Your mind is a wild monkey, swinging from branch to branch

This morning I met Ommwriter. Taking minimalism to a new extreme, Ommwriter is a text processor that replaces the multitude of boxes, bars, tools and icons with an atmospheric space and a few simple commands. Gentle music plays as your text floats above snow and the silhouettes of distant trees. (It feels Scandinavian, but it's actually Spanish). According to its creators, Ommwriter is “a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.” It “believes in making writing a pleasure once again.” 

It's elegant and inspiring, but at the same time it makes me reflect gloomily on our increasing feebleness of mind. The more our tools and technology proliferate, the more we seem paralysed by them. Now we have a tool that helps us forget how many tools we are using, that tries to coax us, via our senses, into a state of creativity. Of course this is refreshing next to the babel of garbage the web also purveys, but at the same time it seems a high watermark of artifice, making our creativity increasingly that of cyborgs. In looking for pleasure, comfort, usability, and sensory experience to help us create, we might easily forget that many of the greatest works of literature were written with feathers.

Heir to my affection

It was a treat last month to record an interview with ABC Radio National's Florence Spurling for an Encounter program that aired this morning, called “Heir to My Affection: the drama and poetry of William Shakespeare, John Donne and George Herbert.” You can listen to it here. We talked mostly about George Herbert, but Florence also spoke with Richard Strier and Peter Holbrook about The Winter's Tale (whence the line “heir to my affection”) and some Donne poetry. Recording it was fun, but listening was even better. There's something very special about hearing this poetry read and spoken of affectionately on air.

I found April in my arms

I was going to post the first couple of stanzas of TS Eliot's “The Wasteland” today, which begins “April is the cruellest month.” But then I came across this charming little thing by Ogden Nash. Of course to him April means Spring, but there's nothing here that couldn't also be found in the bosom of Autumn. This is “Always Marry an April Girl.” 

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

The last day of March and so the last day (at least in legend) of the breeding season of the hare, when they all go a little crazy. To mark the occasion, here's a snippet from the tea party where Alice meets a mad Hatter, a Dormouse, and a March Hare, and has a lesson in semantics.

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide [and said] “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”

“Come, we shall have some fun now!” thought Alice. “I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.—I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.

“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare.

“Exactly so,” said Alice.

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.

“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you know.”

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that I see what I eat is the same thing as I eat what I see!”

“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that I like what I get is the same thing as I get what I like!”

“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that I breathe when I sleep is the same thing as I sleep when I breathe!”

“It IS the same thing with you,” said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.