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Archive for November, 2008

Doing things alone

Posted in Reflection on November 4, 2008| 2 Comments »

Ben Casnocha comments on a FT article:

Fuchsia Dunlop in the weekend FT nails it:

Dining alone in restaurants, like other solitary activities, is a matter of perception. If you feel guilty about it and think you shouldn’t be doing it, it’s dreadful. On the other hand, if you can enjoy it as one of the diverting side dishes to the great shared feast of life, it can be delicious. Dining in company isn’t always an unalloyed pleasure, anyway. If your companion is dull or irritating, or the chemistry of conversation absent, you might as well be alone. And if you are simply too tired to offer another person your full attention, a little solitary sustenance can be just the thing.

I’m an experienced solo diner. If the setting is right (ie, you don’t feel self-conscious), then a casual meal with a magazine can be quite relaxing.

I often do things alone, not just dining out, but also going to movies, galleries, or concerts. I find that I’m more free to observe, think, or feel things when alone. I think to be able to enjoy doing things alone is a useful skill to have. I wouldn’t want to limit my experience just because there isn’t a suitable company around.

Doing things with others is a good way to keep in touch with friends and can often make an experience more enjoyable, but the key is to have the right company for the right activity. With some of my great debate buddies, it doesn’t really matter where we go, we could still strike up a good conversations and share interesting ideas. Without the right company, I’d explore ways to enjoy things myself.

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Music man

Posted in Music, tagged , , on November 2, 2008| 3 Comments »

A friend got free tickets to 王力宏 (Wang Lee Hom)’s concert and invited me along. I knew Wang Lee Hom is a talented person and thought it is worth seeing him in actions. He plays guitar, violin, drums, piano, and sings surprisingly well too. I think he enjoys harmonic and rhythm more than melody or lyrics.

I can see why he is attractive: handsome, talented, and passionate about music. I guess he must have put in lots of efforts in practicing and learning, not to mention the discipline to keep himself in good shape. These behind the scene efforts are probably what I would find most attractive. I respect those who work hard toward their goals and find people who are passionate about something charming.

On my way home, the radio was playing a song I like from the Carpenters, which made a nice, quiet end for the concert trip.

Bonus: I saw 孫燕姿 (Sun Yanzi) in the concert hall as well ^__^

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Obsession

Posted in Books on November 1, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The Economist reviewed a book on obsession. Below are some interesting bits:

Praiseworthy activities or eccentric ones? Science or madness? A bit of both, says Lennard Davis in this history of obsession. But there is more to it than that. As the scientific world view rose to dominance, and life became more specialised, standardised and mechanised,
behaviour that a century earlier, if it had occurred at all, would have been regarded simply as odd, became both more common and more commented on.

Obsession in particular, with its characteristic two-mindedness—a compulsive self acts while an observing self watches helplessly—proliferated as a result of this “democratisation of madness”……Mr Davis devotes a chapter to “graphomania”, the madness of incessant writing… These writers knew they were sacrificing their lives to obsession, but they accepted the price and others lionised them for it.

And so to the present, when obsession is both a common mental illness and a cultural ideal. The two are connected, thinks Mr Davis: twin results of a single process, and perhaps the inevitable consequence of modernity. In just a few decades “obsessive-compulsive disorder” has gone from extremely rare—affecting one person in 2,000 according to a 1973 estimate—to extremely common, affecting two or three people in 100.

And nowhere is the ideal more powerful than in love, where only the “can’t eat, can’t sleep” kind is seen as worth having. He describes, entertainingly, the way this spawns, in turn, yet further obsession, as couples peruse sex manuals that categorise and prescribe precise methods for love-making in a vain attempt to stop their ardour fading. An obsession with obsessive love leads to obsessive efforts to revive it: obsession to the power of three.

This sentence ‘and so to the present, when obsession is both a common mental illness and a cultural ideal’ rings true to me. There seems to be similarly between obsession and passion. And both are characteristics I wish I could have more of. Are they compatible with the quality of a zen-like style detachment? To what extent can we become more obsessive and passionate, and do we really want them given the trade-offs they entail?

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