(For No Audience 1)

Overstimulation and “Phaedrus’ Quality”:


I’m a teenager right now and everyone from the people who write for TIME to my little brother have told me the ineffectuality of listening to music while I work- that it is a distraction from what I am trying to do. I believe them- it feels like the first time I drove a car. But I still do, sure that, like the first time I drove a car, it will only make me better at what I am attempting, whether writing a paper or doing calculus or comprehending. Sometimes I do it on purpose- because my head’s too full so I need to quiet them with louder music. And the science says that I just enjoy the overstimulation.

But I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and while it was not a “formative text for me” like it was for so many others, it made a connection. (By the way, it is nice for the vocabulary it provides for general talking about the subject, but really? Duh.)

Being at one with work

And thinking is something I do

And if I want to enjoy the work I am doing, I need to unplug myself.

In the precognitive moment I am the same, but twice so

And so only half of the cognition is possible.

I need to give the silence a chance, be at one and let that stimulate me,

But if I want to escape thought, I’m still good doing what I do. Because to achieve that oneness, there can’t be too much on one side.

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