I would be most deprived without the words and images running through my own head and from the mouths and pens of others. I can't see how I would give that up. On the other hand, it is necessary for me to regularly, ritually drop down out of them into the animal and expand from there. I call it finding the donkey. The donkey that is me, the donkeys all around me. Here is rest and refreshment.
Thank you for the image of the donkey, Richard! It reminds me of one of Martin Shaw's mythic images of the horse, the rider and the hawk. That each of us has (or is) all three of these things. So the quest for me, in pulling up and questioning the way I've been using these tools, is not to shoot the hawk and discomfit the rider, but to bring the three into a wiser relationship than the one which our devices tend to draw us unto. And much as I appreciate Martin's archetypal image, the humbleness of the donkey feels closer to home for me.
Dougland, what a rich and moving piece. "Yet I wonder how much deeper I might have journeyed into that part of the world, how much more I might have learned, if I hadn’t found that window to escape..." I resonate with your experience here, as I first came to Canada as a 16 year-old with just a couple years of English study in my pocket. Part of the stipulation of the exchange program was, not to contact family or friends for the first three months (apart from brief affirmations by phone that all is ok), because it would allow for a deeper immersion. It forced me to communicate, to make friends, to figure things out. Learning a culture and language this way, later helped me to better support my ESL students (interestingly these Chinese students chose to come and study in Newfoundland because they knew that they would have fewer opportunities to speak Chinese compared to a multicultural centre like Toronto).
I have had a similar experience with Substack, and do believe that there is a place for these interactions that have a positive carry-over into real life. The question lies what we are trading off, just like in your Uyghur example, by finding enrichment online. I am hoping to find a renewed focus during Lent to establish habits that will leave my mind untethered throughout the day.
Also, your longhand writing is splendid and has such a natural flow that it is actually palpable in the reading experience!
Thanks, Eric! I was helped in the direction of writing by hand by a telling coincidence.
First, Alan Garner told me that he could always tell if a book had been written longhand first or typed into a screen. "The elbow is the best editor," was his explanation, and this rings true to my experience. There's a moment when the flow of the line on the page comes to a halt, you are waiting for what comes next, and it's like waiting for a tug on a fishing line. The arm knows when it is time to start writing again.
But what pushed me over the edge into doing this was discovering that Illich had made the same claim about being able to tell which books had originated as a line on a page. He described the strangeness of a kind of book he found himself reading in the 1980s and the gradual realisation that these were the fruit of the word processor with its easy cut and paste and the ability to hit 'delete' and make the words you just wrote disappear without trace.
So I do recommend trying it, even if just as an experiment for a day, to see what happens.
As I write very little, comparatively speaking, unelbowed (my sermons are written in pencil and no longer typed at all - no illusions of writing in stone!) this should not be too onerous :) (Tapped with my right forefinger :) )
As someone who has spent their entire life trying and mostly failing to harness their attention for some purpose beyond myself, I say thank you. Also as someone who has so many habitual trappings that the task to be the person I want and need to be seems impossible, I say thank you. Thank you for sharing the oak/meadow lens from Caroline Ross and the perfect timing of this post.🙏
I'm glad to read this, Randall. There's a certain nakedness to writing in this way, in the quietness of words on paper, that makes it harder to anticipate how the words will land, so your comment means a good deal.
I've spent a lot of time in recent years talking with folks who have been in recovery in AA or other twelve-step fellowships, and while I don't want to compare my relationship to my phone with the hell that some of them have been through (and put their loved ones through), I recognised enough similarities for it to get uncomfortable. But spending time around those folks has also been a heartening experience of the reality that we can change our habits, that we need others to do it alongside, and that there are practices and bodies of hard-earned wisdom that can help.
I appreciate the ongoing writings, Dougald. Thank you for your measured thoughts- I feel a similar tension between utter cold turkey and full indulgence in the good things of the Internet. I’ve grown accustomed to getting your dispatches as letters from a friend, like those of others here on Substack—- hopefully that doesn’t seem impertinent or overly American but just friendly, another magic mirror. Cheers.
