Brazilian history might well be the most fascinating on the planet if two or three more Gilbertos Freyres were to emerge, offering readers two or three hundred years of history analyzed through the multifaceted lens of the original genius. No cataclysms, heroic feats, or miraculous successes would be needed to make it intriguing: it would suffice if, through clothing, customs, preferences, and convictions, the rise and fall of the common man were made evident. “What did you play when you were a child?”, “What did you do on weekends?”, “What did you read?”, “What did you think about this or that?”… This kind of question says everything, or almost everything, about the state of a civilization.
Category: Notes
There Is Something Strange About the Way…
There is something strange about the way ideas take shape in the mind. Sometimes, it’s fun to play at facing the problem of the blank screen, the blinking cursor, and the text yet to be written. Then, one realizes the following: the idea does not spring forth when the mind is active, when it imagines phrases and themes, and reflects on what it will write. If the mind intensifies its thinking, it eventually exhausts itself, but the idea does not come. However, if the mind allows itself a moment of pause, sometimes when lighting a cigarette or pouring a cup of coffee, which interrupts the thought and creates a void, a momentary inertia, it is in this very moment that the idea springs forth, leaving the writer with the task of shaping it and writing it down.
The Aspiring Writer Will Be Shocked…
The aspiring writer will be shocked if someone tells him that not even Cioran himself agreed with the things he said, but that, despite this, he was a true master of the art of writing. Yet this is the case. And that is precisely why it is so difficult to find authors who write like him: because Cioran took the need to craft powerful phrases to its ultimate extreme. For him, it is not the content of what he is saying that matters, but rather the effect of the sentence. And when it comes to powerful sentences, there are not many authors who can compare to him.
Life Becomes Much More Enjoyable…
Life becomes much more enjoyable and interesting when you learn to collect, develop, and preserve a collection of things that money cannot buy. It does not need to be very large; it just needs to be well-maintained and regularly tended to, and you will have a new, inspiring reason to wake up.