4.1
Attention, and unselfing
Murdoch's claim that looking properly at something outside yourself is a moral act, and that beauty is the most reliable occasion for it. The theoretical spine of the page.
read
- anchorThe Sovereignty of Good — Iris Murdoch
- On Beauty and Being Just — Elaine Scarry
- Art as Therapy — de Botton & Armstrong
do
Twenty minutes with one object or view, describing only what is actually there. No interpretation, no meaning, no photograph.
done when you have had the experience of forgetting yourself while looking at something.
4.2
The novel as moral equipment
Fiction as the only technology for occupying another consciousness at length. Nussbaum's argument that some knowledge is available in no other form.
read
- anchorMiddlemarch — George Eliot
- anchorAnna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy
- A Swim in a Pond in the Rain — George Saunders
- Love's Knowledge — Martha Nussbaum
do
Read one long novel as soul-food rather than as achievement. Hand-copy three to five passages and write why each one stopped you.
done when you have a commonplace book with something in it you'd be embarrassed to explain.
4.3
Poetry, carried
The compressed form. Rilke on living the questions; Oliver on paying attention as the beginning of devotion. Poetry is the one art you can carry around inside you.
do
Memorise one short poem. Carry it. Say it to yourself somewhere inconvenient.
done when you have a poem available to you without a phone.
4.4
Music, and the Dionysian
Nietzsche's Dionysian — the art that dissolves the individual rather than pleasing him. Deep listening as a practice rather than a background activity.
read
- anchorThe Birth of Tragedy — Friedrich Nietzsche
- Deep Listening — Pauline Oliveros
- Musicophilia — Oliver Sacks
do
One piece, in the dark, no screen, full length, following a single instrument the whole way through. Two minutes of silence afterwards before you speak or move.
done when you have listened to something all the way through without doing anything else.
4.5
Awe
Keltner's work on the emotion that reliably shrinks the self — and the finding that it is available on an ordinary walk rather than only at the Grand Canyon.
do
The awe walk, weekly: go somewhere on foot with the explicit intention of noticing something vast, and no other agenda.
done when you have been stopped by something ordinary.