Blog

I've decided not to renew my subscription to the New York Times and New Yorker to see how it feels. Not to get stuck in my reading habits and discover new avenues.

So recently, I've found myself a bit lost at certain key moments when I usually pull out my phone. (Lunch break: check. Extended bathroom break: check. Before going to bed: check.) A bit like when I stopped Facebook & Co: what did I do before? What was I reading before my cell phone consumed my life?

I thought about subscribing to free newsletters. Found nothing conclusive.

And then by chance, I stumbled upon a trove.

I stumbled upon (via this Lex Fridman podcast) this incredible article Meditations on Moloch.

Moloch is a biblical monster that Allen Ginsberg used in a famous poem (in English here, in French there, it starts in the second part) to describe what is wrong with the world. Many think he's describing capitalism, but that's just it: in Meditations on Moloch, the author unpacks the poem and shows that there's something much darker hidden behind it.

Moloch is the race to the bottom that everyone is forced to participate in even when they know it's bad for everyone. It is the need to abandon deeply human values to gain competitive advantages that will leave us behind if we don't do what others are doing. It is that force that pushes toward survival ("the state of subsistence," he says) rather than life and that, once this transitional period of abundance is over, will enslave us all.

And in this extremely well-written, very long article, packed with examples and references, he unveils an absolutely Lovecraftian vision of the world in which humans are at the mercy of ancestral monsters that battle each other. And one of them, the one that is probably winning: Moloch.

It made me think a lot about human nature, about our times, and about what lies ahead for us, especially in terms of energy contraction in the age of Artificial Intelligence - one of the monsters that could be working for us or against us.

The article grabbed me so much that I went to look around a bit. The author calls himself Scott Alexander, he's a psychiatrist by trade and...he's written so much! Like hundreds of posts. I read three or four of them at random and was overwhelmed by the detail, the intelligence, the originality.

For example, if you're in the mood and really want to be aware of your mere mortal condition, you can read Who by very slow decay which talks about how doctors deal with the end of life - which is a bit like How doctors die that I wrote about a long time ago and that he mentions. (Coincidentally, what made me click on the article: "Who by very slow decay" is a line from the Leonard Cohen song "Who by Fire" that I discovered last week.)

Even better: when you go to his blog, he's got a long list of links to other authors who keep equally packed blogs: economics, science, rationality, etc... Only geeky subjects that interest me. And his pet peeve, the thread that ties his articles together, is effective altruism which he explains extremely well.

Conclusion: you have to clear your mind to discover something new.

Another dead-end hobby of mine: generative art. I program in c with the Cairo library to make little drawings. I do this some Sunday afternoons instead of tinkering.

Here: testing a new noise function to control the brush. I didn't intend to share it but the result surprised me and since I haven't published anything for a week...

In the long run, I'd like to use this technique in animation to illustrate some video essays.

Because yes, that's the advantage: once a first drawing is done, it's easy to fiddle with some parameters to create very evocative psychedelic animations.

Did you notice how the music from Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey makes everything seem strange? No? Well, I have:

(Or maybe it's just Normandy that's weird?)

I liked the play so much that I did a quick recording of it. Excerpt:

Hopefully it helps them find some new venues.

The challenge starts like this:

Don't think of elephants!

Bam! Too late. You lost.

You imagined an elephant. Or Dumbo. Or any other pachyderm related to your personal culture. Maybe you imagined an entire herd of them. Shame.

In psychology, this exercise serves to demonstrate that we don't always choose our thoughts. An idea can be planted in your brain without your consent, just as thousands of thoughts are planted every day by those around you, by the media, by the outside world. You have less control over your mind than you think.

But over the past few years, I've been learning to develop an immunity.

Let's be clear: if you talk to me about elephants, I'm going to think about elephants, just like everyone else. But if we had a contest and there was a machine to measure this kind of thing, you'd see that I'm able to stop thinking about it much faster than you.

That's my superpower: not thinking about elephants for too long.

It may sound trivial (dumb?) but this ability allows you me live happier. To have less anxiety, easier social relationships, to be lighter in general. But before I explain why, let me show you how. Because it's very simple.