Thanks, Abbey! There are certain books that landed at important times in my life and had the quality of a letter from the older, wiser friend I badly needed. (Alastair McIntosh's Soil & Soul and John Berger's The Shape of a Pocket, in particular.) In that spirit, I'm glad if any of my writing lands like a letter from a friend, because that seems to me one of the more helpful and humbler ways in which we can approach this strange enterprise of sending words out into the world. Good to know that you are reading!
It's odd the windows of time in which things happen. The year after the Beijing Olympics - China's coming-out party - YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter were all blocked. That Livejournal experience wouldn't have been possible. The summer of 2009, there was a civil disturbance in Guangzhou that caused the mistreatment of Uighurs to go to the next level and the internet was blocked altogether in Xinjiang.
That coincided with my most immersive experience of China. At the time I told myself I had it good, since economies around the Western world were going south and whereas in America there were drive-by shootings, in China there were only drive-by 'helloooooos'.
I also had a mate who nicknamed me 阿富汗人 'The Afghan', because I became dangerously underweight as the food was too greasy. Aren't your twenties great?
Ha, yes, truly my time in Korla was another era. I did find myself wondering how it would compare to your experiences when I was writing the piece. Perhaps you have the Great Firewall to thank for how far you have gone in Mandarin! :-)
Last year I finally had a viral hit with a Chinese song, which serves as a reminder, the only thing worse than being ignored on the internet is NOT being ignored on the internet.
To be consciously poised between the conviviality of a platform like Substack, where "people learn how to make their lives and their words into a gift", and the challenges inherent in the bodily reality of our situation as this post describes, strikes me as a very relevant use of the Lenten season.
I would be most deprived without the words and images running through my own head and from the mouths and pens of others. I can't see how I would give that up. On the other hand, it is necessary for me to regularly, ritually drop down out of them into the animal and expand from there. I call it finding the donkey. The donkey that is me, the donkeys all around me. Here is rest and refreshment.
I like that, Richard Kurth. Count me among the donkeys and one who also finds a great deal of connection in dark times on here.
Thank you for the image of the donkey, Richard! It reminds me of one of Martin Shaw's mythic images of the horse, the rider and the hawk. That each of us has (or is) all three of these things. So the quest for me, in pulling up and questioning the way I've been using these tools, is not to shoot the hawk and discomfit the rider, but to bring the three into a wiser relationship than the one which our devices tend to draw us unto. And much as I appreciate Martin's archetypal image, the humbleness of the donkey feels closer to home for me.
Dougland, what a rich and moving piece. "Yet I wonder how much deeper I might have journeyed into that part of the world, how much more I might have learned, if I hadn’t found that window to escape..." I resonate with your experience here, as I first came to Canada as a 16 year-old with just a couple years of English study in my pocket. Part of the stipulation of the exchange program was, not to contact family or friends for the first three months (apart from brief affirmations by phone that all is ok), because it would allow for a deeper immersion. It forced me to communicate, to make friends, to figure things out. Learning a culture and language this way, later helped me to better support my ESL students (interestingly these Chinese students chose to come and study in Newfoundland because they knew that they would have fewer opportunities to speak Chinese compared to a multicultural centre like Toronto).
I have had a similar experience with Substack, and do believe that there is a place for these interactions that have a positive carry-over into real life. The question lies what we are trading off, just like in your Uyghur example, by finding enrichment online. I am hoping to find a renewed focus during Lent to establish habits that will leave my mind untethered throughout the day.
Also, your longhand writing is splendid and has such a natural flow that it is actually palpable in the reading experience!
Thank you, Ruth! That's interesting to hear about your experience of coming to Canada and makes a great deal of sense that they would have that rule.
And thanks for inviting so many of us to join in exploring a new relationship to these technologies during Lent. I shall report back!
Thank you, Dougald
A rich post
The mention of the uyghurs was very poignant in that they seem to have been forgotten by the ‘and now’ culture of what passes for ‘news’
I really like the handwriting idea for posts before going near a screen
Ive long thought it might be the necessary RH ‘take care!’ brake on what might be otherwise an unhusbanded flow of words
I hope to take study leave later this year
I’m wrestling with leaving my laptop behind and simply working with the books I have, plain paper and my supply of Blackwings :)
Your comment may help push me over the edge in this respect :)
I may even begin to publish on this convivial forum :)
Thanks, Eric! I was helped in the direction of writing by hand by a telling coincidence.
