Notes on Notes

Back in November a conference titled "Take Note" was held at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The purpose? To assess the long history, up to the current state, of the practice of note-taking.  While this at first seemed to me another painful, self-reflexive mise-en-abîme that academia prides itself on -- an event in which literary scholars, historians, and psychologists could pontificate on the marginalia of their own professions -- it quickly occurred to me that there was a kernel of an idea here that could give way to some lovely observations on reading, note-taking, and memory.  This kernel, I thought, could be best served, not by the medium of sober academic scrutiny, but of whimsical, stream of consciousness literary expression. Yet before I was able to have any marginally profound thoughts of my own I quite by accident came across a passage in a book I had chosen at random that reflects on this very theme.

Within the second page of Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage -- a sometimes hilarious and consistently insightful contemplation on the very deep-rooted anxieties that surround writing, procrastination, and settling down -- we come across one of the most apt descriptions of the purpose of note-taking I have had the pleasure of reading.  Within a somewhat rambling caveat to the fact that this is a book that is and is not about D.H. Lawrence, Dyer sets out to preface us with some of the difficulties one encounters when beginning such a large literary undertaking.  He writes,  "I even built up an impressive stack of notes with Lawrence vaguely in mind but these notes, it is obvious to me now, actually served not to prepare for and facilitate the writing of a book about Lawrence but to defer and postpone doing so.  there is nothing unusual about this.  All over the world people are taking notes as a way of postponing, putting off and standing in for."

As one who has completed a senior thesis in the humanities, I am all to familiar with this specific conundrum of note-taking as a non-activity, as the mere self-imposed roadblock to that work you tell yourself you should and you need to and you want to be getting to.  Whereas formerly I had always been impressed with those who so meticulously color code and label and organize such copious amounts of notes whether it's on a legal pads or an iPad, my conviction that this is at least partly a waste of time has now been justified thanks to Dyer.  And yet here I am again, taking notes on someone else's work in order to postpone the work I originally intended to set out to do, to write some original thoughts on the nuances and particularities of taking note.

As one who had always been passionate about drawing and painting, one who was always sure that this was the talent or the interest that set her apart, I often oscillate between kicking myself and contently accepting the fact that my four years at a liberal arts college has turned me away from the practice of visual arts and towards the analysis thereof. Whether or not this was indeed an unfortunate turn of events should probably be left unanswered for it remains a fact that I have spent the majority of my last four to five years, instead of using my pencil and pen to outline the forms I see, I have been using ink and graphite to underline the work of others, of course with the purpose to comment upon later. However, as Dyer has adroitly pointed out, the latter half of the note-taking experience, the thought of return to comment further, to add one's own critique or insight, often never comes to pass.  For this reason it is the quality of the line, and not the contents it supposedly aims to highlight, to which I am now drawn (forgive the pun).

The quality and thickness of an underline, its slight waver, the measure of a check mark or question mark, and the range of a ballpoint as compared to a fountain pen, have all become greater parts of my daily life as a liberal arts student. I've turned from sketching everyday scenes to this even farther removed form of gleaning. My last recourse towards beauty and creation in this act is the quality of my line, my underline. Of course the quality of the underline is cursorily related to the content being highlighted if only in the perfection of the line of the printed word, expressed more fully when juxtaposed with my unsteady, imperfect highlight (I could say organic versus machine but I won't). The act of underlining is a promise to that content that I will return, that this phrase or part of a thought merits careful, sober, and heavy inspection. But if we are all being honest with ourselves we would admit that such a promise rarely reaches its fruition.

To what do we then owe this "forgotten" content?  Is it truly forgotten? Perhaps not if you consider that your edition of this collection of essays or novel may eventually make its way into the hands of an unsuspecting college freshman buying his or her spring semester reading list off amazon for the used, discounted price.  However, I believe that for me it is only partly about this often unfulfilled promise to that obscure passage of Benjamin or Kracauer, it s also a manifestation of an unfulfilled promise to myself to continue to create my own original content, visual or literary.

Chaos and Cosmos

As many people know, traveling can be an extremely stressful experience. For some the lows outweigh the highs.  The sleepless airplane rides, never knowing where to get a decently priced meal, never knowing how to act, how to dress, but also soaking every bit of new information up, trying to absorb it all so you will never forget, and feeling yourself changed by it all.

Now imagine living abroad. There are some differences but also many similarities to traveling. It is like traveling for the however many months you are abroad for. The same highs and the same lows, over and over again. You have to consciously work at being comfortable. Nothing comes easily. That is both the fun and the anxious part of being an expat.

I particularly have had to work extra hard at settling into France.  When I went away to college for the first time that transition took nearly a year until I felt comfortable and confident again. This transition has been somewhat eased by the fact that I did study abroad in the same country as well as that I live with my boyfriend here. I imagine it would be much more difficult doing this experience alone for the first time.  Even so, I believe that no matter if you are alone, with your friends, or if this is your first or tenth time coming to France, there will always be an unsettling of yourself at first.

However, as a 22 year old recent graduate I find many of these unsettling feelings could also be attributed to the fact that I have just been dumped out into the world after living all my life with the reassuring structure of education.  This structure has given meaning to my life and now I find myself asking: now what? What is the point now?

To anyone who may be experiencing these kind of unsettled anxieties I would highly recommend watching the much-acclaimed thirteen-part series from 1980, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, created by astronomer Carl Sagan (the entire series can be viewed on Netflix and YouTube free of cost).  I find astronomer to be too small a title for Sagan however.  I might rather say astronomer-philosopher-scientist-existentialist-atheist-therapist-dreamer, among many other admirable qualities and accomplishments.

The beginning credits start. A soft chorus of strings and a piano accompany the beginning of your voyage through an array of interstellar dust and clouds.  I know what you're thinking. Are we in some hokey new-age relaxation film?  I assure you that you are not. Sagan is a rigorous believer in the scientific method. He dispels all validity of astrology and alien abduction.  As a bonus, Sagan is an incredibly talented at the art of elocution. I could get lost in the cadences of his voice -- the extended vowels and the reassuring hand gestures. 

Each episode is done on the grandest scale imaginable: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean," "Voice in the Cosmic Fugue," and "Harmony of the Worlds," are some of the chapters that mark this epic journey.  It's this grandiosity that might turn some people off at first, but if you give Sagan a chance you realize that this scale is our scale. It is the scale of the universe of which we are a part of. Take, for example, this photograph taken of the earth from one of the distance shores of our galaxy.

Sagan famously refers to Earth here as the "pale blue dot." He points out that "all of human history has happened on that tiny pixel (shown here inside a blue circle), which is our only home."It is an incredibly humbling realization that all of human existence is only a pale blue dot in comparison to the vastness of the cosmos.

However, the most astonishing realization Sagan made for me in Cosmos, was the realization that we are the universe reflecting upon itself.  We rose out of interstellar gasses and evolved over billions of years and have come to reflect upon our place among the galaxies. And after this realization I had the most peaceful sense of calm, as if I finally knew my place in the world, as if for the past twenty two years my perspective had been completely out of whack.

So if you are drowning in the seeming chaos of post-grad or expat existence, I would recommend looking to the organization and perspective that Cosmos gives as a much simpler and cheaper form of therapy.  Yes, many of the series' preoccupations are outmoded and come from a time when relations between the Soviet Union and America were quite different.  As any film it is an artifact of its time. But to me Cosmos still offers perspective in the midst of chaos. Just keep looking up.