To stop thinking about elephants, all you have to do is:

1. Allow yourself to think about elephants,
2. Accept being interrupted,
3. Never celebrate.

I'll explain.

The first step is counterintuitive: if you're trying to stop yourself from thinking about elephants, you examine every thought to make sure it doesn't contain any. You see the paradox: it is the process of checking that sustains the idea. Even if you manage to move on, it's the comparison that brings back the elephant.

To get around this trap, the goal is to accept the next idea whatever it is, without judgment or comparison. Elephant? Fine. Tiger? Car? Cheese? Great. Everyone is welcome. This is what I call "accepting to be interrupted": by removing the anti-pachyderm customs and unconditionally receiving what comes, one restores the natural thread of thought, the famous "stream of consciousness" which, when not held back, never lingers too long on the same subject.

The third step is decisive:

Not celebrating means not verifying if you've succeeded. And therefore not to rejoice in a possible victory. For the same paradox would come into play: to certify this victory, you owould have to compare the current thought with the forbidden thought. And bam: here comes the elephant again.

That is the real meaning of "moving on": no longer maintaining the memory that we avoid. Not comparing the present with the past we no longer want. Accepting to be somewhere else, entirely.

Why does this make life easier? Because what works for elephants works for anxiety, for jealousy, for anger. For example, here's my three-step recipe for getting rid of anxiety:

1. Allow yourself to be anxious,
2. Accept to be interrupted by another emotion,
3. Don't celebrate the disappearance of anxiety.

Again, the last step is key: after the battle, you'd like to rejoice in the death of the dragon. Shout that there was a monster here that you've defeated. But merely pronouncing its name makes it come back. Wherever you look for angst - even to check that it's gone - you always find a little.

Hence the importance of moving on and not looking back.

After that, it all depends on what you're looking for in life: to exist as the Great Dragon Slayer in a world infested with them? Or live as a peaceful nobody in a world where they don't exist? For both are possible, and the choice is entirely up to you.

I'm rediscovering Leonard Cohen: The Partisan, yes, but also "Who by Fire" which speaks to me quite a bit in these times of Zen exploration.

I'm impressed with the metric freedom.

Singing Leonard Cohen in the shower isn't as easy as expected: you end up with syllables too many, beats too few, stammering at the end of a sentence, fooled by the apparent simplicity of the performance.

That's the strength of his songs, I find: simplicity. No unnecessary adjectives, no obligatory rhyme, no imposed meter. We're surprised by a phrase that stops sooner than expected ("I took my gun and vanished"), by the unexpected repetition of a word ("Oh the wind, the wind is blowing. Through the grave the wind is blowing") or by the constant change of meter that creates a music within the music, as in "Who by Fire."

This freedom creates surprise. Surprise gives weight to every word.

I've always thought –without thinking too much about it, honestly– that songs were an extension of music. First you learn the guitar, then you figure out what to sing. Listening to Leonard, I understand that song can be an extension of literature or poetry: first you write a text, then you find the music to make it resonate.

When you write, it's impossible to force the reader to pause on a word or perceive the emotional color of a phrase –or else by adding more words that dilute the whole thing. Therefore, a song can be seen as a setting in space (and in time) of a text. Through rhythm and interpretation, each word is given the place and coloring that the author had imagined but that the page alone could not transcribe.

So soon Boulengerie, the album.

In an old chest, I found pictures taken in New York where I had invited my mother more than ten years ago. Back then, I used to do a lot of film photography and I used some of these for a small exhibition in a bar in Paris. (The pictures ended remaining there for several years.)

Here are some scans of negatives without any correction or filter. This is the strength of film and ektar film in particular: full and vibrant colors, a natural contrast that retains a strong dynamic. Nothing is ever completely burnt: even in skies and reflections, there is a bit of texture. Leica M6 with Summicron 35 and 50mm.

Seeing this, I feel like getting back to it.

I used these photos to dress up the site until I find something better. Since I've found a trove, I might post some more soon.

