emptiness
Occupied by a void
Roland Barthes wrote that the centre of Tokyo is occupied by a void...it is a quiet forest that lies at Tokyo's heart.
...The centre of Tokyo is certainly a void, but one that is protected by a circular train line, the Yamanote, which forms a 40-km (25-mile) loop around it. It seems to me that this ring of steel emphasizes the importance of the void, and the depth of its significance.
Names vs. The Nothing
This is the first site along the tour. In here we have a void. I remember the building that used to stand here, it was painted blue. Passing through it, you can imagine how us, as ghosts – should the building be standing here – would have to actually be invisible to pass through these walls and now it’s the reverse. The building is the ghost and we’re passing through these walls.
Erased de Kooning Drawing
Once, Robert Rauschenberg erased most of a drawing by Willem de Kooning, and then named it Erased de Kooning Drawing.
I am in no way certain what this is connected to either, but I suspect it is connected to more than I once believed it to be connected to.
Most important of all are the pauses
Japanese music is above all a music of reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded, or amplified by a loudspeaker, the greater part of its charm is lost. In conversation, too, we prefer the soft voice, the understatement. Most important of all are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and radio render these moments of silence utterly lifeless. And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines.
Empty rooms
A Quote by Bruce NaumanI don't think empty rooms are ever really empty. I think we subconsciously put our emotions into them.
Untangling the Bank
Specific aims
Having specific aims, I then started to add almost everything else I could think of that might help me monitor and control my progress.
More than a witness
Documentation has made the difference between simply being a witness to nature and being one who identifies themes and questions.
Peculiarities
Taking notes has always helped me zero in on the interesting questions.
In taking field notes, the way to find these peculiarities is to keep track of as many observations that may not appear at the time to be relevant at all.
Secrecy
At a glance, my journal seems to be a mess. It is not meant to be seen or read, except by me, and often not even that.
If it wasn't written down
I’ve been keeping journals of one sort or another since I was a teenager, and if there is one thing I can now confidently say about all this scribbling and note-taking, it is that if it wasn’t written down, it didn’t happen. The more I wrote the more that did happen, because all this process stirs up ideas. Stopping to sit and write costs time and energy, and some biologists feel that it should be discouraged.
An active participant
Note-taking helped transform me from a young boy on barefoot runs who passively observed the tangled bank of the Maine woods into a naturalist-scientist who is an active participant in unraveling the mysteries of the natural world.