The book lover (part 1)

The times we live in...
A never ending feed of constant information
Mass produced and launched into the collective consciousness,
A mishmash of disparate data to assimilate
And not enough time for the mind to percolate
It is sheer madness, so much to be computed
An organised chaos...

The times we live in...
The mere attempt to reflect upon how to best describe
the worldwide chaos we are now witnessing
is reason enough to trail off into some kind of Twilight Zone...

The world is frozen, in a comatose state,
Days pass, then turn into weeks, a succession of sameness,
This blasted (goddamned, wretched, fucking, bad joke of a crisis, tabarnak)
Has undeniably taken (colossal, massive, monumental, monstrous) proportions.
Looking at the projections,
it seems like this situation will be lasting much longer than anticipated.
(this situation is far from over, can be expected to last for months)

So we must deal with our confinement,
And all this time we have on our hands
is a perfect occasion to fill our brains with something useful.
Why waste entire days in forced inertia when there is an opportunity to gain more knowledge.
Have you been reading more lately or is it just me?

In this picture are a few classics, The complete works of Shakespeare and Dante, some Dickens, an old French version of Anna Karenina...

Since our next song will only be ready in a few days,
(Seb is finishing the work on the next release and I have guitar tracks to record on some others) I had the idea to write about something different today,
this is somewhat of an introduction for a series of book posts I have been thinking of doing for a while.

In my opinion, reading the most useful and rewarding way to pass the time...
A world of diversity, with so much to learn...
A bountiful source, an infinitude, an abundance,
of written word to draw insight and inspiration from.

One good example of how you can absorb something new
during these months of confinement is by learning a new language.
The idea is not necessarily to perfectly master it but maybe just pick up a few words here and there. You never know when it can be useful!

Used book stores are a great place to find dictionaries and foreign language reading material.

Also, why not brush up on a little cultural/historical background,
maybe even old legends or mythology...
I started to learn Russian by myself a while ago with books,
I learned the alphabet and thought it would not be long before I could read full books so I went to this cool store called Pусские книги on Décarie street here in Montreal and found this fabulous book about legends and myths.

Needless to say that I was in over my head,
oh I can read it, but I have no idea what it says (lol), one day...

---

A few years ago I stumbled upon this one:

Collapse, How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed, by Jared Diamond

I highly recommend reading this book!
It details diverse past and present situations and analyses how whole cultures and civilizations have succeded or disappeared and led themselves to their doom.
How did they not realize where they were going?
And why didn't they act before it was too late?...
Thus leaving the reader with the same questions pertaining to our modern times, present actions and challenges to overcome.
Can Knowing the errors of the past, the reasons and causes of our failures, change the way we think as a society so that we don't end up disappearing too?
Maybe, just maybe, we can learn from these events and reach a better understanding of how to find harmony and succeed at not destroying ourselves as we go forward.
(Or do we have to learn the hard way?)

Hope you enjoyed this little book post!
Sending lovewaves to you all!

by Elaine @philodendron