I notice a thing in my media consumption patterns where sometimes there’s something I want to watch or read or learn more about, but it doesn’t really happen until something else “softens the ground”.
For example: I’ve vaguely wanted to learn more about Miles Davis for a few years now.
why? because… he’s miles davis! he’s cool. I wanna be cool. I wanna understand cool. he was a legend, a pioneer. I wanna understand that stuff.
but all of that was happening for me at a rather intellectual layer. I didn’t care about miles davis, only the idea of him, kinda.
but that’s not an insurmountable problem. caring about something intellectually is often a starting point for me to care about it more fundamentally. I just need to get a sense of how it’s connected to other things I care about too
I think sometime around 2015 I started listening to Kind of Blue on repeat on youtube – and that gave me one entry point. Now I wanna know more about the guy who made the thing I like. But that wasn’t enough at the time to make me watch a 2hr documentary
I like the idea of jazz, and I appreciate it, but I would be being dishonest if I described myself as “a jazz guy”. it doesn’t shake me up all the way through
I am certainly “a scenes guy”, though, and I like reading and learning about scenes…
so at this point I have enough interest to go and read the wikipedia page a little more closely than I usually do – and if there are a couple of bits that hit me, now my interest is aroused. (Importantly, I don’t really have much say in this!)
Now we’re off to the races. Now I can spend a whole day on Miles Davis. I’m looking up what he did in Paris, I’m considering watching the French movie he improvised a soundtrack for. He’ll start popping up in my writing here and there when relevant
the most interesting thing about this whole process to me is how little of a say I get in whether or not I’m going to watch something
there is a process that exists through me, of which I am a mere (and often frustrated) servant
the more aware I become of the fullness of this process, the less frustrated I become. my subconscious really is smarter and more powerful than me, which is simultaneously amazing and terrifying
other cool thing is – I think “soften the ground” is a powerful general principle for all tasks, not just “I wanna watch this movie”. Instead of feeling vaguely guilty about the stuff on your list, realize that things happen almost naturally once the ground is appropriately soft.
✱
see also: make yourself comfortable
Hi Visa,
When you first started to tweet about Miles Davis, my first impulse was to suggest to you to listen to the music he composed -while watching the film l’ascenseur pour l’échafaud/elevator to the gallows. It is magical!
Maybe the storyline of the movie isn’t great, but it still has Jeanne Moreau wandering in the rain through the streets of Paris looking for her lover. Accompanied by the musicscore, it is the epitome of fifties noir romanticism. ( lot of inescapable fate there too)
I was introduced by a friend to this music, and likewise friends suggested books, films, art etc. and I am wondering if friends’ advice makes the ground soft? Also I have the feeling that maybe you are hinting at something like intuition, but maybe intuition springs from many stored conscious acts that built a body of knowledge? Like the process Daniel Kahneman described? Maybe your taste has developed so much that you can trust your intuition to take you to the right choices.
best whishes and thank you for all the food for thought!
Iris
I’ve been a Miles Davis fan for 25 years.
Like most people, I started out listening to “Kind of Blue”, and wanted to be a cool hipster who got it. Unlike most people, I had passed my Grade 8 by that point, so I was starting out, yes, but with an educated ear. (And that counts as softening the ground with an entire monsoon season)
I started out as a pretender, and ended up being a lifelong fan. I should probably add that I also tried to like Megadeth and it didn’t work out, so if it works out or not, it has a lot to do with your personal chemistry towards the music. If it catches on, good and if it doesn’t don’t push your luck.
The other thing you should know about Miles Davis is that he has many periods of music, and they don’t have much to do with each other. Jazz is something where unfortunately only the band leader gets named, whereas everybody contributes quite a lot. There was the Miles Davis who played with Charlie Parker, then the Miles Davis who played cool jazz, then there was the first quintet, then he paired up with Gil Evans, then he paired up with Coltrane, then he put together the second great quintet who had Shorter and Hancock, then he went electric with Bitches Brew, then he put in rock and funk into the music. That’s 6 or 7 eras, and they’re all different, and calling all of them “Miles Davis” is quite misleading.
But he’s quite special.