Mar Rodriguez

Interesting lecture for all of us who live in this in-between world where everything and everyone has a price and nothing has an inmanent worth for itself. This article is a comment on the book - Influence: Science & Practice - by Robert B. Cialdini.

#1 - Reciprocation

“Hold open a door and you receive a “thank you” and a smile. Send a birthday present to a friend and you’re almost certain to get one in return. Pay for a co-worker’s coffee and she’ll pick up the next one. As Cialdini painstakinly details in the book, there is no culture on Earth without this unspoken, yet powerful rule of reciprocation.”

Read the full article

I’ve been re-reading one of my favorite books on film editing by Walter Murch

I like above all his preface.

“Most of us are searching -consciously or unconsciously- for a degree of internal balance and harmony between ourselves and the outside world, and if we happen to become aware -like Stravinsky- of a volcano within us, we will compensate by urging restraint. By the same token, someone who bore a glacier within him might urge passionate abandon. The danger is, as Bergman points out, that a glacial personality in need of passionate abandon may read Stravinsky and apply restraint instead.”

it’s not only a beatiful song from Joy Division which was afterwards covered by The Cure, Simple Minds or Calexico - among many others- but also the name of an interesting sound and video installation which I found while searching for interesting websites.

If you want to see the Joy Division’s video:

Love will tear us apart (Lyrics)
Songwriters: Hook, Peter;  Sumner, Bernard;  Curtis, Ian Kevin;  Morris, Stephen Paul Davi

When routine bites hard,
And ambitions are low,
And resentment rides high,
But emotions won’t grow,
And we’re changing our ways,
Taking different roads.

Then love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.

Why is the bedroom so cold?
You’ve turned away on your side.
Is my timing that flawed?
Our respect runs so dry.
Yet there’s still this appeal
That we’ve kept through our lives.

But love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.

You cry out in your sleep,
All my failings exposed.
And there’s a taste in my mouth,
As desperation takes hold.
Just that something so good
Just can’t function no more.

But love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.

Ese es el título de mi libro preferido de Paul Auster. A la vez inquietante y mágico. Para los que no lo hayan leído y les interese mi humilde opinión: os lo recomiendo y os cuento un poquito, pero solo un poquito, de qué va:

Un escritor de treinta y pico años está reconvaleciente de una enfermedad que casi le cuesta la vida. En uno de sus paseos de por el barrio, entra en una libreria y compra un cuaderno de notas. Durante los nueve días siguientes, vivirá bajo el hechizo del cuaderno en blanco, prisionero de un mundo de premoniciones y hechos extraños que pondrán en peligro su matrimonio y harán tambalear su fé en la realidad.

Es un libro maravillosamente escrito, sobre el tiempo, el amor, el poder de la imaginación y el de la escritura. Yo lo leí hace ya unos tres años y de repente me volvió a la memoria. Era de noche y estaba hablando con un amigo sobre las casualidades (raro que en alemán se llame Zufall, no?) y tras colgar el teléfono recordé, que en un libro, Auster mencionaba algo sobre eso. Buscando en la estantería lo encontré por fín. Creo que lo volveré a leer, se que la primera vez a mí también me hechizó.

Y si os interesa saber algo más de éste tan admirado y querido escritor aquí está su página web.

“Escribir para mí, ya no es un acto de libre albedrío sino una cuestión de supervivencia”.

Nota: La frasecita es por supuesto de Paul Auster