Escapism, The Dark Place, Schmökern, and More
Friday, May 10, 2024
Happy Friday y’all.
Here are 10 things I found interesting from the last week or so.
1/ Graham Greene of Escaping the Madness
To start this week’s newsletter, I’d like to share a quote by author Graham Greene. He said:
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”
The last two newsletters I’ve focused more on the topic of escapism. In doing so, one of my friends texted me. He asked:
“So can forms of escapism be categorized or bucketed? Healthy vs Unhealthy - drawing vs drugs? Are there criteria for what is a healthy version and what isn’t. this is where my mind went.”
When I think about the positive and negative aspects of escapism I refer to them in terms of “escaping from life” or “escaping to life.” However, these are not closed categories. I see them more embodying the idea of the yin and yang.
In every negative example of escapism, there’s a small drop of positivity. In every positive example of escapism, there’s a small drop of negativity.
It makes me think how because escapism is not its own formal school of thought like other philosophical schools like stoicism or existentialism, there isn’t clear cut frameworks or ways to bucket forms of escapism. This will require more investigation. More on this later down the road.
2/ Iris Murdoch on Fantasy, Illusion, and Reality
“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”
3/ Leo Tolstoy on Truth
“Truth, like gold is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”
It’s the washing away, or the shedding of layers, that reveals the gold right in front of you. Instead of searching high and wide for the treasure out “there,” it’s looking within to notice the gold within which is no other place than “here.”
4/ Margaret Forster on Escapism
“People talk about escapism as though it's something nasty but escapism is wonderful!”
Escapism is not only wonderful, it is essential.
5/ Erica Jong on Escaping to the Dark Place
“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”
Instead of escaping from the dark place, escape to it.
Muster the courage to follow your talents there because it is there, in the depths of the dark place, where the light shines the brightest.
6/ Schmökern
I came across a new word this week: schmökern. It’s German verb for leisurely browsing through books, often with a sense of joy and without a goal in mind. When I think of leisure, I often go back to one of Vizi Andrei’s essays, How to Waste your Time. He writes:
“Leisure must not be an escape from effort; it must be unavailable without effort. Pure leisure paradoxically requires discipline, focus, and commitment, not an endless pursuit of dopamine.”
Andrei adds that leisure resembles the art of wasting your time. A life of leisure, a life without goals, sounds boring or wasteful to many. But Andrei makes a counterpoint to this:
“You need silence to be able to imagine a brighter future. Your mind requires boredom to carve out a destiny for yourself. In a world full of distractions, boredom is no longer a mere “productivity hack” —it’s one of the highest virtues. Protect your boredom. At all costs.”
Protect your boredom. Follow your talents. Trust the process. Go to the dark place. Find reality in a world of illusion.
7/ David Lynch on Deadlines
“It just drives me nuts…somebody arbitrarily says, ‘You gotta do it in two days.’ That fucking really pisses me off. It really does. We’re always up against the clock…I’m not working that way again, ever. This is absolutely horrible. We never get any extra shots. We never any time to experiment. We never get to, you know, go dreamy or anything. We barely fucking make our days. I could have spent a week…and dreamt up all kinds of stuff. You know, it’s just…it’s sick, this kind of fucking way to do it. You don’t get a chance to sink into anything. It’s not a way to work.”
It’s funny that same essay by Andrei, he writes something akin to what Lynch said,
“Paradoxically, only those who know how to waste their time are truly busy, productive, and hard working.”
And then later wrote,
“The quality of our leisure predicts the quality of our work.”
Deadlines are good because it helps you get stuff done and close the gap that Ira Glass talks about. But perhaps Lynch has a point — being up against the clock due to some arbitrary deadline might be what is reducing the quality of your work. Perhaps keeping busy and staying productive is antithetical to hard work. Perhaps working like that creates the illusion of quality work. Perhaps, the real work is disregarding the deadline for a moment to experiment, to do nothing, to pause, to stand still, to sink in, to escape.
8/ Joseph Campbell on Hesitation
“Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required. Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or highroad to the soul’s destination.”
Campbell’s words are closely related to a stanza in J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem, “The Riddle of Strider” from his book, “The Fellowship of the Ring.” He writes:
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
Allow yourself to get lost.
Allow yourself to wander.
Allow yourself to rest.
Doing so allows the best ideas shine through and glitter.
9/ Arlan Hamilton on Being Yourself
“Be yourself, so that the people looking for you can find you.”
10/ Ludwig Wittgenstein on Why We Are Here
“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not to enjoy ourselves.”
Said another way: I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure sure that it is not to escape from life. It is to escape to life.
Thank you for reading. Have a wonderful Friday and I’ll see you next week.
—Garrett
Thank you!