Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Tom's Notes—Wordsmiths

I don't know about you, but when I need to check a word my first port of call is always The Free Dictionary online. So I was surprised it didn't get a mention in the Guardian's Online dictionaries: which is best?

Strange.

Reading through the talkback on the above article, I was chastened by how many snooty wordsmiths there are. There's even a word for them: prescriptivists. I prefer "snooty."

Though the free dictionary serves my casual purposes, there are times when I have to be 100% sure (and a little bit snooty) about a word—that's when the Merriam-Webster Collegiate and Oxford Concise come out. 9 times out of 10, I find the free dictionary still had it right.

Sometimes though, I disagree with all three.

Rather than being a prescriptivist or a descriptivist—I like to think of myself as a pragmatist. And I mean this in the best traditions of Wittgensteinian thinking. Ultimately, what we've decided words mean trumps dictionary definitions. Because what we say is more important than what we write.

I'll tell you why: written words are artificial. You don't think in letters; you think in vowels and consonants, in sounds. With a voice not a keypad. Writing is an invention that humans are still trying to build-in to the species: reading and writing have to be taught at school, but there's no class for learning how to vocalize—that's instinctive. Watch a young child learning to read, what are they taught to do? Read out the words. Older children may not engage the voice, but you still see their mouth silently annunciating. It holds true all the way to adulthood: the most important thing to a writer is his voice not his pen—he knows you are listening to him and not just scanning glyphs on a page.
The spoken word is like the flesh around the muscle and bone of cognition's hand. Written words are like a glove over the hand. Think of getting your keys out and opening the front door with gloves on—not easy is it. Same thing with written communication.

So what we say has more credence than what we write. The phrase "there's a few problems" doesn't cause any problems in conversation; but write it down and suddenly problems appear. I'm sympathetic to arguments that orthodoxy for phrases like "there's a few problems" debases the language—but this puts the cart before the horse.

Nevertheless, there's no denying the importance of dictionaries to human communication.

So which one is your favourite?

Monday, August 30, 2010

Monday Music

What to do for today's tune... How does some Django Reinhardt sound? Wait for the 1:26 mark and find out yourself. Enjoy.

Tom & Nana: Rain on our Parade

We went to see the Notting Hill Carnival.

Not much happened.

Because the weather did.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Tom & Nana: Sunrise to Sunset

Hazy light breaks on the pavement.

Things begin to move.

The wheel turns.

People coagulate at all the old spots.

And as the sun sinks down.

The blue calm comes again.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Tom's Notes—Home or Away

Not knowing where home is makes feeling homesick a confusing business.

I'm English, so you'd think England would always be "home" for me. But I never knew what I loved about England until I went to live in Japan.

Life, in practice, was better in Tokyo: customer service was excellent; there were more cafes, record stores, clothes shops and commodities from around the world, than any other place I've been; it was safe; it was affluent. But it was ugly. I'll be frank. The Japanese idea of a park is often just a tree with an uncomfortable bench next to it—some ghastly granite statue or concrete fountain put in for good measure. No pomp no majesty; nothing even close to the architectural and natural splendour citizens of London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona, Prague, Moscow, Washington, or New York enjoy. The new the old, the natural—it was all equally hideous. I realized that a large part of life was missing for me in Japan: the aesthetic.

You can grin and bear it. I did for almost 10 years. But life becomes an empty chore.

At least, mine did. I don't think this holds for all people; take a look around you—it's obvious that aesthetics aren't everyone's top priority. Living in Japan made me realize though, they are for me.

I knew I'd get a bit more soul-food living in England. So when the chance came to go back, I grasped it. Now we're back, guess what. I miss the service, the cafes, the record shops, the clothes shops, the wealth of commodities. I miss the safety. I miss the affluence. I miss it all.

And I know what'd happen if I went back to live in Tokyo—it'd hate it all again.

It's classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Perhaps the only solution is think of "Home and Away" rather than "Home or Away." But then, I don't know which place is "home" and which is "away."

Go figure...

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Tom & Nana: In the Provinces

We went to Tochigi and Ashikaga.

Things were different.

Slower.

Simpler.

Quieter.

And then we had to go back.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Tom & Nana: Empty in Ebisu

You can almost hear a shamisen twang.

Things that look old are new.

And they lead you.

To things that look new but are old.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Tom's Notes—Intellectual Billionaires

Doesn't it make you just wonder how a billionaire gets a billion?

