By RENATO ORTIZ*
The volume of interactions becomes so strident that it is necessary to survive the deafening of information
I got up early, took the bullet train and arrived in Kyoto late in the morning; fortunately Yoshino was prudent, he faxed me, in Japanese, the instructions for me to get to the Nichibunken. The taxi driver had no problem finding him, a young woman was waiting for me, she was kind, she guided me around the center, we had lunch together, she showed me around the library and lent me her magnetic card so I could make some photocopies, she instructed me also how to get to the “Oaks” hotel in the central part of the city.
O International Research Center for Japanese Studies It is imposing, a huge building, exuding wealth, located outside the city on top of a hill. Bucolic environment, forest and birds. The building contains a large library, work and conference rooms, offices for researchers, a theater, where Noh and kabuki plays are performed sporadically. There is also a complex to accommodate visiting professors and offices for administrative staff.
It was built in the modern style and is equipped with computers, databases and material for projecting videos, slides and films. The institute acts as a research unit, there is no teaching staff, it has a permanent staff of researchers and receives visitors, as well as doctoral students. They pay guest teachers handsomely; I was informed that at any time I could submit my candidacy for three to six months. The center is impressive due to its size and the facilities offered to researchers, but I have doubts about this type of enterprise. Would it be advisable to isolate intellectual work on top of a hill? Would good ideas flourish better in such a rarefied environment?
Intellectual work takes place in the text, without it ideas float in their abstraction, writing translates them into tangible reality. It is a craft in which words shape thoughts. It also has a feminine dimension, it contains much of the male/female, left/right dichotomy that Robert Hertz appreciated; takes us back to household chores, tidying the house is almost equivalent to tidying our head. Particularly with regard to a specific activity: sewing.
Sewing requires skill, knowing which differentiates it from simpler activities like cleaning the house. Only through practice accumulated patiently over the years can the final fabric be created. Aptitude that expresses the individuality and experience of each person. Placing the needle in the thread, combining the cloths, making the cut are delicate operations, requiring care and concentration.
In this sense, the expression “sewing ideas” reveals a practice that women have wisely cultivated over the centuries. It is said that ideas are unsewn in the same way that a piece of clothing is poorly finished, the parts clashing with the whole. However, there is a difference between seamstresses and tailors. These are men's clothing experts, they work like these social scientists who have sewn with a limited number of words. People whose job is limited to fixed ideas.
While craftsmanship, intellectual work contains a dimension of individuality, Marxists would say, its result is not alienated from the person who performs it. The author, in his solitude, faced with the blank page, is condemned to uncertainty, although the specificity of his act does not entirely coincide with the isolation of the place in which he finds himself.
I believe that the lack of distinction between the act itself and the space in which it takes place feeds the illusion of recollection. This is the quality that gives the figure of the writer a certain exoticism. Like the monks in their abbeys, he would take refuge from the temptation of the flesh, exiled, his inspiration and labor would meet (a bit like Saint Anthony, immortalized in the paintings of Salvador Dali and Max Ernst).
However, this hyperbolic asceticism, actually figurative, ignores that writing is in itself a form of distancing from the world, an artifice that removes us from our place. It doesn’t matter where we do it – in the desert, far from destruction, or in the middle of a crowd. The conjunction between solitude and writing is an imagistic trait petrified under the weather, that is, from changes; it thus constitutes a continuity that becomes perennial.
It persists, even in current times, when communication technologies have become mobile and omnipresent. Therefore, to overcome every writer's dilemma, distraction, a new artifact was invented. Life in the universe of bits is based on a fundamental principle: connection; it is the technical resource that enables interaction between people. To be connected is to exist. There is, however, a problem: the volume of interactions becomes so strident that it is necessary to survive the deafening of information.
The Hemingwriter machine is the opposite of all this, its intention is to distance us from ambient noise. It was designed exclusively for writers. Its format, inspired by the old typewriter, imitates the same layout of the keys, but with a display on which the typed/scanned words appear. Cut and paste functions are available, making text handling easier. It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so what you write is automatically recorded and sent to the cloud, and can later be reworked on your computer or other digital device.
Meanwhile, the author is disconnected from the disturbances around him, internet access is blocked. His attention is directed to the text, solely to him, and the temptation of distraction is entirely nullified. The technological answer presented comforts and stimulates, it brings with it the promise that the world of ideas, as Plato imagined, would be at your fingertips, downloaded from the heavens, on the pages waiting for you. The solitude of writing would thus be the guarantee of the platitude of its own truth.
* Renato Ortiz He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of The universe of luxury (Mall).
Originally published on BVPS blog.
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