Thursday, December 18, 2008
Idle dreaming is often the essence of what we do...
Thomas Pynchon's essay entitled Nearer, My Couch, to Thee is a meditation on Sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. I link to it here with an observation about myself upon which I will refrain from commenting for the moment: I used to work harder. I used to fill every possible moment with work. Always reading books, writing letters, adding to or crossing out items from lists (and, of course, occupying myself with tasks outlined in said lists), making artworks, writing songs... So, maybe it's not that I worked harder, but I worked more. Always doing something of substance, or so I thought. Or so I thought. And now I wonder. Have I succumbed to sloth?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Love this post. Reminds me of this quote by Siegfried Kracauer:
If...one has...the sort of patience specific to legitimate boredom, then one experiences a bliss that is almost unearthly. A landscape appears in which colorful peacocks strut about, and images of people suffused with soul come into view. And look--your own soul is likewise swelling, and in ecstasy you name what you have always lacked: the great passion. Were this passion--which shimmers like a comet--to descend, were it to envelope you, the others, and the world--oh, then boredom would come to an end and everything that exists would be...
Embrace your sloth! You never know where it might lead!!
Also, I must read that Pynchon essay. Where can I get it?
Where does the Kracauer quote come from? Click on the "Nearer, My Couch, To Thee" for the link to the essay.
Ah, yes. I see now the Pynchon is linked. Can't wait to read it. The Kracauer comes via Jonathan Flatley's essay in A Minimal Future (one of my faves!) but the original source is a book called "Mass Ornament: Wiemar Essays," translated by Thomas Y. Levin and published by Harvard University Press, 1995. If you're thinking about the whole notion of boredom, Flatley's essay is a knock-out. Not sure if your interest in sloth is related to boredom but for me the two are somehow connected.
Post a Comment