I recently went through an experience best described as a "correction." After doing very well in making progress on writing my Lorca book (2) I came up against a few months in which I did very little. Now I am back on track with a plan to complete it by June or July.
My next two projects will be
a) a theoretical but pragmatic book on verse translation
b) a book on Spanish prosody
I plan to take the rest of 2014 off from active writing in order to let my ideas develop just through readings and thought, then begin either (a) or (b) in 2015.
The correction is like a stock market correction, where prices go down in order to bring things into focus. My therapist gave me this metaphor. It's a setback or relapse that might have a strategic importance in the long run. It might even be a good thing though I've suffered quite a bit in other ways during those months.
3 comments:
In the financial sense, a "correction" is one that brings prices back to their "natural" level. In 2008, for example, it finally became clear to everyone that housing was way overpriced.
I've been having the same feeling about the ideas in my field, and even the ideas that I have about life more generally. My sense of their importance is out of proportion, I've got too much invested in them.
So I very much get this idea of a correction—mental, intellectual, whatever. The problem is that "the market" has to cooperate. Everyone has to agree to the new proportions. A new scale of intellectual values.
This metaphor is one that Pound would appreciate, I think. The line grows thick.
i like what you say about disproportioned importance, thomas.
some time ago i started appreciating that even thinkers i claimed for myself, supposedly because of their appropriate contact with 'practice' or 'life' or what have you, slotted their work somehow under one version or another of the contemplative / intellectual life. —they classed what they did in such a way that one -ought- to be able to look at it, and then look around at the rest of life, and with some sense of proportion, admit: it's contemplative. or reflective. i guess the tricky part to not want to have to concede is that it's 'just' so.
I was just thinking about this re an issue related to teaching and curriculum; interesting to come across this post.
[I've gone through these before on other projects and been very frustrated with people who said it was lack of discipline, "fear of success," etc.]
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