Think of it: a thousand million pounds, dollars, euros, whatever—when you've got a thousand thousand thousand of them, the currency doesn't really matter (unless it's Zimbabwean). This is 1 with nine zeroes; enough capital write off a small nation's debt for a year. It's mind-boggling: 1 man, or 1 woman, with enough money to run a small country for a year, none of it credit. Take Bill Gates, his fortune is about 53 billion. The world population is about 6.7 billion. That's almost 8 dollars from every single man woman and child on the face of the planet into Bill's bank account (for example). If you had a billion pound coins and laid them on the ground side by side, you'd make a line 22,500km long: over half the circumference of the Earth. That's like a loop of quids around the entire continent of South America, and more—you'd start the loop in New York and stop in San Francisco. If you had 2 billion pound coins you'd be able to go in a straight line from wherever you are and arrive back at the same spot with 222 thousand pounds left to spare—enough to build a house out of pound coins. It's a huge number of pounds or dollars or euros or whatevers to have. Huge.

How does one person get all that?

I tell you what makes me wonder—how a person like Frank Kermode or C.G. Jung or Marie Curie gets all that knowledge. I think of them as intellectual billionaires. I just can't fathom how one person could know so much.

[By the by: I don't count geniuses like Einstein or Beethoven in with them—geniuses create knowledge rather than accumulate it (though they accumulate an Olympian amount, no doubt). No, geniuses are a little different.]

Read the writings of an intellectual billionaire and feel tiny and resentful—in just the same way you feel tiny and resentful about the staggering amount of money some people have. Bill Gates could give me a million dollars, and it'd only be one fifty-thousandth of his fortune. That's only 0.002% of his total—so painless it wouldn't even register for Bill; and it'd make me a millionaire.

But I'd rather I had 0.002% of an intellectual billionaire's fortune. At least, I think would...

Monday, August 23, 2010

Monday Music

Some relaxing music for a manic Monday—Melt by Leftfield. Enjoy.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Tom & Nana: Look Twice

Some things never change.

But you still have to look twice.

It's the players who change.

Not the game.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Tom & Nana: 100th Post Party!

Thanks everyone for being with us. Here's a present for you: a video made by Nana.



Join us for the next 100 posts. We'll see you here, Together.

Tom's Notes—Trepidation

We're close to having our house.

We've found the one for us. We've made an offer. The offer's been accepted. We're close.

And yet so far. The good news was last week; this week the survey was completed, and the news was bad—the roof is gone, there's a woodworm infestation in the timbers; rising damp climbs the masonry. £20,000 to fix it all.

So we stand in front of a bridge; 20,000 pound coins in length. Our house and its owners are on the other side. We can't walk to them, we can't meet in the middle. We can only go 5,000 pounds forward—but can they come 15,000 pounds this-a-way?

All we can do is watch and wait, in trepidation.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Tom & Nana: Ueno Two

Park cruising.

Hallowed ground.

Look and see.

Hollow days.

Benched lives.

And dormant bus-stops.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Tom & Nana: Numero Ueno

The hopes and dreams of hundreds clack together at temple.

Madams make the effort.

Market man makes a living.

It's all for sale in Ueno.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Monday Music

Bob Sinclar for our anniversary. 5 years together. The rest of our lives to go. Enjoy.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Tom & Nana: Scenic Study

Open space.

Down the barrel.

Squelchy shapes.

Off kilter vista.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Tom & Nana: To the Beach!

A car ride to Camber, and we're all happy.

If the sky goes grey, Mum'll shelter you.

We take in the rippled vista.

And look close at the colorful stones, studding the shore.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Tom's Notes—Morning Metabolics

I'm a night person.

And the corollary is true: I'm not a morning person. It takes my unconscious at least an hour to negotiate the hand over to my conscious. And then another hour or so for my conscious to calculate the upside in getting out of bed.

The opposite process happens at night. My unconscious has to peel my consciousness's fingers off the controls one groaning digit at a time. My conscious will scrabble for any excuse to keep going: I find myself, at midnight, arrow-buttoning through the telly guide—give me something, anything! At gone 1 with a book, Another page, then promise I'll sleep; repeat. Staring at online newspapers and waiting for an update at 2. When all else fails going to Wikipedia—2:20 prayers for something interesting in "on this day."

I'm better than I was. Thanks to Nana.

But even Nana can't wash away my difficulty with mornings. Is it just that some people aren't wired for waking up with an eye-popping "shing!" and the thrust of "it's a new day!" get-up-and-go? It must be.

So, I remain a night person.

(Though I was up at 7 today)

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Tom & Nana: Watching the Waiting

People on pause.

Taking a break.

Thinking.

Waiting to go again.

Wherever it is they all go.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Tom & Nana: Acting for the Camera

Looking bookish.

Or just looking.

Can do down in the dumps too.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Tom & Nana: Composition Nation

They say squares represent the complete mind.

That there's a symmetry in all of us.

That stone is something like our soul.

It's worth thinking about.