By The Landlord
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris
“Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It's your masterpiece after all.” – Nathan W. Morris
“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” – Socrates
“I make myself rich, by making my wants few.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The less you own, the less owns you.” – Tyler Durden (in Fight Club)
“Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.” – Ernest Hemingway
The Red Wheelbarrow - by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
As a young-ish writer, quite a few years ago, I had a charismatic senior editor who encouraged all submitted, edited and then sub-edited magazine features and news stories to always be "brought down to their fighting weight". No waffle, no frills, no unnecessary phrasing, no "flab". It's a boxed-in phrase, pulling no punches.
Long since retired, she was old-school, very down-to-earth, often humorously sweary, sometimes outrageously filthy, always with a laser-focus passion for language and factual correctness. It's an impression that's lasted long on me, if not always studiously followed. It was also in the days of print-only media, where space was always very tight, and before the oeuvre of the online allowed a more nebulous, unlimited expansion.
That discipline is still something to aim for, and it’s a lot easier hacking down someone else’s words than your own, if you have the time, that is. But not everyone can be minimal with their prose. Some go the expansive Laurence Sterne way, as opposed to the taut Ernest Hemingway.
And so this week, with spring cleaning possibly on the seasonal, almost forever put off-able to-do list (yet again), it feels like the time is ripe for some practical and creative decluttering, not merely of possessions in the house, but also of the mind, and also to extend this reducing (though not, hopefully reductive) activity beyond domestic matters, but the entire process of life's need for throwing away, chucking out all kinds of chintz, stripping back, editing out, paring back, purging, chiselling, sculpturing, sifting, trimming, shaving, scaling or downsizing – and how such a framework comes out through the compressed composition of song.
After all, any good creative process is about continuous distillation and reducing, like a sculptor chipping away the extraneous until you only have the gold, the kernel, the truly resonant that remains.
So this topic might be about the physical, about expunging objects and possessions, but could also be about expelling problematic people in your life, or mentally clearing out bad habits or thoughts, unwanted aspects of the self. Life seems to be a continual tidal process of finding and gathering and acquiring, then throwing, dropping or losing. Time and necessity might take care of such matters, but it's often more complicated than that.
Organised chaos, on the tipping point …
After all, with our ancestors having been at some time nomads before settling down to be farmers and citizens, it’s a practice we’re hardwired to do from the dim and distant past. So we at least have to be strict with our belongings when it comes to travelling on holiday. Here's some advice from Phineas Fogg in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days: “A well-used minimum suffices for everything.”
That's all very well, but back at home, it's simply very, very difficult getting rid of stuff. It's the making decisions that is so exhausting, isn't it?
As we get older, and are more likely to live in larger places for longer (coming up to 20 years in my case), the build-up of possessions is inevitable. Thousands of books and records, CDs and other items fill our house, mementos of countless moments of inspiration, joy, excitement and discovery, now standing as silent dusty friends bearing witness to so many of my forgotten thoughts on my shelves and in drawers. If only they could all simply live in an easily accessible, flawlessly retrievable Mind Palace, neatly compartmentalised but interconnected, rather than taking up space. But yet I'm also proud of my various voluminous collections – they also seem to be some evidence of my existence.
And that also expands into the virtual space we have in this Song Bar. Hundreds of thousands of songs and connections and ideas have passed through its various portals, as sparks in people’s brains, seeds landing, some flowering in the form of picked playlists. There's an amusing irony to this process, especially in the light of this week's theme - picking playlists is a two-way process, inviting collective expansiveness and then ruthlessly distilled, finely tasted reduction.
But taking the problem to extreme degrees, a category I've fortunately not (yet and hopefully never) fallen into, is the serious mental and physical condition of hoarding. Further down our street there's a neighbour who does this to a chronic degree, gathering masses of old junk - broken washing machines, toasters, suitcases, microwaves, wheels, bicycles, tins - you name it - there doesn't seem to be a discernible pattern. We always hope that he does this to recycle and sell for scrap, but the constantly expanding proliferation spilling out into his garden and beyond seems to point to a severe mental disorder.
He's a thoroughly pleasant, if eccentric gentleman – very articulate, if socially awkward, dressing a bit like a Estragon or Vladimir from Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot (see last week's absurdist topic), only even more like a tramp, appears to rarely, if ever wash, but rumour has it that he's freakishly bright with a Double First from Oxford many years ago, but then, perhaps despite having some private income, severely lost his way in life. It'll all end in tears, well, more accurately multiple skip loads, unfortunately when he becomes physically too old, but while he's still active and reasonably OK, we, and other neighbours, do what we can to aid his well-being.
When collecting becomes a mental tunnel, it’s definitely time for some radical decluttering
If you're worrying about tackling all your stuff, extreme untidiness, and cluttering can of course be associated with considerable intelligence, if not genius – that is, if you take a look at the inside of the studio of the great British painter, Francis Bacon:
Francis Bacon’s painting studio
Unclutter that! But if you were to undertake such a thing, where do you start? Of course there are all sorts of opinions about this.
“Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify, simplify!” shouts further the 19th century naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who is a regular at this bar.
Easier said than done, Henry. There are also best-selling, highly successful experts in this crowded field, making the most of the sheer consumerist mess of modern life with decluttering tips and skills.
“My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do," writes Francine Jay, brandishing a copy of Miss Minimalist: Inspiration to Downsize, Declutter, and Simplify.
“Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from them," says Joshua Becker, waving his shining volume of The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own. He also throws in this nugget for good measure:
“We don't buy things with money. We buy them with hours from our lives.”
Fair enough. But that's also many hours of stuff …
Perhaps though the queen of all reduction and decluttering is Japanese tidying expert, Marie Kondō, an infectiously enthusiastic, tiny, effervescent, minimalist who was obsessed with tidying since she was a small child. That's already unusual.
She began with a small, local practice in Tokyo in 2010, sorting out the chaos of clients' houses and causing happiness in the process. She quickly gained extraordinary popularity as a tidier and as a writer, maybe even, but not necessarily as a tidy writer. As well as advising on processes such as working by category rather than rooms (eg clothes first, then bathroom products, then books etc), or giving thanks to, and touching each possession to access its importance, all to help you make choices. Here are some of her other sifted nuggets:
“Remember, we should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.”
“For books, timing is everything. The moment you first encounter a particular book is the right time to read it. To avoid missing that moment, I recommend that you keep your collection small.”
“It’s a very strange phenomenon, but when we reduce what we own and essentially 'detox' our house, it has a detox effect on our bodies as well.”
Marie Kondō
All of these appear in her first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, which has to date sold a whopping 13 million copies worldwide. Imagine all of those in one place. I would maybe get a copy too, but I've got way too many books already. I think it might make the place look a bit cluttered.
Over then now to you, dear tidy Song Bar punters, with your own reducing, decluttering, sorting and simplifying skills and songs all about this mode and process. This week's marvellous Mr Minimalism, turning all this into neat piles of playlists, is the super-organised Severin! Place your suggestions in the small boxes below for the deadline at 11pm UK time on Monday. Tidy!
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