insert: randomness

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With huge thanks and many tips of the hat to Michael Donaldson for lighting the way to Mike Bridge's Tycherion – a tool for randomizing Criterion Channel films (named after the Greek goddess of fate and chance) – I'm continuing my efforts to incorporate more randomness into my days (like the button I've programmed on my Stream Deck to call up a random note in Obsidian (though it works only so long as I'm diligent about processing the handwritten into the digital brain, an area in which I've been lacking)), to facilitate the discovery of choices and options I never would have selected otherwise coupled with a Harvey Dent-esque adherence to the result of the thousands-sided coin; I do, as Tycherion's button says, accept my fate (even if I do have to delay it until later in the day).

FWIW, the first film Tycherion selected and the fate I accepted was Vojtech Jazny’s ALL MY GOOD COUNTRYMEN, a brilliant piece of Czech cinema from 1969 – I bow to thy cinematic wisdom, Tycherion.

listening to rick rubin read to me

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In a manner not dissimilar similar to how it took me eight years of mowing two two-acre lawns every week (I'm since retired) to start listening to podcasts, I've only just – after 11 years of running nearly every day – started listening to audiobooks (also a recent first) during the day's run. While my latent drummer muscle memory makes music-while-running a likely non-starter (as I will either run in tempo with the music or attempt to fit the music in my head to my tempo ) audiobooks present none of those difficulties (though they have their own, chief among them being a difficulty in processing everything that's coming at me, like listening to someone who won't shut up).

General practice: if I like what I'm hearing – as I do now, with Rick Rubin reading his own THE CREATIVE ACT (reminds me of David Lynch's CATCHING THE BIG FISH) – I buy the physical book both for easy revisitation and as a repository of noted memory. Along with Rubin, the other one that got that treatment was James Clear's ATOMIC HABITS (excellent, by the way. Might re-listen at some point). What both have in common was that the author themselves read the book; in Rubin's case particularly, it felt like / feels like I'm working with him; I get why artists want to. Can't imagine standard audiobook guy voice having the same impact – though standard audiobook guy reading certain lines is amusing in and of itself.

Sticking with non-fiction of the manual/idea variety for now (though I might add poetry), things that I have a harder time making myself make the time to sit and read each day. Philosophy, too.

links/2023w10.1

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