Something to look forward to

In Praise of Amateurism

An amateur is someone who does something for the love of it (amator means 'lover' in Latin, which is why amour means 'love' in French).

Amateurs only care about the activity, enjoying it, and (sometimes) sharing it with others. There is no other motivation. They are not shaped by market forces, nor do they have to bother living up to some hierarchical set of 'professional standards.'

Roland Barthes has suggested that a 'completely de-alienated society' (something possible only in theory) would be a society of amateurs -- unlike our society, which is a society of consumers. (He said this in The Grain of the Voice).

It still sounds like an ideal worth working toward to me. So let's raise a glass to amateurs and lovers everywhere!

And let's stop using 'professional' as a synonym for 'good' -- 'conditioned wage-slave' might do as well, I think. (Though let's be gentle, and think -- not say -- that, and more with compassion than contempt... We all have to make a living somehow, now don't we?)

Form and Function (Doing things the right way)

"Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean tolet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of the corridor, in a grove fragant with leaves and moss. No words can describe the sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in mediatation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Soseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, 'a physiological delight' he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves.

As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and a quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a tiolet of the Kanto region, with its long narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the leaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stone. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature.
- Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, a twentieth century novelist, in his book In Praise of Shadows (Leete's Island Books, p. 3f)

Contemporary tea master Soestsu Yanagi says that "The Way of Tea is a way of salvation through beauty."

-quoted in Rand Castile's The Way of Tea (Weatherhill, 1971), p.82