Cures for melancholy: Letter to Lady Georgiana

Sydney Smith, Letter to Lady Georgiana (Feb. 16, 1820):
Dear Lady Georgiana,

Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done—so I feel for you. Here are my prescriptions.

1st. Live as well as you dare.

2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.

3rd. Amusing books.

4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.

5th. Be as busy as you can.

6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.

7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.

8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.

9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.

10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.

11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.

12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.

13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.

14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.

15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.

16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.

17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.

18th. Keep good blazing fires.

19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.

20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,
Very truly yours,—Sydney Smith

image copyright: The Selby

Robert Mapplethorpe

Dissocia Zine

Work has started on Jay and I’s new zine, Dissocia. Here’s our creative mess, below. Thou must follow us on Facebook, Twitter, the Dissocia blog, and whatever goddamn piece of technology we can master.
Contribute, contribute! We’re looking for prose, poetry, fashion writing, satire, comics, doodles, paintings, photography, one-page plays, jokes, essays, sketches, book reviews, film reviews, rants; write about politics, or art, or sport. And send in your stuff: dissocia @googlemail.com.

Randomly, while flyering around Cowley Road, Rosy and I came across this gem of a wall:

“DISSOCIA, DISSOCIA, WELCOME TO DISSOCIA!”
-Anthony Neilson, ‘The Wonderful World of Dissocia’ (2004)-

The Post-it

This is one of a series of 71 photographs by Phil Grey of Will Self’s room, viewed in 360 degrees.

For Will Self, the Post-it note is an inherent part of his creative process:

“My books begin life in notebooks, then they move on to Post-it notes, the Post-its go up on the walls of the room. The shaggy patch of them in the middle of the wall (they’re stuck to a map of the Isle of Grain, my spiritual home) are all short story ideas, tropes, metaphors, gags, characters, etc. When I’m working on a book, the Post-its come down off the wall and go into scrapbooks, which is why the wall to the left of the window has Post-it alopecia – that’s where some of The Book of Dave was stuck up. I can’t throw anything away. Anything. I’m going to end up like one of those old weirdos who lives in a network of tunnels burrowed through trash – yet I do not fear this”.

The Post-it is the baby of the inventive genius of Dr. Spencer Silver and Dr. Arthur Fry. In 1968, Silver developed a high-quality but “low-tack” adhesive which consisted of small, indestructible acrylic spheres that stick only when tangent to a surface (such as a wall). As a result, the adhesive’s grip was strong enough to hold papers together but weak enough that the paper can be pulled apart again without being torn.

For the humble student, the Post-it is a visual aid, the condensed germ of an idea or a quotation stuck up on a visible plain. It is a to-do list (“Buy print cartridges”). It is a messaging device, a homing pigeon in note form to leave on other student’s doors (“Ella: dinner tonight? S+ P xx”). It is an easy-to-find notebook for jotting down numbers and messages. It is an empowering fridge magnet in paper form (I know someone who jots down carpe diem style notes on her fridge and changes the message at random). It can also function as a sort of modern day billet-doux, a quick love letter stuck on a lamp, the words I love you. Call me text me when you get this scrawled on neon yellow. It is, in scientific lingo, a retrieval cue, an adhesive aid for absent-mindedness. The point of the Post-it is that it is totally ephemeral. I’ve only ever saved one Post-it in my life and that was a special one. The rest are ripped off walls when the crucial exam or important errand is completed. Will Self sticks them in note-books when he’s done with them as plot-helping devices. The best thing about the Post-it is that it is a small tool for classifying the external disorder around you. Two friends in my halls post-ited every object in their room while drunk one night (“table”, “chair”, “book”, “book”, “book”, “toaster”). The post-it is a stationary object in a rapidly moving world.

A photo of Frank Long, 88, and Shirley Knappe, 83, of Coral Springs, Florida, who were married three years ago and use different types of Post-it notes to organize their lives (Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times).

Through the keyhole

What is it about us as human beings that makes us love nosing around people’s houses so much?

Possibly one of my favourite websites around is The Selby, where the photographer Todd Selby takes photos of arty/trendy/it people’s houses, along with mini scrawled interviews and watercolour drawings. Ignoring the latest instalment of the dreaded Peaches Geldof’s new pad in NY, most of the characters have seriously cool, creative houses. My favourite of long ago is of the artist Fanny Bostrom and the photographer Bill Gentle. How lovely is this:

Then there is the Writer’s Rooms series in The Guardian Review. Man, all the rooms look the same, but still, I love that section.