My brain felt full after I finished Absalom, Absalom. I wrote about it already here, but it’s the kind of book you finish, close, and then sit with it in your lap for a while. It’s satisfying and you need to digest it. It earns some silence. It’s a beautiful thing.
So with the book closed on my lap I was looking at the back cover and this quote made me smile:
In case the image doesn’t present correctly, it goes:
“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”
When it comes to books, I totally agree.
But then I think it’s even broader than books. I start thinking of my podcasts in Spotify where I subscribe to - so, so many podcasts. Put YouTube and the many, many, MANY channels on top of that. And, we haven’t even gotten to music.
My range is one part ADHD, another part FOMO, and a third part, let’s go with - uninhibited curiosity.
I like good and bad. I like new and old. I like exploring why something is old and good or new and bad and everything in between. I just want to play in sandboxes where someone else’s curiosity talked them into building something and now I get to look at it.
Because whatever you take in, at another point in life, you feel inspired to create.
You can’t write unless you read.
You can’t make music unless you listen.
You can’t make art unless you look.
What year did Faulkner write that blurb? It doesn’t matter. All that actually matters is that he knew it too, and this book didn’t come about because he was sitting around scrolling social media, he was consuming his way through apprenticeship and my god does it show on those pages.
It hits you hard. How much he knew it. Beyooteeful.
