different takes on things. The PC thing to say here is that every opinion is equally valid. History would tell us otherwise.

Maybe it’s not about validity, but about the right of every opinion to exist and be expressed so that they its claims may be taken apart and put back together for validation.

Humbleness must be what we need to always keep us grounded. St Augustine was fortunate to have received an epiphany that made him leave his world of sin. Miracles and epiphanies however aren’t much of an option for us earthier individuals, so that only leaves us with humbleness. The humbleness to listen to other people’s views and recognise their merits, but more importantly, the humbleness to listen to other people’s thoughts and recognise our faults.

The title of the book is 'Confessions of a sinner'. Don't bother reading if you aren't one.

Written for Asam blog.

Hypertext project.

for you hypertext buffs out there, visit my project blog for interesting extracts and materials about the subject.

Qaul ul-hukama'

Minggu cinta dan falsafah

Books to get through:

• Essays in Love
  

(4/5 - for being such a good read!)

You know when I look back to the moment I picked up this book, nak tergelak rasa. I recently finished reading De Botton's 'The Consolations of Philosophy' which I found a good read, though probably too wide-ranging for its own good, but it was enough to make me want to read more from him. So there on the Philosophy shelf at Borders were three titles by the author, one on travel, one on work, and one on love. Naturally I chose the last.

"Essays" offers exactly what its name promises, a series of essays charting a romantic relationship from inception to the painful end, and what lies after. As what I would consider the nerdiest treatment of a love story - ever, the teachings of the sages of philosophy , Plato, Hobbes, Marx (!), Mills, et al, are used to draw out meanings from specific moments in the relationship, and grippingly told in first person. Which is both odd, and interesting, at the same time. Odd because love stories are usually supposed to be emotional, and all this philosophising sometimes tend to seem like overanalysing, and interesting because, hey, turns out there are practical uses for philosophy after all.

At times however, you can't help but feel that the philosophical explanations are only there to sooth the wounds and allow the 'narrator' to - yes- move on. Nothing inherently wrong in that of course. Some do it by writing rap songs and no one seems to be that bothered by the sexist violent juvenile content in them, so if the intellectual alternative works for you, then by all means!

I have a strong suspicion that 500 days of Summer fans will find this book irresistable.

Favourite quotes (so far, and there are many!):

By contrast with the history of love, the history of philosophy shows a relentless concern with the discrepancy between appearance and reality. 'I think I see a tree outside,' the philosopher mutters, 'but is it not possible that this is just an optical illusion behind my own retina?' 'I think I see my wife,' mutters the philosopher, adding hopefully, 'but is it not possible that she too is just an optical illusion?'

Only poverty, either of love or money, leads one to question the system - perhaps the reason why lovers do not make great revolutionaries

• The Sorrows of Young Werther

Yet another tragic love story, only this time from the 18th century.

I'm actually reading this on my iPod touch using stanza,which us a pretty cool app. But unlike a mobile phone, the iPod is a sensible eBook reader. Anyway about the app, besides the obvious reading you do with it, you can also put in annotations, seek definitions, and perhaps my favourite feature, the bookmarks tell you how many percent into a book you're currently at. Anyone who's ever dealt with an ebook will know how much of relief it is to know how long before the book ends, because unlike real books, you can't see the physical progress you make when reading an ebook.

• The Book of Dead Philosophers
  

• Soul Mountain

Another quote from a reading. This time featuring a zombie Voltaire!