focus

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Figured out a likely root cause of my focus problem post-run the last week or so: while listening to the audiobook will be financially beneficial (Graham's THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR – I sort of get this stuff now; and hey, if Warren Buffett considers it the best book on investing, who am I to argue), it was not creatively so: the morning run is my walking (running) meditation and, for better or for worse, I need that time to be alone with my brain, my breath, and the sounds of the AC. Filling my brain with the words and notions of others, no matter how beneficial (and surprisingly refreshing, in its way) is not at all worth the frazzled, unfocused husk that returns. Duly noted.

re/visit :: CATCHING THE BIG FISH (Lynch, 2006)

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Though I've endlessly perused Lynch's ode to TM-infused creativity in the 15+years since I last read it, this was my first time re-reading it in its totality or, rather, having David Lynch read it to me while I drove in circles on a lawnmower (THE STRAIGHT STORY part of my days) which gave it a whole new life.

Apparently my fragmentary thinking – and my efforts to stay there – has/have been around for a long time:

It would be great if the entire film came all at once. But it comes, for me, in fragments. That first fragment is like the Rosetta Stone. It's the piece of the puzzle that indicates the rest. It's a hopeful puzzle piece...

You fall in love with the first idea, that tiny little piece. And once you've got it, the rest will come in time.

(These are my perpetual efforts to remember that final sentence.)

Recommended, wholly, just as it was 17 years ago – and especially worthwhile as an audio book, like Rubin's THE CREATIVE ACT: there's something about having both Lynch and Rubin speaking to you, whispering in your lone ear, lying in a field. Essential to the creative library.

Other note: I always have to type David Lynch twice, as I invariably type David Lunch the first time.

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.