The Great Humbling S3E3: 'Be like water!'
Dougald talks about Campfire Convention https://campfireconvention.uk/ Ed introduces this week’s ‘New Move’ instruction: Be Like Water Dougald tells a story about meeting Cindy Crabb on a North Sea ferry and receiving her zine, later compiled as the Encyclopedia of Doris, a review at Zine Nation says ‘it’s not an overstatement to say that it’s one of the most important and influential fanzines ever written’ and his own zine ‘Learning How to Drown’ Ed talks about the etymology: Old English wæter (noun), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch water, German Wasser, from an Indo-European root shared by Russian voda (compare with vodka), also by Latin unda ‘wave’ and Greek hudōr ‘water’. Intriguing that the Russians have vodka/voda - like the Gaelic ‘Uisge beatha’ - ‘water of life’ for all our lyrical libations... Ed acknowledges Bruce Lee...on ‘being like water’ and the Hong Kong protests. Dougald brings in the Dao De Jing – and his old friend Charles Davies who made a version of it called ‘I thought I was on the way to work, but I was on the way home’ – his version of chapter eight starts like this: water knows the way. it can flow anywhere without trying and it gives life to everything. it ends up in the lowest places and brings them life Ed quotes the poet Mary Oliver... “It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.” Dougald goes deep into Taoism with the artist and tai chi teacher Caroline Ross: “in Taoism water can signify both 'the highest good' and 'danger'. It can signify the exemplary method of non-contention and also the treachery and inescapability of boggy ground, an analogy for overthinking, dwelling on the mundane, or over-involvement in human affairs” And mentions the madness of the internet and Swedish dramatist Stina Oscarson’s need for ‘provprata’ - ‘test-speak’, to put a thought into words without being tied to it, try out how it sounds Ed references the ‘dark forests’ beyond the ‘failed states’ of the major internet platforms Dougald mentions Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin’s answer to the Fermi paradox, and how silence is how you survive as well as a piece from Yancey Strickler Ed brings us onto ‘Flow’ with Hungarian American professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ‘Flow’ is all about being ‘in the zone’ or ‘in the groove’ - a state of complete (and content) absorption, concentration and immersion, of intrinsic motivation, where the ego falls away, and thoughts follow seamlessly, musically on from one another - like jazz… We discuss what being an ‘autotelic’ person is all about Ed introduces Roger Deakin’s ‘Waterlog’. “A swimming journey would give me access to that part of our world which, like darkness, mist, woods or high mountains, still retains most mystery. It would afford me a different perspective on the rest of land-locked humanity.” Dougald references Vanessa Andreotti’s talk called ‘Existence Beyond the House that Modernity Built’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU56UWP3zzY: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegreathumbling.substack.com