Set-up day for a project that I produce and direct with ChezFilms for École des Ponts. Today, life-size test in the studio before shooting the interviews starting next week.

This project started in November and will continue until summer. Updates soon.

I had let myself go a bit so this weekend I planned to get back on track.

Zero sugar: no more pastries, cakes and dark chocolate. Zero alcohol: no going to the Pub - or else for a Perrier. Two real meditation sessions a day: it's true that in Paris, between my son and appointments, I often do this too quickly - we're getting back to it.

Since we're there: no more cell phone. I'm not on Facebook and company anymore but I spend hours on Reddit and Youtube. We're uninstalling! (Even if it means reinstalling later...)

And why stop there? I pushed the vice to the point of doing the following experiment:

For forty-eight hours, when I felt like doing something that wasn't necessary... Well NO! I wasn't doing it. The goal was not to deprive myself or suffer unnecessarily but to study my response to frustration, to see how my brain reacts under pressure, to observe the thoughts and emotions elicited by breaking my habits.

I called it my Stoic experiment.

Recently, I had been wondering about the role of effort, discomfort and discipline. In particular, listening to Chris Williamson's podcast with David Goggins on overcoming one's limits, rereading Marc Aurelius and his Stoic pals, thinking back to some of the Buddha's teachings on the nature of experience, listening again to the presentation by Joseph Goldstein on the end of passions, but also, simply, by taking cues from personalities I admire who seem to handle effort differently.

Also: through the counter-example of loved ones I see sinking under the weight of their addictions.

The theory is this: since no one escapes suffering and discomfort, we must learn to live with it. Better yet: make them allies. We cannot control external circumstances, it is true, but we can control our relationship to them. Therein lies room for progress and a field for experimentation.

First observation of the weekend: it's hard. But brief.

The moment when you deny yourself the cake, the youtube session on the couch or the little beer at the end of the day, this moment is extremely difficult to go through. Everything inside you screams: "But why? We have always done like that!" The weight of habit weighs down and the body rebels: the feeling of hunger becomes more acute, or the fatigue, or the desire to drink. It takes an effort that seems disproportionate to the actual size of the obstacle.

And a minute later... nothing.

The discomfort and difficulty disappeared as quickly as they had come. No trace, no aftereffect. One feels neither better nor worse, as if the obstacle had never existed.

Then, as we let each new urge pass, it becomes easier and easier - all categories combined. You end up wanting less, being less attached to satisfying your desire. Without a goal to reach in the future, we become more available for the present: we receive what is rather than constantly comparing with what should be.

Consequence: we realize that, the rest of the time, we act on the basis of very ephemeral impulses that have no consequence on long-term happiness. Worse: satisfying an urge reinforces the "I want / I get" mechanism which makes it more difficult to resist the next assault. Letting go is worked like a muscle.

Second observation: we find ourselves in novel situations.

When I forbid myself to collapse on the couch for another youtube session, for a moment I find myself a bit lost. What do I do instead? If I don't lie down, do I stand? Do I sit down? But... where? At my desk? On that chair in the corner that is never used? But... WHAT FOR?

A habit is the permission we give ourselves to abandon ourselves body and soul to a familiar activity that asks no questions. As soon as we break the routine, nothing is self-evident and the questions return. Everything becomes new and mysterious. What if I played the xylophone? What if I cleaned the windows? Remind me: what did we do for entertainment before cell phones?

Because let's be honest: a youtube session is twenty minutes minimum - and there are several in a day. Beer is often two beers, and that involves a drive, buddies and talk. As for sugar, it's like food in general: it's a whole ritual that requires shopping, cooking, eating, washing dishes, etc. Often with the radio or TV on.

So it's mathematical: when you stop all that, you have extra time.

Hours, literally.

That's why this weekend, without really realizing it, I started drawing again, made music on my Pocket Operator, visited a nursing home and a cemetery, read a lot more than I usually do, and filled my journal with musings about the meaning of life and the nature of existence.

I recommend.

Instead of being glued to my phone, I drew some pictures (still that stoic experience I'll talk about):

You can tell it wasn't generated by an A.I., right?