An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

~ G. K. Chesterton, On Running after One's Hat, 1908



Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Bullet Point Storytelling

Angie's List,  Letterman's Top Ten, the TSA's Prohibited Items. A search in Google brings up over two billion results for the word list. The word death only brings five and a half million.

Only love is stronger than a list ....  8,930,000,000 results.

Like love for a bad man, lists can lead you astray and leave you feeling empty. An overuse of Powerpoint in the military and education has led some to say the Microsoft program, which focuses on charts and bulleted lists, is evil and makes us stupid.  I'd argue about causality on the second point, but nevermind. Is Powerpoint evil?  Please. Amoral, maybe. Are bullet points the end of civilization? No, that's ridiculous. That honor belongs to chocolate fountains.

All week long I create a list called "Saturday." It is list of all those things I can't or won't do during the week. The banal and the aspirational wait together -- not in order of importance, but rather in random order of thought.

A selection from last Saturday:
  • Put spare monitor on Freecycle
  • Put CDs on Craiglist
  • Take books to Opp House
  • Schedule Clothing Exchange
  • Sync phones
  • Buy toothpaste and toothbrushes
  • Make a mobile
  • Make persimmon pumpkin pie
  • Need motorcycle gloves and sweater tights
Lists are intriguing because they provide an insight into a person's life. If you're wondering, I accomplished just more than half. Well, Matt made the pie. And, drove me around. Sweater tights? Check. 

Found magazine is dedicated to these storytelling moments with the public sharing of lost and found private love letters, photos, and, yes, lists. Each piece provides a glimpse into someone's life and reminds how much we have in common,  how much we don't,  and how much we hope we don't.  (We also find evidence at Found that people have long delighted in funny pictures of cats.)   Like photos and notes, lists are relics of our time on earth and when found by a stranger and shared, they become poetry.

Sometimes lists are more explicitly poetry than not. The list or catalog poem is a common grade-school exercise. Anyone who can write can write a list, so the thinking probably goes that it's a good start for would-be budding poets. I'm not aware of too many celebrated poets that use this form. You've probably come across Maya Angelou's Woman Work, an effective piece about the weariness of a working mother. Each line adds another layer of labor until the reader feels bone-tired by the end.  This isn't the example given to eager gradeschoolers. They get Walt Whitman's I Hear America SingingI love Whitman, but blech. I can see why there's a dearth of good poets these days with this as the model. Want an antidote? Read Song of Myself, section 1.

A few years ago I was reading some book or other on positive psychology and came an exercise to combat depression: keeping a daily gratitude journal. The gratitude journal, you might well guess, entails making a list of things for which you are grateful. As an ingrate, even in the best of times, I tweaked the idea one long lonely winter when I dangerously close to feeling self-pity. I'd just recovered from temporary blindness and assorted personal angst.  Each night, until I didn't need it any more, I simply made a list of "good" things that happened during the day. Good is subjective, but these were moments of beauty or banality that gave me satisfaction, if not joy.

I've returned intermittently to add to the journal: A day here, a day there with only one extended return. What drove me to despair again in the spring of 2008 is what drives everyone to despair: the absurd behavior of the other (opposite sex, same sex, etc.).  What pleased me enough to note were what pleases everyone: good food, accomplishment, time with friends, and feeling especially well-turned-out.

To be more specific, this entry from Tuesday, 2007 April 24:
  • Postcard from [a friend]
  • Caught an advising mistake
  • Spanish subtitles on Coffee and Cigarettes
  • Good show of hosting neighborhood meeting, created nice spread
  • Ate a couple of pieces of chocolate -- very nice
  • Made crabcakes with leftover crab from Sunday's dim sum efforts
  • Lunch made for tomorrow and clothes picked out
  • The sound of rain in trees
What strikes me is that there are very few momentous, earth-shatteringly happy moments. Okay, there might not be any. I don't want to read the whole thing to make sure, because it goes on a bit and is best reviewed only momentarily. I took pleasure in small things: a pleasant walk to work, a good piece of chocolate, new rain boots (these were really kick-ass rain boots). I also noted the weather far more than is healthy for an American younger than 40. In particular, I really enjoyed kicking through puddles in my new rain boots. And, coming home to tea.

I recently found the to-do list of my wedding day. Not quite ready to part with it, I put it in the middle of a pile of papers to unearth another cleaning day: a gift to my future self. Though I have pictures and videos a plenty, the list is the closest thing I have to a written record of that blur of an occasion.  And, this might be the concern of Powerpoint critics. Instead of deep thinking and reflection, our history has been reduced to bullet points, a gloss over the complicated, sound bites instead of intelligent discourse.  But, it's a false dichotomy. You can have the occasional zinger as well as real conversation.  There is room for both the list and the fuller forms. A list can be literature.

2 comments:

  1. I'm with you completely on the chocolate fountain. So with you.

    Make a mobile? How many people have that on their to-do list?

    Motorcycle gloves? You go, girl.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Edward Tufte is on my list of heroes. And although I use PowerPoint, I am aware that it is a manifestation of my insecurity.

    ReplyDelete