an act of intellectual disburdenment

6 minute read

I'm at my desk, I'm writing in the weekend. The world is full of wonder, I see opportunity in every corner. I'm seeing signs. Is this the high before a crash? Why does food taste better, music sound better? I got paid today for the first time in 10 months (or maybe last night, I didn't check). I didn't expect to be paid for another few weeks. The world is on my side.

posted by @laurabreadkitten

Backlog

• April 15th - Went out to an experimental jazz / noise event at epa and loved it. Made me think of art spaces in Dunedin. All of cordoba reminded me of Dunedin in a weird way - partly the hills, partly the weather, partly just the spirit of the place. A difficult thing to pin down, will need to go back. Met with M and went to the opening party for a leftwing political groups headquarters, sat around singing songs. Later we went to some bars, played pool, danced. We did it all.
• April 16th - My diary just says "Dia de descanso", I would have got home around 5 or 6 in the morning so probably just slept all day. Went for a walk in the evening around the neighbourhood of Alta Cordoba. Walked past a fair few churches, had a choripan, sat in the square. Then I found a trendy craft beer place and sunk a few brews while using my phone or reading. It was really nice, one of my favourite things about travel is wandering around and then finding a bar. I think I felt quite melancholic but also content. A lot going on emotionally at the time, which I'm not going into in this journal so much.
• April 17th - I walked into town and bought a thermos and some silicon glue to fix my bandolera bag. I was going to take a bus somewhere but I ended up just seeing the Museo de Arte Religioso Juan de Tejeda(The John de Tejeda Museum of Religious Art) then getting a parillada from an asado restaurant. Awesome day. It's funny reflecting on it now and realising how much I enjoyed being by myself wandering about. Reminds me of one of the first days in melbourne when I wandered about North Melbourne and ended up eating a delicious, and expensive, steak with butter, and felt very at peace (at least, I remember feeling that. Who knows how it was at the time). I'm going to bring more of this energy to my day to day life.
  Later that night I went to another band practice and hung out, drunk some fernet and chilled. Got home late (3:30am), pulled my bags out of my room ready for the flight the next day (now this day)
• April 18th - flight to Salta. Arrived home to C and the hostel worker still awake. Under the impression that we had to arrive horribly early to the airport, and under the false impression that the other had decided to stay up all night, we stayed up the rest of the night chatting and playing cards. We had breakfast and left to the airport, went through with no hassle and fell asleep in the gatelounge.

back to today

I had a quiet night in last night, watched some Severance and ate pizza. This morning I went to S's house to watch the Argentinian under 20 futbol team destroy NZ 5 - 0. Then we got coffee and donuts. On the way home I picked up some sewing supplies.

sewing supplies

My jacket sleeves are too long and the cost of a tailor might be around $80. The jacket only cost $120, I'm not paying $80 to take the sleeves up. I'm going to do it myself, and in doing say gain a world of experience in repairing and altering my clothes, skills I am proud to both have a to develop further. Am I nervous? yes. It involves cutting the lining out and also removing the buttons, before sewing it all back into the adjusted sleeve. The buttons will be the hardest part, but I'm sure with focus and patience I can do it.

against interpretation

Along with a Jaimie Oliver vegetarian recipe book I also got a book of essays out from the library. Essays by no other than one of my favourites, Susan Sontag. I read the titular essay today.

The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

I'm into it, it helps me to develop ideas I've had about interpretation of work and it inspires me to move more into criticism, something I've wanted to do for a while but have felt hampered by my own ability to write (not to mention percieve). There's another great quote from the intro to the book:

Before I wrote the essays I did not believe many of the ideas espoused in them; when I wrote them, I believed what I wrote; subsequently, I have come to disbelieve some of these same ideas again - but from a new perspective, one that incorporates and is nourished by what is true in the argument of the essays. Writing criticism has proved to be an act of intellectual disburdenment as much as of intellectual self-expression. (emphasis my own)

what else

I'm reading this good article - Should Artists Shop or Stop Shopping? - Sheila Heti writing about Sara Cwynar

Buying keeps me here, in a certain state, a state of waiting (for the thing to arrive), a state of limbo (between my life as it is now, and the life I imagine I will live once I have it), a state of unreality, of wishful thinking, of magical thinking (that my life will be different once it arrives), a state of disappointment (when the thing I bought is absorbed into my life like everything else, and does not distinguish itself as new), a state of need (to buy the next thing that will lift me out of this here.) But what is this place I am in, and trying to escape? What is this here, but shopping? My home, and the computer on which I write, and the phone in my pocket, everything around me—has become a shopping mall. I am here in a shopping mall and I can’t get out. I can only get out if I stop buying things.

I'm feeling far more capable of writing again, here in my room.

I've got a load of exciting tabs open again, because I don't use Arc on my work computer so they never get archived. I do miss Arc though, it's a great browser. Command + Shift + C to copy URLs is chef's kiss exquisite. I want to make a browser plugin to do the same. I also want to make a browser plugin to help me develop Optimizely changes.

listening to

Wood ft. Yu Su - from Meeting with a Judas Tree by Duval Timothy
I've also got to link the track I heard the above track on: A Fragile Correspondence (19/5/23) - Clyde Built Radio

questions

• What's ahead?
• What can I prepare for?