Writing this to you from the magic island of Bali in Indonesia. I never thought I’d end up in this part of the world.
Growing up in Moscow, I always thought of Singapore, Australia, and the South Pacific as somewhere near Mars. Now I am here. Australia is closer than Thailand, New Zealand is closer than Dubai, and Los Angeles (from the other side of the globe) is closer than Europe. And the time difference (8 hours ahead of London), after killing my sleep for three days in a row, is now showing its charm: while everyone is asleep in London, I have a whole day to myself just to explore this little island. The weather is stable: +30 every single day; the pool is (literally) 10m from my chalet; and the only tiny little problem in this paradise-place is the enormous lizards (tockay gecko, Google them) that crawl in our room while we sleep, increasing my wife’s risk of having a cardiac arrest.
But enough bragging.
This morning, I read a curious piece in The New Yorker about different modes of thinking.
Joshua Rothman’s article starts with an intriguing sentence: “I was nineteen, maybe twenty, when I realized I was empty-headed…”
At first, I didn’t understand what he meant by being empty-headed (what, you mean like, stupid?). But reading further on, I understood completely what he meant.
According to Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions, and its author, Temple Grandi, there are two (actually, three) main modes of thinking: verbal (that’s when you think in words and monologues) and objective (thinking in pictures). The third mode is a mashup of the first two (thinking in both words and images).
However, further research suggests that no matter what your mode is, some of our thinking is done unsymbolically – which is what Rothman referred to when he called himself empty-headed.
“I raised my hand [in class] to say something and suddenly realized that I had no idea what I planned to say. For a moment, I panicked. Then the teacher called on me, I opened my mouth, and words emerged,” he writes further on.
I couldn’t relate more.
For as long as I can remember, I was always obsessively taking notes. And while the majority of people track their to-do or shopping lists, my notes are entirely about what I think, feel, and notice. As I grew older, this obsession turned into a semi-daily journaling routine and more blogging projects than I could count (or keep track of) – attempts to produce outlets for this obsession.
But when I dive deeper into why I need to take notes and journal, I see that I, too, mainly think without symbols. This might make you feel empty-headed, though the thoughts are there. They’re just hidden from plain sight.
Writing has always been a way to make sense of myself and life. The phrase I stole from Kevin Kelly (the founder of Wired and author of The Inevitable, amongst other things) explains it best: “Until I write, I don’t know what I am thinking.”
Writing, for me, is a way to name and label processes that happen within my head which would have simply been heavy clouds of smoke otherwise.
It’s as if my head is gradually filled with hidden weight that I can’t see but feel. (Think: dark matter in space). And the only way to alleviate my mind is to write things down.
It’s possibly one of the best pleasures in existence – to sit down (ideally, somewhere beautiful and picturesque), alone, with a pen and Moleskine, and just write. I almost never know what’s there until I start writing. I almost always surprise myself.
Think of it as a brain dump.
Writing this newsletter is, in many ways, similar. 90% of the time, I don’t know what I will write until I start typing. And then – always – something emerges. It feels like magic because if you were to ask me what I was going to write beforehand, I would have never answered.
But it’s there. It’s always there.
Jarvis Cocker, one of my favourite humans, says it best.
“I’ve done talks at colleges and schools, and people tend to ask you that question with a pained look on their face. They think that maybe writing something involves moving to France and wearing a beret. And that fall [from a window], my literal fall from grace, brought me down to earth. It made me realise that the stuff you should write about or use or paint about is right under your nose. It’s the things that you’ve been brought up with. Because you’ve been brought up with them, you discount them because… it’s like the furniture in your house. After a month, you don’t see it anymore. It’s just there. You sit on it."