First, Alan Garner told me that he could always tell if a book had been written longhand first or typed into a screen. "The elbow is the best editor," was his explanation, and this rings true to my experience. There's a moment when the flow of the line on the page comes to a halt, you are waiting for what comes next, and it's like waiting for a tug on a fishing line. The arm knows when it is time to start writing again.
But what pushed me over the edge into doing this was discovering that Illich had made the same claim about being able to tell which books had originated as a line on a page. He described the strangeness of a kind of book he found himself reading in the 1980s and the gradual realisation that these were the fruit of the word processor with its easy cut and paste and the ability to hit 'delete' and make the words you just wrote disappear without trace.
So I do recommend trying it, even if just as an experiment for a day, to see what happens.
I JUST read that part in Illich a few weeks ago! And I have had the same practice coincidentally, since beginning on substack…
As I write very little, comparatively speaking, unelbowed (my sermons are written in pencil and no longer typed at all - no illusions of writing in stone!) this should not be too onerous :) (Tapped with my right forefinger :) )
As someone who has spent their entire life trying and mostly failing to harness their attention for some purpose beyond myself, I say thank you. Also as someone who has so many habitual trappings that the task to be the person I want and need to be seems impossible, I say thank you. Thank you for sharing the oak/meadow lens from Caroline Ross and the perfect timing of this post.🙏
I'm glad to read this, Randall. There's a certain nakedness to writing in this way, in the quietness of words on paper, that makes it harder to anticipate how the words will land, so your comment means a good deal.
I've spent a lot of time in recent years talking with folks who have been in recovery in AA or other twelve-step fellowships, and while I don't want to compare my relationship to my phone with the hell that some of them have been through (and put their loved ones through), I recognised enough similarities for it to get uncomfortable. But spending time around those folks has also been a heartening experience of the reality that we can change our habits, that we need others to do it alongside, and that there are practices and bodies of hard-earned wisdom that can help.
I appreciate the ongoing writings, Dougald. Thank you for your measured thoughts- I feel a similar tension between utter cold turkey and full indulgence in the good things of the Internet. I’ve grown accustomed to getting your dispatches as letters from a friend, like those of others here on Substack—- hopefully that doesn’t seem impertinent or overly American but just friendly, another magic mirror. Cheers.
Thanks, Abbey! There are certain books that landed at important times in my life and had the quality of a letter from the older, wiser friend I badly needed. (Alastair McIntosh's Soil & Soul and John Berger's The Shape of a Pocket, in particular.) In that spirit, I'm glad if any of my writing lands like a letter from a friend, because that seems to me one of the more helpful and humbler ways in which we can approach this strange enterprise of sending words out into the world. Good to know that you are reading!
It's odd the windows of time in which things happen. The year after the Beijing Olympics - China's coming-out party - YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter were all blocked. That Livejournal experience wouldn't have been possible. The summer of 2009, there was a civil disturbance in Guangzhou that caused the mistreatment of Uighurs to go to the next level and the internet was blocked altogether in Xinjiang.
That coincided with my most immersive experience of China. At the time I told myself I had it good, since economies around the Western world were going south and whereas in America there were drive-by shootings, in China there were only drive-by 'helloooooos'.
I also had a mate who nicknamed me 阿富汗人 'The Afghan', because I became dangerously underweight as the food was too greasy. Aren't your twenties great?
Ha, yes, truly my time in Korla was another era. I did find myself wondering how it would compare to your experiences when I was writing the piece. Perhaps you have the Great Firewall to thank for how far you have gone in Mandarin! :-)
Last year I finally had a viral hit with a Chinese song, which serves as a reminder, the only thing worse than being ignored on the internet is NOT being ignored on the internet.
https://www.eyeshenzhen.com/content/2023-08/31/content_30443607.htm
To be consciously poised between the conviviality of a platform like Substack, where "people learn how to make their lives and their words into a gift", and the challenges inherent in the bodily reality of our situation as this post describes, strikes me as a very relevant use of the Lenten season.