I’ve watched a few of the videos made by Ali Abdaal, he’s a doctor who has got heavily in to media, YouTube primarily, here’s a link to his channel; https://www.youtube.com/c/aliabdaal. He’s done extremely well out of YouTube. One of his videos recommended three books;
- Steal like an Artist – Austin Kleon
- Show your work – Same author
- The war of Art – Steven Pressfield
Actually, he didn’t recommend Steal like an Artist, but it precedes show your work and it made sense to buy it. They weren’t expensive and they are the kind of book that only takes a couple of hours to read. I’m 3/4 of the way through the first one. It is not critical book despite the perception that the title might give. It talks about how artists get their inspiration, and how you can become inspired in the same way.
I haven’t started the second book yet, but it follows a similar principle. I think in the case of both Books, I am seeking in a way to take away some of my conservative (with a small ‘c’) inhibitions. I was walking down the high street and there was a pile of litter, dispersed in a certain way. I wanted to take a picture, low level, with the camera on the ground. I looked around, there was only one other person on the street, he was easily a couple of hundred yards away. But that was enough. I didn’t take the photo. I thought “He’ll think I’m weird”, I was embarrassed to be in the position of wanting to do something that wasn’t normal. The picture may have been rubbish (yes, yes, I know) but I’ll never know because I was either afraid, or too embarrassed to do what I wanted. Why? You’d think would you – (and I’ve talked about this in a previous post – can’t remember the number) when I bought the dictaphone in Berlin, and was then too embarrassed to walk down the Kurfürstendamm making audio notes in case people thought that I was talking to myself and was therefore mad. What a joke that turned out to be. Everybody is now wandering everywhere, talking in to little boxes. I need to release my inhibitions – just a tad, not too much.
The third book, the War of Art, is mostly about defeating procrastination. That’s something that I think I suffer from. I do a little bit, I don’t think it’s extreme, but there are times when I avoid doing things until I have to do them. I’m not ready to read that one yet (no, I’m not procrastinating about the book. I have something else to do.
It’s magazine time again. This month’s issue of Country walking has turned up, and it looks interesting. Apart from my Breakfast book, I shall be focussing on that for the next couple of days. My breakfast book? I’ll write about that in a bit.
Bills Posts 