The Art of Travel

After reading How Proust Can Change Your Life, I bought two more books by Alain de Botton. His novel, On Love, could quite possibly be unreadable, but I'll try again soon. The Art of Travel, though, was a nice reminder to start paying more attention to what's around me and, of course, to travel when I have the chance. [I've gone back to using commas where appropriate. I can't help it.]

One particularly insightful chapter was on anticipation. "The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present." Everything I hope for, read, watch, remember or anticipate has some piece of reality omitted or changed; when I am doing any of these things (hoping/anticipating/experiencing art/remembering) either I don't have all the information (anticipation/hope of the unknown), I'm distracted by what's in front of me (books, movies, art), or I consciously (or unconsciously) throw aside or distort or enhance pieces of the things I know (memory).

People talk a lot about living in the moment, but the moment is informed by all my experiences, the things I've read and watched, and the things I hope for. These things determine the way I interact with the present and I use them to make sense of what's in front of me. De Botton reminded me that the thoughtful person is the one who doesn't stop with observation ("That's pretty") but attempts to understand ("Why does that seem pretty to me?"). Art is always made by answering that question, but this is also how rich experiences in the present are made. You might answer the question objectively ("The lines are symmetrical, the colors do this or that"), with reference to human characteristics ("The oak tree gives an impression of stoicism"), or informed by your own experience ("That reminds me of the time when..."), but in some way my present is always informed by the answers to those questions and it becomes richer and more memorable when I think about the answers for more than a split second.

I worry sometimes that grad school will stump me; it's all about asking good, thoughtful questions. But asking why is always a good place to start in real life and in art; maybe I like literature because there's a great chance of getting to a satisfying answer.