My IOS Apple health app is showing it has stored 238.66 terabytes of my data! Wow, didn’t know I did that many steps.
Category: Journal
Journal 2020-09-18
Watching performers, I appreciate quality but I don’t get particularly excited by even exquisite technical excellence. Looks attract, certainly, but interest is quickly lost if there is nothing real going on beyond the performance. I detach emotionally when there is anything conceited or contrived. What holds me is real lived human experience, with all its perfect imperfections; something genuine that has emerged in the moment and surprised even the performer.
Journal 2020-09-10
I really don’t like listening to or watching any recent performance of mine, even if I am generally pleased with how it turned out. This is weird because I don’t mind after a while, when there is some distance of time and I have forgotten about the process involved. I suppose the time delay helps me enjoy it as an audience member, rather than identifying so firmly as the performer.
Journal 2020-08-31
A lot of what I know is the product of age and curiosity, and although broad is often just familiarity with the basics. But I do also feel something expanding within me lately and I’m not sure of the cause, like energy ignited from a switch that has been flicked on.
Journal 2020-08-15
Random thought, slipping into British mode…
Despite its reputation, England can be a nice place for the weather. We have about six months when it can be very pleasant to be here, say from about mid-April to mid-October. The dark, cold and damp months of December to February take some extra effort to appreciate.
I prefer long sunny days in the low to mid 20Cs (70Fs).
(yawn)
Journal 2020-08-14
Paradox of the day:
It’s in my best interests not to be so self-interested.
Journal 2020-08-12
I appreciate the storytelling of real human experience, truthfully expressing core feelings that are shared by people across cultures and time. Very generally, I tend to turn to Shakespeare for plays and poetry; and Dostoevsky for deep psychological novels. Some other great writers I like to read are: Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, and Victor Hugo.
Journal 2020-08-11
Reading Hamlet.
It’s been done millions of times, but my instinctive interpretation of Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy is a bit different from the many performances I have seen. In fact it may be unhelpful seeing other people’s performances because the blueprints distract from my own relationship with the words.
Every single person has both uniqueness and a shared oneness with everybody else. What is interesting is finding the individuality and playing with it, rather than blandly mimicking other people or current socialised expectations.
Journal 2020-08-06
I think I will set-up my own green screen film studio and have some fun making videos. I want to shoot dramatic monologues and music performances – and also maybe some presentations if I’m feeling boring.
Journal 2020-07-30
Wasn’t Shakespeare amazing. It would be so interesting to find out how his genius developed – what he saw and experienced in his life that helped him write such beautiful words and comprehend so deeply the human condition in all its different aspects. I can think of other notable geniuses in history – Mozart in music, Newton in science etc. – but Shakespeare is a sort of mythical other, shrouded in mystery, whose breadth of insight has the greatest impact on me.
Robert Walker 