Yeah, behind the academic wall, but luckily here they are for everyone: http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_the_history_of_ideas/v064/64.1blair.html; Ann Blair, ‘Reading Strategies for Coping With Information Overload ca. 1550-1700’, and the Rosenberg article: http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_the_history_of_ideas/v064/64.1rosenberg.html.

The whole list: http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_the_history_of_ideas/. But you got that already.

Another article to read: Daniel Rosenberg, ‘Early Modern Information Overload,’ Journal of the History of Ideas (2003). Behind the academic walls… Rosenberg is here: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~dbr/.

And did not know this project: http://www.hti.umich.edu/d/did/. Collaborative translation of Diderot & D’Alemberts Encyclopedia.

Also very handy; the dictionary of ideas: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/DicHist/analytic/.

Of course I’m following all the current stories about doping & cycling. The entanglement of sport and — hmm — “experimental” medicine is fascinating. It is a big ugly mess too. What has changed in respect to former times (let’s say pre-’80’s) is that no-one questions anymore that ‘doping’ does make you go faster, makes you stronger. It’s taken as a scientific fact (and in most cases, it is a proven fact, I think). But if the pro-peleton is also a — half illegal — laboratory for experimental medicine, did medicine ever learn anything from cycling?

(yes, that EPO does work &c.)

Some knowledge, that is later used for ‘good’ purposes? This would be scarier than a peleton of stupid junkies taking dope to perform better — because it would mean that sports is really a laboratory, and the sportsmen guinea pigs for the ‘human good’.

Copied two articles from Critical Inquiry 31, (Autumn 2004) on the art of transmission & read those this afternoon:

Ann Blair, ‘Note Taking as an Art of Transmission’ (p. 85-107)
Alan Liu, ‘Transendental Data: Toward a Cultural History and Aesthetics of the New Encoded Discourse’ (p. 49-84)

Ann Blair writes: “This historical interest [in note taking] is fueled not only by the rapid growth of the history of reading, of which the study of note taking is an offshoot, bit also by our current experience with new technologies and our sense (often more diffuse than articulate) that the computer is changing both the way we take notes and the kind of notes and writing we produce.” (p. 89)

Let’s make that ‘sense’ more articulate…

Apart from that, I think that my interest in note taking also derives from the fact that I have never been able to devise a working systems of note taking for myself, but keep on dreaming about it. Notes are in my notebook, on post-its stuck on the pages of books, in the margin on photocopied articles, in text-files on the computer (both in VoodooPad, TextEdit, BBEdit, MacJournal and — very rarely — a wiki), entries on my blog, and sometimes even sheets of A4-paper. I dream of having a database of quotations (like a commonplace book), a full bibliography with annotations, also covering websites. It seems so easy…

More browsing: from Jeroen Mettes on Romanticism, http://n30.nl/2006/08/schetsmatig-pleidooi-voor-de-romantiek.html, to the piece by Benjamin Kunkel on writing and memoir, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/books/review/16kunkel.html”, to the n+1 magazine, http://www.nplusonemag.com/, in which a.o. I find this text that voices my opinion on Eggers & The Believer: http://www.nplusonemag.com/situation_2.html — regressive avant-garde.

As I mentioned Braxton playing with a noise-punk band, yesterday, I guess I’m allowed to mention today that The New Yorker features an article on Yamataka Eye and The Boredoms, from which I learn that Jeffrey Deitch has discovered them too, and will host a Boredoms installation in his gallery next year: http://www.newyorker.com/critics/music/articles/060807crmu_music.

(Yes, I’m wasting my time, browsing & blogging).

(Good friends of mine have followed The Boredoms since 1987. I saw them twice in the early nineties. An audience of what, twenty? thirty? forty? made them play three encores. We had beer with them backstage. “Those were the days”.)

Ha, in twenty years time Jeffrey Deitch will host an Oorbeek-installation!

Just a sentence I read upon opening Dewey’s The Public and its Problems from 1927: “In general behavior in intellectual matters has moved from the public to the private realm.” (p. 50). Would that hold in times of ubi-blogging? Not if blogging is taken as publishing (which I think it should). Could you now write “In general behavior in intellectual matters has moved from the private to the public realm”? Not yet, I’d say. Though for some it would be true.

Anthony Braxton plus, uh, relentless noise-punk? I’d missed that: http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=22814 and http://www.wordthecat.com/goku/2006/07/28/wolf-eyes-and-anthony-braxton/.

Zelden zulke slechte benen gehad. Ik kwam niet vooruit. Allerlei spieren deden pijn — een late reactie op de spanning van gisteren? Toch nog bijna drie uur gereden, van kwart voor vijf tot kwart voor acht. Prachtig weer, meest zonnig, beetje wolken en drie sputters van een bui waar ik onderdoor fietste. Warmer dan verwacht, nog een graad of 25. Kanne – Eben – Wonck – Bassenge – Roclenge – Boirs – Glons – [mooie smalle klim, waar de route met de roze pijlen naar beneden komt] – Slins – Anixhe – Hermee – Oupeye – Hermalle ss Argenteau – Wixhou – St. Remy – Blegny – Trembleur – Dalhem – Bombaye – Berneau – Moelingen – Lixhe – Lanaye – Kanne

That’s what it feels like, a bit: been there, done that. So now I can say: I have performed at the BIMHUIS, with Oorbeek and Koichi Makigami (what a sweet person he is, and what a performer!) I was nervous, I stayed in the dressing room for 2 hours, rehearsing.

Then, on stage, everything was fine & went fine. Heard quite a few good reactions, both from people who’ve seen us a few times (and probably would not hesistate to tell us if it was terrible), and from people who saw us for the first time. Sold a few cd’s. The audience was mainly a sunday afternoon crowd — it was the jew’s harp festival & I don’t think all of them enjoyed our way of making music. The chaos of it, the noisy bits, the changes from soft to loud to soft, the piecing together (or coming together) of various fragments. But it was pretty packed — and that felt, well, good of course.

It felt strange as well: in the past I’ve seen so many concerts of improvised music & free jazz — in the old BIMHUIS — by groups far better than us, for an audience of like 20. I don’t know what that means… I guess it means that this festival was marketing success. (The jew’s harp festival received al lot of publicity). So I wonder how many in the audience did think — let’s go for a nice sunday afternoon concert, and then thought, oh my god, what a terrible noise!

But it was a great joy to play with Koichi Makigami. And he, of course, was the star.