What Is Boast, and What Isn’t
Two quick thoughts:
There is a certain kind of boast, or personality thereof, that emphasizes “how good I have (or the thing has) become because of my choice of tools“. Like, “the photo is great because of the camera I bought“, “the code has become faster, the lines fewer, the scalability better, because of the language that I mastered“. The fact is there is no good tool or bad tool, only tool that fits the situation and tool that doesn’t. Masterpiece can be taken with a point-and-shoot camera (think of Nobuyushi Araki), and talking about how many megapixels there are is platitude.
There is a certain kind of travelogue that I stopped reading since long ago. I seem to have lost interest in what is happening in a city now and am only interested in the history of a city over a certain period of time. Any travelogue that tries too hard to fit in too may now-happenings loses my readership for good. My criteria for good travel literature now: curiosity, slowness, acceptance of fateful encounters (or the lack thereof), and the most important quality, silence.
lukhnos :: Sep.16.2007 :: bon-vivant :: No Comments »