Proverbs for the Future

Anne Herbert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnneHerbert(writer))was a gifted writer who edited CoEvolution Quarterly (the periodic magazine of the Whole Earth Catalog (http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=1010)) before I did in the early 1980s. We never worked together, or were close friends, but I really dug her writing. It was telegraphic, lyrical, abbreviated, evocative, extremely personal and mystical.  She wrote in short bursts. Like proverbs from a secret bible. Brian Eno noticed her stuff works really well on t-shirts. It was not like any writing I had encountered.  (She came up with the phrase “practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty” which later became a meme.) Readers loved her; but publishers did not get her.

After one book (http://www.amazon.com/Random-Kindness-Senseless-Acts-Beauty/dp/0912078898/ref=nttatepdpt1) of her work that sank on the marketplace, she disappeared in the mid 1980s and never published again even in magazines. I often wondered about her. She was decades ahead of her time. I always thought her stuff was perfect for blogs and twitter. But after 1990 no one I knew had seen her.

Recently I discovered that she is still going, still writing and that she has a weekly blog (http://peaceandloveandnoticingthedetails.blogspot.com/)! In fact she has been blogging since 2005! I’ve been reading her online recently although she doesn’t know it. She’s as good as ever. She is the epitome blog/twitter writer IMHO. It turned out she had been broadcasting 140 character tweets and bursty blog postings long before either media existed.

I love her sensibility. You might too.

Some recent samples. These are not cut or edited. These are the entire entry.

Do less; have less; be more.

Flawedness is the only option. I disagree, but there it is. I don’t know how to deal with flawedness in myself or others. Now, that’s a flaw.

Music fans are more likely than musicians to love the kind of music they love and disdain other kinds.

Musicians are more likely to love music as a group and to be riveted by at least one kind of music their fans feel is wrong, so very wrong.

Renata Adler was a New York Times movie critic who brought to the job the gift of not being particularly fond of movies as an art form. She almost didn’t like them as a group.

This gave her access to general insights less available to lovers of the form.

She said you can’t make an anti-war movie because film always says yes to what it shows.