Dear Friends —
This issue was not easy to write. From the initial overflow of ideas to the blank emptiness of the white page, the process of compiling this issue of Caesura was a long mental journey involving questions like what is Caesura, and eventually, who am I? And yet, we made it to the issue number four.
Just to make sure, Caesura is a newsletter you are currently reading, and I am — Adil, its author. This newsletter is for people who seek focus in the world of everyday distractions — that is, in any way, the current state of affairs, before (and if) it evolves into something else.
Originally, this issue should have contained my essay on boredom, but that essay is in bad shape: full of unfocused descriptions without a central argument. That is part of the reason why I have started reading Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom to put things in order with my understanding of boredom. I am on the second chapter, and it has been a smooth reading so far.
Here is the cool quote from the book:
This is boredom’s irony. On the one hand it highlights the inherent meaninglessness of existence while on the other it propels us forward in a never-ending search for something fresh and meaningful—something we hope will satisfy [us].
Anyways, let’s get started.
🎈 Matter of Perspective
Creative block is a part of journey that I embark on with Caesura. It usually takes the shape of boredom and makes ideas look boring and uninspiring and I give up exploring them as a result. The opposite to this is overexcitement, when every idea seems super interesting, but I got demoralized by the lack of time needed to research them.
The balance is somewhere between the two, but if I have to pick, I would go for boredom over overexcitement.
Boredom grounds your expectations and brings back to the reality. It makes you want to achieve the end result as fast as possible because the longer you keep on waiting, more boring the task becomes. Remember that feeling when you have a deadline for super uninspiring and dull task and you want to do anything possible to get rid of it quicker? Yeah, this is boredom. Ass James Danckert argues in his book, the function of boredom is to signal us that whatever we are doing right now is not engaging and we need to move on to something else. It acts as a reality check, wakes you up and makes you get creative around ways to get things done and move on.
An essay is always greatest before it’s written.
Overexcitement, in contrast, is full of false promises and illusions. It intoxicates you with a menu of potential opportunities, one looking better than the other. The expectation of doing something great seduces your mind more than the actual act of doing it. An essay is always greatest before it’s written. In doing so, overexcitement creates a gap between what you think you can versus what you actually can accomplish. Eventually, your overexcitement ends in a harsh zoom call with the reality (which then naturally evolves into boredom).
My solution to creative blocks is to split a large task into smallest atoms. Then, start with focusing on something small. One essay, one argument per essay, one idea per paragraph, one thought per sentence. One short sentence.
As control loving animals, we enjoy when things have illusionary edges — clear start and clear end. Short sentence starts and ends with a single thought. Paragraph forms one idea. Several paragraphs form a single argument. And so on.
Here I cannot avoid the parallels with running, which is a creative process too. Often, I feel lazy to go for 10K (kilometers) run. But 10K is two runs of 5K, and each 5K is just 5 short 1K runs. 1K run is approximately 9 minutes of a very slow running or 5-7 minutes of moderate-to-fast running. So to run 10K, I tell myself just to go for 1K and then stop if things are so bad as I imagine (they never are). After 1K, my body propels me to run further — no mental decision is taken by me, the body just continues to do what it was doing. At 3K mark, the decision to stop becomes more mentally taxing than just staying in that default mode — which is to keep moving the body forward (so again, no decision was taken and I continue to run). By 4K you are almost at 5K. By 5K, I think that it was not so bad and I can go for another 5K. So it starts again — 7 minutes, 1K, 3K, and so on. Eventually, I close the second 5K circle totaling 10K per one session.
This is not about tricking your mind. You never will be able to trick the physics of your legs hard jumping on the asphalt for 10K. It is more about perspective — looking at something big and seeing smaller pieces that make it up.
⭐️ My Favorite Things: Album I Like
There is a beauty in hidden mechanisms and processes that run our lives. Ecosystems of arteries pushing notes, ideas and people forward, left and right. This incredible mess that is somehow orchestrated and manipulated into one gigantic system of systems.
There is beauty in things like that. Things that if dissected and dismembered do not make any sense, but rather it is the totality of these disparate chaotic forces comprising them that bend the common sense into their will.
“Let your imagination lead you, it knows everything you don’t know and can’t be aware of” — starts Moor Mother her new album, Jazz Codes. Moor Mother is Camae Ayewa, songwriter, composer, vocalist, poet, and assistant professor in Composition at USC Thornton School of Music. She is also part of Black Quantum Futurism, artistic collective aiming at re-imagining life through the prism of afrofuturism.
We use labels and genres to define, classify and control things we do not understand. Like music that does not fit our conventional mental models. Jazz Codes has “jazz” in its title, but it is not a jazz album. Similarly, it has rap, soul, r&b, poetry, but none of these are enough to describe it.
The album is a challenging listening experience that put you through a series of imaginative obstacles in an attempt to make you to understand it. It trains your ears to give up resistance, listen and pay attention and once you do, you uncover additional layers of audio processes and background mechanisms that your untrained brain has been skipping over because it was just too much to comprehend. The album jumps at you, distracts you, conditions you to expect storm in a quite melodies and find beautifully charming rhythms in chaotic instrumentations.
✍️ Quote of the Week
In Born to Run, Christopher McDougall writes:
Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you practiced that so long that you forget you’re practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won’t have to worry about last one — you get those three, and you’ll be fast.
It is about running, but I have applied it to many things — including writing.
Remember that you can reply to this email to let me know what do you think (what you liked? what you disliked? what you want see more?) or just say hi. Also, if you do not already, follow me on Twitter or Insta.
See ya,
Adil.