What I talk about when I talk about reading

It’s 10:00pm. Bernstein is playing Mahler.. again. Bernie. And Mahler. And Dui.

The Complete Mahler Symphonies, recorded in 1960, take a little over 12 hours to complete. I’ve listened to it several times now. Typically, I listen to each of Mahler’s symphonies in order.

Unless I skip to number 5, of course.

I started listening to Mahler for the simple reason that I hadn’t before. You see, I’m into classical music, but I was always more of a piano listener: Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninoff. You know, the basics.

I mean it. There’s no false modesty to it. I know very little of classical music.. mostly the composers above. I wanted to expand my horizons, instead of just listening to Chopin and Bach and Beethoven over and over and over. So I went to Mahler.

I went to Mahler.. and started listening to it over and over and over.

That’s me.

I bought Bernie’s Complete Mahler Symphonies on iTunes. My wife jokes that I’m probably the only remaining iTunes customer. She’s probably right. Nobody buys music on iTunes anymore.

I bought music because I didn’t want to carry a phone. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to listen to music on the go without a phone unless you buy it.

Nobody buys music anymore because everybody has a phone now. But not me.

Nope, I don’t have a phone. Well, I do. 2, actually. I just don’t use them. Really. Life is complicated this way.

Anyway. Mahler’s Symphonies cost me R$ 149,90, or $30. $30 to listen to music without a phone even though I have 2 of them, just because I don’t want to use them.

That’s me.

Juju is sleeping on a catbed on my desk, Sophie sleeps on the catbed on my side. There are 3 catbeds and a 3-floor cathouse in my home office alone.

When I was young, like undergrad young, I had 20 dogs. At once, yes. 20. We just kept rescuing them from the streets, and eventually we just had 20 of them. What can I do?

My 20 dogs and my 6 cats at the time always got along fine. The dogs got mad at each other sometimes, but it was more like gossiping than actual fighting. They were just causing drama to keep life interesting. Like some people do, sometimes.

I have 20 cats now. Well, actually, 22 — in fact we just counted them. We just keep rescuing them, you know? What can I do?

At this point, rescuing another cat only increases my cat count by about 5%, and what’s a 5% increase, anyway? Might as well take care of the cat.

I’ve lost many pets. Comes with the territory. I’ve had to put many of them down. Some were run over. Some got cancer. Fuck cancer. A couple dogs actually disappeared when they were about to die — just jumped the walls and disappeared. Can you believe it? I didn’t know that that was a thing.

It sucks.

But you treasure the time you spend with them, not the loss. Well, that’s what I do, anyway. Like having Juju here sleeping at my desk while I write.

That’s me.

You know those people who say that everyone should exercise? Some say everybody should learn a new language, or to play the guitar, or be vegan, or whatever? Not me. I understand all this stuff is hard.

Although you should exercise.

Anyway.. writing. Writing is just one of those things I wish I had started sooner.

But you see, also, I couldn’t. I mean.. what would I even write about?

I had nothing to write about. So of course I couldn’t write.

You know what’s funny? I worked for a writing startup once. Helping kids become better writers. It was great. Honestly, when I joined, I didn’t even like writing. Not that I didn’t like to write.. I didn’t like “writing,” as a thing. The act. I didn’t understand it, really.

You see.. writing itself, is nothing. Yes, the medium is the message. But also, the message is the message. Not the medium.

It’s like when parents say “my kid spends all this time on the phone, Dui” .. but the phone is the medium. What is it the thing they’re spending their time on, really?

Also, what is the thing you’re spending your time on when you’re on your phone, really? .. What’s the message?

Anyway, writing is the medium, and it shapes my message. But there’s no real name for this thing we call the message. At least I don’t think there is. I could be doing videos or podcasts, or talking to you over zoom, and it’d *shape* the message.. but it wouldn’t *be* the message.

So that is what my thing is about. It’s not about the writing, really. It’s about the .. the thing.. you know? The message. That’s what I care about.

That’s me.

And the message, .. it’s got everything to do with books. So maybe, just maybe, it *is* actually about writing after all.

You see, it’s not really me that you’re reading right now. Well, it kind of is. But it’s also just this weird backpropagation of all these books I’ve read.

I once read about this idea of “what activity you wouldn’t give up for any amount of money?” .. it came up with this cartoonist, I think, who was offered a life-changing amount of money to give up the rights to her cartoon and, when justifying her declination, said “well, what would I do then?”

That’s books for me. I could give up writing, guitar, exercise and BJJ. I’d even give up programming.

But I wouldn’t, for any amount of money, ever give up books.

I mean, what would I do then?

There’s this idea that your zone of genius is on the thing that seems like play to you but work to other people. Honestly, it’s kind of a BS concept. If anything .. ok, yes, it’s just a BS concept.

But also, .. yes. Reading does seem like play to me and like work to a lot of other people.

But not all people.

That’s also the thing about being good at things. When you’re bad at something, you’re just bad. But when you’re good, you’re usually good in a really precise way, a precision typically useful so you can tell exactly how much worse than others you really are.

Anyways.

The point of reading books is to remember them. Well, at least that’s the point for me. They have to change how you think about things. In short, they have to change you.

You may say that fiction is different, fiction doesn’t have to change you, but I think changing how we think is even more so the purpose of fiction books. I mean, humans have a way harder time changing their minds when they’re faced with facts than with fiction, after all. So that would make sense.

I’m not being flippant. We change our minds based on stories, narratives, impressions, and emotions. We may be stochastic parrots, but our thinking is anything but stochastic.

And so we go through life, changing our minds.

It is said.. they say, you know, “they,” that we consume about one book a day’s worth of information. 100,000 words. In a way, we’re all being shaped by these 100k daily words.

So I mean, what message is in it? What do those 100,000 daily words say? What type of thing is changing me? I .. I don’t know.

But that’s why I read books. I chose all these books for my daily words. And I have for many years now.

That’s me.