Inklust #19: Gives and Tells

There were a few stipulations she had written into his standard contract that Mark had balked at: lemon rounds, not wedges; hypoallergenic makeup; fair-trade green tea. These, she explained, were gives—items that he was not to insist upon, which lack of insistence would make him seem like a much more reasonable person than his contract made him out to be.

— Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, David Shafer

Here's a neat story: Van Halen was renowned for having a stringent, vaguely insane and crazy-detailed contract, one of whose stipulations included the demand that the band be provided with a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones picked out. If a single brown M&M was found, Van Halen could cancel the concert at the full expense of the promoter—right then and there.

This is usually told as an anecdote to illustrate how debauched and ridiculous rock-stardom had become. But there was actually a really good reason the clause existed.

Van Halen's concerts included some of the most complex and advanced pyrotechnics of any show at that time. A successful show required a number of safety precautions and precise technical measures.

If the band found brown M&Ms in the bowl, chances were high that the contract hadn't been read. It significantly increased the likelihood of an onstage accident or technical failure.

The brown M&Ms weren't a give; they were a tell.

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What is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #11: Sacrifice

I wonder if Ibrahim’s palms were damp as he walked his son to the summit. Did he tell him they were going on a hike? Did he take water? I think he must have glared at the knife until his reflection was part of the blade. I think relief must have replaced his horror when he unsheathed his knife and recognized his face. He must have known that what he was to do was of such significance it had already become who he was, and so he offered both his son and himself to the kinzhal’s edge.

— A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra

I think the biggest lesson my dad wanted to teach me — the one he still regularly reinforces — is his firm belief that we become what we think about. Being an engineer, he acted on this concept the best way he knew how: by ensuring my input was as diverse as possible. On the day I was born he ordered the complete collection of Encyclopaedia Brittanica and accompanying Great Authors series. Every year he bought a new dictionary for my birthday. He made me write down and map goals, and he still sends me newsletters or ideas he finds edifying. His entire approach to the mind revolves around keeping the software up to date.

On some level I guess we know that idea to be true: a single thought, the suspicion of a thing, or the significance of some future event can so affect us that we get chills, can almost literally feel ourselves transforming.

Scientifically the idea is sound. I've read a lot lately that we can change our synaptic patterns based on actions, new habits, new input, even thoughts. Synaptic pathways define who we are, generally speaking, during those autopilot moments when you're just feeling and reacting to things.

So next time you find yourself snagged in a debate about determinism versus free will, you'll have an explanation for why it's neither and both.

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What is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #10: Agora

When Newton identified the laws of gravitation he did not assert that they held sway everywhere, but wondered whether "God is able ... to vary the laws of nature ... in several parts of the universe." The physicist Ernest Rutherford, whose experiments exposed the structure of the atom, was so skeptical about drawing grand implications that he threatened to bar from his laboratory any scientist who so much as uttered the word "universe." When the astronomer Edwin Hubble established that the Milky Way was one among many galaxies, he called them "island universes" and questioned whether "the principle of the uniformity of nature" pertained across such enormous distances. This is the opposite of starting with a deeply held faith and accumulating evidence to support it. Scientists have a story of discovery to tell, dogmatists a story of obedience to authority.

-- The Science of Liberty, Timothy Ferriss

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What the dickens is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #9: Love

I discovered I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people's time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.

-- Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Gabriel García Márquez

Image credit: mary_gaston22.

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What the dickens is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #8: The Alchemy of Advertising

Most of consumer behavior is perfectly obvious -- people like things that look nicer, taste better, work more dependably, and cost less. Then there's the mysterious part. And what we claim to understand about the mysterious part is usually speculation and ideology masquerading as knowledge.

-- Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian

About the Image: Sunsets to Die For, Shepard Fairey.

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What the dickens is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #7: The Quality Without a Name

The more living patterns there are in a place -- a room, a building, or a town -- the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name.

And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself.

-- The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander

Fun fact: This book has served as inspiration for many a web developer and programmer. I'm sure it's applicable to a lot of other things too. Thanks Milan for the recommendation.

About the image: Le Café de Nuit, Place Lamartine, Arles (1888); Vincent Van Gogh.

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What the dickens is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #6: Promises of Plenty

"How much is it, this year, my man?" The tailor had come in while he was speaking.

"Well, it's been a doubling so many years, you see," the tailor replied, a little gruffly, "and I think I'd like the money now. It's two thousand pound, it is!"

"Oh, that's nothing!" the Professor carelessly remarked, feeling in his pocket, as if he always carried at least that amount with him. "But wouldn't you like to wait just another year, and make it four thousand? Just think how rich you'd be! Why, you might be a king, if you liked!"

"I don't know as I'd care about being a King," the man said thoughtfully. "But it dew sound a powerful sight o' money! Well, I think I'll wait--"

"Of course you will!" said the Professor. "There's good sense in you, I see. Good-day to you, my man!"

"Will you ever have to pay him that four thousand pounds?" Sylvie asked as the door closed on the departing creditor.

"Never, my child!" the Professor replied emphatically. "He'll go on doubling it, till he dies."

-- Sylvie and Bruno, Lewis Carroll

About the image: The Professor by Harry Furniss, for Sylvie and Bruno.

