Sunday Notes // Singaporean Art, Writing a Great Book, Cross-Generational Friendships, and Perspective on the Perspective of Books
Notes on books, art, and life
This week started off gloomy, with tempestuous clouds and intermittent rain showers—typical in many places during May, but not in the usually sunny Alentejo region of Portugal. Luckily, I’ve been deep in book production work, revisiting Parea’s first book, The Hours Before Dusk by Jenna Matecki, which brings enough warmth to brighten the grayest of days. I also revisited my favorite oracle deck, Between Worlds, made by Ryan LaMere, a brilliantly talented creative who I happened to meet in a cork forest last summer. I drew the “Community” card twice, prompting me to reflect on how the best memories from the last five years all involve a group of dear friends around a table, a sentiment that is beautifully by Jenna in this passage from the Buenos Aires section of her book (accompanying illustration by Jimmy Thompson below):
At one of the long tables you sat across from
a legend who said much more with his eyes than his mouth
and an artist with short bangs and a septum ring
next to another one with a surfing habit and a theory that hands
have their own set of memoriesWhat they all had in common
was the way they made eye contact when they listened to you
how they leaned in real close when you spoke
Among the other things that brought levity this week: the “When is Enough, Enough?” exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale, some writer advice from Suleika Jaouad and Diego Perez, building cross-generational friendships, and a perspective on the perspective of books.
When is Enough, Enough?
The Singaporean pavilion at the recent Venice Architecture Biennale featured an exhibition called “When is Enough, Enough?” The exhibition uses elements of immersive design to engage viewers in the topic of a community’s interactions with its surroundings. According to the article linked above, “The exhibition asks how architects can quantify the immeasurable values of architecture: agency, attachment, attraction, connection, freedom, and inclusion.” Visitors of the exhibition get to choose and prioritize the intangible elements to bring a more global perspective to urban architecture and design. I think this is a fascinating concept for a myriad of reasons; most of all, because it directly engages with the people who actually live in cities. Architecture always considers human and environmental interaction, but I wonder how different the architects’ hypotheses and approaches are from the views expressed by the people interacting with the design.
A Conversation with Suleika Jaouad and Diego Perez (Young Pueblo)
I subscribe to Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journals Substack (you should too!) and I read a conversation that she had with Diego Perez, who writes as Young Pueblo. The post started with two post-it notes with advice that Suleika had written to herself:
If you want to write a good book, write what you don’t want others to know about you.
If you want to write a great book, write about what you don’t want to know about yourself.
As an editor and publisher, I love this. A good or great book isn’t born from a place of comfort, it’s born from a place of deep investigation, honesty, more honesty, hard questions, and discomfort. I believe that if you’re not potentially offending anyone (an ex, a faction of people, a belief system) you’re playing it too safe. What’s a good romance book without steamy scenes that you wouldn’t want your parents to read? What’s a good memoir without the brutal candor about your own failings? What’s a good business book without admitting all the wrong turns you had to make before you got to the right ones? If you’re writing a book, please, please try to find ways to make yourself uncomfortable! Find out all of the things you don’t want to know about yourself!
Cross Generational Friendships
I mentioned to my best friend that I was going to meet some friends of my boyfriend’s over the weekend—these friends are a couple of women who live in New Zealand and are somewhere in their 50’s or 60’s. She exclaimed, “You know, I was just telling my husband that I wish I had friends who were a bit older than me. I don’t know how I’d go about making those friends but it seems like they’d be able to add perspective and dimension to my friend group that’s missing.” Funnily enough, just a couple weeks before I connected with another woman in her 50’s/60’s who used to be a dancer, choreographer, and writer in New York but now lives in Amsterdam. She recently launched a writing coaching practice and we spent an hour on Zoom talking about the myriad of challenges inherent in working in creative fields, and how we wished we could combine our collective talents to help arts foundations with their marketing and communications. Speaking with someone a bit older than me who has similar interests and career path gave me a sense of peace and contentment, a feeling of knowing that there are happy, successful women who’ve lived their lives the way I want to live mine. What do you think? Do you have friendships that span generations?
A Perspective on Books
“Even if a book teaches you nothing, it can still provide talismanic value—reading a book about something can signify an intention to live differently. Maybe one particular book on marriage won’t make you a better partner, in and of itself. But the time spent reading it will be time spent engaging with one’s thoughts about the subject, and, ceremonially, proving your devotion to it.” - Sasha Chapin, Sasha’s Newsletter
A dear friend sent me this post and I appreciated the sentiment—that one doesn’t read a book to increase factual knowledge; rather, books are perspective-changers or expansive mind-openers. I also liked the idea of a book providing talismanic value, that reading a book is an intentional investment in wanting to live differently. If you’ve ever picked up a book and not loved it only to pick it up again a few months or years later and become obsessed, I think it’s for this reason. You weren’t ready or able, because of something that was going on in your life at the moment, to have your perspective shifted.
Next week we’ll be talking about the importance of agents, the one tool you should absolutely invest in if you’re a writer, and how publishing houses measure success. As always, thank you for reading and have a lovely rest of your weekend.