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What the dickens is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #5: The Daily Baptism

I am the cleanest woman in the world, not from love of cleanliness but from a passion for water. The same passion will make it impossible for me to die anywhere but in an Arab city by the sea. Water is the first element. My first element. I felt the truth of this on my skin, even before I read it in books. Even before reading this Hadith from the Prophet to his daughter Fatima, on the eve of her wedding to 'Ali ibn Ali Talib: "Wash yourself ever with water; thus, when your husband looks at you, he shall delight in you."

I washed myself with water; thus, when I looked at myself, I was delighted.

-- The Proof of the Honey, Salwa Al Neimi

About the image: "Young Lady Bathing" by Rafael.

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What the dickens is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #4: The Thinking Meat

[Humans] live in a world where it's words and not deeds that have power, where the ultimate skill is mastery of language. This is a terrible thing because basically we are primates who've been programmed to eat, sleep, reproduce, conquer and make our territory safe, and the ones who are most gifted at that, the most animal types among us, always get screwed by the others, the fine talkers, despite these latter being incapable of defending their own garden or bringing a rabbit home for dinner or procreating properly.

Humans live in a world where the weak are dominant. This is a terrible insult to our animal nature, a sort of perversion or a deep contradiction.

-- The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

Image credit: Kazuya Akimoto.

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What the dickens is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Inklust #3: Bell-Shaped Instruments of Torture

I finished this book at the nail shop today. My nail technician's daughter Kimmie jokingly observed it was published under Penguin Books' "Great Loves" series, then raised her eyebrow at me like I was a shifty-eyed Harlequin reader.

I couldn't stand for that so I gave her this long awkward explanation about how it's not really what she thinks, and how, after reading a Russian love story, the only thing you'll be lusting for is a natural death, peaceful and alone, with many warm cats.*

But oh, the soliloquies! Nobody does them quite like a glassy-eyed Russe, hardened like the grist of life.

"Women are like empresses, keeping nine tenths of the human race in servitude, doing hard labour. And all because they feel they've been humiliated, because they've been denied the same rights men have. And so they take their revenge by acting on our sensuality and ensaring us in their nets."

[...]

"No sooner does a man go near a woman than he falls under her spell and loses his head. Even in my previous life I used to get an uneasy sensation whenever I set eyes on a woman dressed in a ball-gown, but now that sight inspires me with genuine terror: I really do see in her something that's dangerous to men, something that's against all law, and I feel like calling for the police and appealing to them for protection against this danger, demanding that this hazardous object be confiscated and taken away."

-- The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoy

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*Another awesome book from this series is Ivan Turgenev's True Love, which is, at least in part, about a guy who falls in love with a princess, who's secretly sleeping with his dad, who beats her.

Inklust #2: Anatomy of a Smile

This is post #2 in my Inklust experiment, where I post a quote from whatever text I happen to be reading. None of the passages have to be particularly profound, but people have a way of constructing contexts -- personal omens -- where there otherwise may be none.

That's part of what I think is so interesting about this project. If the quotes affect you in some weird way, then the undertaking will have been worth the toil. So weave at heart's content:

But Perry had told him, "The eye doesn't matter. Because you have a wonderful smile. One of those smiles that really work." It was true that the tightening action of a smile contracted his face into its correct proportions, and made it possible to discern a less unnerving personality -- an American-style "good kid" with an outgrown crew cut, sane enough but not too bright.

-- In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

Image credit: glitter feet.

Experiments in Inklust

Being back in California makes me anxious. As a result, I am devouring books with the gasping, gulping desperation of someone drowning -- or of one intent on drowning herself with ink.

To put all this literature to (what I hope is) good use, I'm going to try this new thing where I post a daily quote from whatever book I happen to be reading. Sometimes the quotes will be in English, other times they will be in French (translations optional, depending on whether I think I can do the original text justice), because I'm also trying this other thing where I alternate between English and French texts.

Logic follows that if reading voraciously as a kid taught me to speak well in English, the same method should help form a solid linguistic foundation in my adopted tongue.

On verra. In the meantime, French-speakers can feel free to correct me. =P

Today's quote:

Garder un appartement propre, gai et vide de mauvais ki changerait l'image que nous donnons aux autres, même si nous sommes à mille lieues de notre habitation. Nous devons rester en union parfaite avec notre intérieur, où que nous soyons. Laissez une maison impeccable en partant au bureau le matin et toute votre journée s'en trouvera transformée !

Maintaining a clean apartment, cheery and devoid of negative energy, alters the image we convey to others, even if we're a thousand miles away from home. It's imperative to maintain a harmonious union with the space we inhabit. When you leave an impeccable home behind you in the morning, your entire day is transformed!

-- L'Art de la Simplicité, Dominique Loreau

Justifying an 'Unjustifiable' Profession

Left-wing economists, ever eager to snatch the scourge from the hand of God, hold that advertising tempts people to squander money on things they don't need. Who are these élitists to decide what you need? Do you need a dishwasher? Do you need a deodorant? Do you need a trip to Rome?

I feel no qualms of conscience about persuading you that you do.

What the Calvinistic dons don't seem to know is that buying things can be one of life's more innocent pleasures, whether you need them or not.

- David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising.