Je sais que 2013 est encore jeune, mais je sais déjà que cette vidéo est une des choses les plus touchantes que je verrai cette année.

L’auteur et illustrateur Christoph Niemann a voulu rendre hommage à Maurice Sendak en illustrant un extrait d’une entrevue que ce dernier avait accordé à Terry Gross avant son décès. Je n’ai pas la larme facile, mais quand Sendak, de sa voix brisée, nous exhorte de “live your life, live your life, live your life”, mon coeur se serre…

Facebook. Twitter. Google+. LinkedIn. Blogs. RSS feeds.

Fatigue.

“What I want is to be creative, I said. I want the tools to serve me, not the other way around. I’m getting absolutely nothing significant done, but I’m supposedly “busy” all the time. And it’s all driven by a shared anxiety: if we don’t keep up, we’ll be left behind; if we don’t flock over here with the Crowd, we’ll lose our audience and no one will talk to us or listen to us anymore. We’re not so sure they’re listening now…maybe we’d better issue another Tweet or Post or Dent and make sure they’re there.”

From Beth Adam’s blog, The Cassandra Pages.

Stahl house, also known as Case Study #22.

« Tout autour de moi, chacun parle de sa vision du monde. Dire son opinion est une activité for répandue qui renforce l’idée que la vie est un grand spectacle où le bien et le mal se rencontrent en faisant semblant de ne pas se reconnaître.» [...]

Étudiante à l’université, je pensais que la lucidité était ce qu’il y avait de plus précieux pour quiconque prétendait être responsable de sa vie et intervenir dans les affaires de la cité au nom de la justice et du respect de tous. La lucidité était alors composée du désir de bien faire à partir d’un certain nombre d’informations qui, une fois analysées, permettaient de juger les politiciens et les lois dont ils accablaient souvent le peuple. Être lucide ne donnait pas le droit de se moquer des gens qui ne l’étaient pas. Être lucide signifiait avoir en main des éléments de preuves pour lutter contre l’oppression et l’aliénation. La lucidité était un instrument de libération, il était normal de vouloir la partager avec tous ceux et celles qui pourraient en profiter.

Aujourd’hui nous sommes plusieurs à nous dire lucides, à pouvoir correctement juger du bien et du mal, pourtant rien ne résulte de cet amas de consciences juxtaposées, chacun étant flanqué d’une solitude impeccable, et d’un à tout prendre pour soi qui semble toujours être le résultat de circonstances atténuantes. Aujourd’hui, une partie de l’âme seulement nous émeut, ignorante et smiling. Une toute petite partie d’âme que nous portons comme un révolver à la hanche et que nous dégainons rapidement au nom de notre individualisme sans horizon. »

Extrait de Hier, un roman de Nicole Brossard.

Salon’s book critic Laura Miller is not going to make very many friends with this article, but I actually think she’s right in a lot of ways. Her article points out most of the elements that still make me uncomfortable with the concept of NaNoWriMo. You should read the whole thing, but if you are too lazy, here’s an excerpt:

NaNoWriMo is an event geared entirely toward writers, which means it’s largely unnecessary. When I recently stumbled across a list of promotional ideas for bookstores seeking to jump on the bandwagon, true dismay set in. “Write Your Novel Here” was the suggested motto for an in-store NaNoWriMo event. It was yet another depressing sign that the cultural spaces once dedicated to the selfless art of reading are being taken over by the narcissistic commerce of writing.

I say “commerce” because far more money can be made out of people who want to write novels than out of people who want to read them. And an astonishing number of individuals who want to do the former will confess to never doing the latter. [...]

Rather than squandering our applause on writers — who, let’s face, will keep on pounding the keyboards whether we support them or not — why not direct more attention, more pep talks, more nonprofit booster groups, more benefit galas and more huzzahs to readers? Why not celebrate them more heartily? They are the bedrock on which any literary culture must be built. After all, there’s not much glory in finally writing that novel if it turns out there’s no one left to read it.

Recently, I ran into someone I know at the book launch of a mutual friend. While chatting about the abundance of books published within a certain group of our acquaintances, this person revealed to me that she attends every single launch and buys all the books to show her support. “But I never read them,” she says. “I just don’t have the time.” This person was a published author herself, and I’m sure she expected most of her friends to read her book. While her comment surprised me, I’m sure she was just admitting out loud a practice done by many, many other writers.

The cheerful “Write a novel in 30 days!” suggested by NaNoWriMo has annoyed me from the start. There’s something in all the excitement around the event that seems to imply that anyone can write a novel. That kind of thinking is not doing anyone a favor, as Laura Miller judiciously points out. While the NaNoWriMo promoters do insist on the fact that what you’ll end up with is a first draft — and a messy one at that — I know that many people will still turn in their unedited manuscripts to editors, or force it upon their family and friends, “just to see”. The idea makes me cringe. I love good books too much and I admire good, hard working writers too intensely to ever dare show one of my first drafts to anyone. But that’s just me. Over-analyzing, terrified and proud me. Trust me: it’s not that I’m elitist. I just have too much respect for this stuff.

So why did I join in this year? For the purely artificial pressure of the self-imposed deadline. I’ll confess that I’m not that excited about the support group aspect of the exercise, though I know it’s a central part of NaNoWriMo. I don’t really believe that the 175 pages I’ll end up with in November, if I do manage to write that many, will be the true first draft of a novel. At best, it will be a decent start to a longer piece of work that, knowing myself too well, and the fact that I do have to work to make a living, I’ll probably take a couple of years to edit. If I don’t get sick of the characters and the story before I manage to finish it, of course, but that’s another story.

Nine years of freelancing, combined with an ever-increasing online presence have turned me into a scatter-brain in constant need of stimulation, which I probably always was anyway. I have been scared of writing a novel all my life, or at least as long as I have been able to read. When I was 10 or so, I sat down in our unfinished basement in front of an old typewriter and I decided to write a novel. I managed to type about 2 pages and then left the project aside for a while. When I came back to it a few weeks later, I was humiliated to see how naive, earnest and just plain bad my words were. I think it scared me for the following 30 years.

Yeah, I’m that crazy when it comes to writing and I am that hard on myself in general. So if I don’t publicly hold a gun to my head and risk further humiliation by not completing this damn NaNoWriMo, I’ll probably be hiding in a hole for another 30 years. A hole where there is no pen, paper, or laptop. (I’ll probably manage to find an Internet connection though, which I’ll wire directly to my sad, full-of-regrets brain and then I’ll surf and refresh my Twitter feed until I die from bitterness after reading all of your wonderful accomplishments.)

There’s nothing wrong with being “just” a reader. I’m a huge reader. Hell, I even think that I’m a GOOD reader. I’m sure writers would love me if they knew how well I read their books. But at this point in my life, because I’ve been seeing myself as a writer since I was a little kid — though I pretended that I wanted to become a helicopter pilot because it sounded more realistic — I need to write the damn thing. I need to just give it a freakin shot.

Damn. Look at this. I’ve written a 1000-word blog post. And to think that I am behind on my NaNoWriMo word count for the day!

Manque de temps. Crainte de manquer de talent. Nécessité de gagner sa vie. Perte de motivation. Sentiment de découragement devant le nombre de bons romanciers qui existent déjà et dont on n’aura jamais le temps de lire toutes les oeuvres. À quoi bon en ajouter une de plus?

Écrire un roman est un de mes souhaits les plus chers depuis l’enfance. J’ai beaucoup écrit dans ma vie – thèse de maîtrise, journalisme, biographie, scénario – mais je n’ai jamais rédigé de roman. Quand j’ai passé le cap des 20 ans, je me suis dit que j’avais raté la chance d’être dans le groupe ultra sélect de ceux qui publient très tôt. Quand j’ai eu 30 ans, j’ai constaté avec déception que je ne pourrais plus être considérée comme une “jeune” auteure. Quand j’ai eu 40 ans et que j’étais toujours sans roman à mon crédit, j’ai commencé à désespérer. Je me suis durement questionnée: allais-je être de ces gens qui écrivent leur premier roman à la retraite et à qui on s’intéresse surtout pour l’aspect tardif de leur vocation? Ou, pire encore, allais-je tout simplement éviter toute ma vie d’en écrire un?

Toutes les excuses sont bonnes pour ne pas écrire.

Cette année, j’ai décidé de me donner une excuse POUR écrire: NaNoWriMo. Il s’agit d’un regroupement de gens d’un peu partout à travers le monde qui ne se prennent pas trop au sérieux et qui désignent novembre comme étant le National Novel Writing Month. Ils s’engagent envers eux-même à écrire 50,000 mots en 30 jours.

C’est l’équivalent d’un roman de 175 pages.

L’idée, c’est de ne pas se censurer. Il faut voir le tout comme un premier jet et faire taire l’éditeur-réviseur en nous. Le mien est particulièrement verbeux. Déjà, il me chuchote à l’oreille qu’on n’écrit pas un roman qui vaille la peine en un mois (c’est vrai), que 175 pages, ce n’est qu’une longue nouvelle et que de toute manière, j’aurai probablement un contrat ou deux qui feront surface pendant le mois et qui deviendront prioritaires. Depuis deux semaines, mon éditeur-réviseur me dit que mes idées de roman ne sont pas géniales, ou encore, qu’elles feraient de bien meilleurs scénarios qui eux auraient au moins le mérite de me permettre de gagner ma vie. Il me dit que je suis rouillée, que mon français est trop teinté de mes nombreuses lectures en anglais et que je n’irai probablement pas plus loin que ce premier jet.

Sur un coup de tête en fin de semaine, j’ai donc enfermé mon éditeur-réviseur dans le cabanon, entre les meubles de jardin et le barbecue que je venais de remiser pour l’hiver. Il se gardera occupé en leur faisant la leçon sur l’aspect tout à fait superficiel de leur vocation saisonnière.

Et je me suis inscrite à NaNoWriMo.

Ça commence demain, le 1er novembre. Environ 1600 mots par jour pendant 30 jours.

J’ai un peu la chienne. Mais en bonne travailleure autonome, je connais la puissance du deadline, même quand il est artificiellement déterminé.

Pour me motiver, j’ai juste à penser à la femme qui, lors de son cinquantième anniversaire, préfèrera bouffer du gâteau en toute quiétude plutôt que de ruminer d’amers regrets.

Dear Alston,

It took only a few minutes after you died yesterday for the news to make it through your circle of friends, with the expected ripples around blogs and social networks. There has been quite a few tributes published in the last 24 hours and I’m sure they’ll keep coming during the next days. I’ve been wanting to add my voice to the group of people who cared very much for you, yet I sit here in front of my computer… and I do not know what to say.

I cried when I found out the news yesterday, shortly after 3pm. I couldn’t concentrate on work, or on anything else for that matter, so I decided to go sit outside, stare at the reddening maple trees in the yard, with the silly idea of “offering” you this view of a gorgeous Fall day. But even that simple intention could not materialize without a hitch: this was the time that my neighbor decided to mow his lawn and the moment was broken. I could imagine you yelling at him, telling him to shut off that fucking noise making machine because Martine was trying to have a quiet moment. Hearing your voice in my head made me smile.

We knew you were going to leave us. We’d known for months. But knowing doesn’t seem to make it that much easier. When a group of us last saw you in August, you were so frail that we were all in shock, tiptoeing around you, trying to give our potluck session some kind of normalcy. It made me nervous because I figured that, with your personality, so frank, sometimes even blunt, you probably hated the idea of people tiptoeing around you. But I think you were in that energy conservation mode you had talked about on your blog, so I don’t know that you were present enough with us on that day to realize that we were so nervous. It’s not a big deal, really, but I hope you weren’t too conscious of it. I hope the only thing you felt was all the caring and the love.

I gave you a hug outside of the car that day when Ed and I drove you back home. I felt privileged to have that extra time in your company on this short drive to Old Montreal. My arms could get around your entire body without any difficulty because you had gotten so thin. I got back in the car with tears in my eyes, and told Ed that I had a feeling this was going to be the last time we see you.

It was.

So what is left to say? Like everyone else, I want to say that I appreciated LOVED your dry sense of humor and that contagious laugh of yours. With your energy and vivacity, you could turn a boring gathering into a wild evening of drinking, laughing and loud, crazy talking. But one of the things that I admired the most about you was your ability to express yourself in writing. It was always there on your blog – you were quite the opinionated guy! – but it became more apparent after you got your cancer diagnosis three and a half years ago. The stuff you published then was powerful, naked and devoid of sentimentality, yet it was beautiful and well put together.

So instead of insisting on finding something special to say about you, I will let your words do the work. This is from a blog post you wrote on May 4th of 2010, on the 3rd anniversary of your diagnosis.

The past three years have been the most difficult of my life and the most rewarding. I wonder if that’s the rule. I hope it is. It makes hard times bearable if you have something to show for those hard times. I certainly do; it’s obvious. I may have lost my health and career, but I gained and strengthened friendships, published books, starred in movies, went on adventures, and changed my perspective. None of these things could have happened without these hard and trying ordeals. And I know that…let’s put it this way: I know that I will continue to receive benefits.
Now I take it one day at a time. It’s almost all that is left to me; the long-term is too nebulous. I sometimes feel as though I am going away on a trip somewhere at some point, and won’t be able to enjoy certain things. For example, the entertainment centre that they are building in the Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal. They talk about this new Centre 2-22 (I think that’s what they are calling it), and how it will have a new bistro and cultural groups with their HQs there, but I won’t be able to see these things, because I won’t be here. I’m going away. Elsewhere. Right now it just feels like some other city. Maybe a job transfer. No more Montreal. Maybe Helsinki? But as time wears on, I know it will feel…different.
I don’t normally feel this way, and I certainly don’t put it in these pages, but once in a while, especially on my anniversary, some candour is due. I hope I can stick around Montreal for a while. I do like it here.

Wherever you are, sweetheart, I hope you like it there.

With much love,

Your friend Martine

Alston Adams, November 8 1974 – October 4, 2010

Note:
A memorial service will be held for Alston on Friday October 8th, 2010 beginning at 3 pm. The service will be followed by a small reception. Kane & Fetterly Funeral Home, 5301 Decarie Boulevard H3W 3C4 (Metro Snowdon, Tel: 514.481.5301).

J’ai publié récemment sur mon blogue un billet concernant les dangers de la pensée positive. J’aimerais revenir sur ce sujet qui me touche tout particulièrement en vous présentant un nouvel ouvrage publié chez Flammarion Québec: Faire face au cancer avec la pensée réaliste.

Je vous en parle tout d’abord parce que ce livre a été écrit par une personne dont je suis proche depuis l’enfance: Josée Savard est ma “vieille” et précieuse amie depuis l’école primaire dans la basse-ville de Québec. Elle est maintenant professeur titulaire à l’École de psychologie et chercheur au Centre de recherche en cancérologie de l’Université Laval. Je n’ai rien à voir avec ses succès mais je suis quand même très fière d’elle!

Mais je vous parle surtout de ce livre parce que c’est un ouvrage important qui pourrait venir en aide à vous ou à un de vos proches. Josée a une expérience clinique de plus de 15 ans auprès de personnes confrontée à une maladie menaçant leur vie. Elle a donc vu les effets négatifs de la tyrannie de la pensée positive sur les patients: culpabilisation, anxiété, colère, dépression, découragement, etc. Quand on croit pouvoir se guérir si “on le veut vraiment”, alors lorsque le cancer reprend le dessus, on peut être porté à croire que c’est de notre faute. Les gens malades n’ont pas du tout besoin de cette pression supplémentaire!

L’ouvrage s’adresse aux patients atteints du cancer. Il pourrait aussi être d’une grande aide aux professionnels de la santé œuvrant en oncologie. L’auteur leur propose d’adopter la pensée réaliste qui favorise l’adaptation de la personne à la maladie en l’amenant à percevoir sa situation telle qu’elle est, tout en espérant que le meilleur survienne. Cette approche est basée sur les préceptes de la thérapie cognitive-comportementale, celle qui a reçu le plus de preuves scientifiques quant à son efficacité.

Ce que j’aime particulièrement de ce livre, c’est qu’on n’y trouve pas de recette miracle ni de mysticisme bon marché. Juste des techniques faciles à comprendre et qui ont été testées par de nombreux psychologues en clinique. L’ouvrage est divisé en 9 chapitres qui proposent des conseils pratiques pour aider à diminuer les difficultés psychologiques associées à la maladie.

Voici la liste des chapitres:
1. Le cancer et l’optimisme réaliste
2. L’influence des pensées et des comportements
3. Reconnaître les pensées négatives et les remplacer par des pensées réalistes
4. La culpabilité et la dépression
5. L’anxiété et la peur de la récidive
6. La colère
7. L’insomnie
8. La fatigue
9. S’adapter à la progression du cancer et apprivoiser la mort

Déprimant comme lecture? Je ne le crois pas, non. Comme le conclut l’auteur du livre:

Personne ne sera jamais heureux d’avoir un cancer, mais il est possible de vivre cette situation plus sereinement, en changeant la façon de la percevoir et en éliminant plusieurs comportements qui maintiennent les difficultés psychologiques.

Comme m’a dit Josée dans sa dédicace, j’espère que vous n’aurez jamais besoin de lire ce livre. Mais si vous ou un de vos proches est atteint du cancer, cet ouvrage pourrait faire une différence dans leur manière de gérer leurs émotions pendant la maladie.

With a new year comes new resolutions. This year, you are going to do what you always told yourself you should do and damn it, you’ll be successful at it. You’ll work hard because you know success is based on merit and it comes to people who truly deserve it because of their relentless efforts. You will go far and perhaps even become your own brand. Why not? If you are not succeeding in your goal, it’s because you are not trying hard enough, right?

So what does that say about people who are not “successful”? Does that make them losers? Or are they maybe just too lazy?

For years, especially in the U.S., positive thinking and meritocracy have been pushed forward not only by popular show hosts like Oprah but also by psychologists, doctors and entrepreneurs. You are sick? Think in a positive light, don’t let any negativity creep in and you will beat your disease. You want to be a famous singer? Stand on the street and sell your show ticket by ticket if you have to. They say Marilyn wasn’t the most talented young actress around. She became famous because she wanted it MORE than any other girl did. (Or maybe she said that herself. I can’t seem to find the original quote.)

Because I’m not an optimist by nature – a result of personality and unhappy childhood – this kind of positive thinking has always made me cringe. “Yes we can” is nice and all, but I’m more of the “Okay let’s give it a try but don’t get your hopes up too much” type of mentality. It freaks me out to see positivity elevated as the new moral standard, the new religion to follow. My lack of faith may not allow me to fly as high as a kite, but it keeps my feet well grounded. It also means that I often have a plan B, which makes me ready to move on when something doesn’t go my way.

Thankfully, we are slowly hearing voices rising up against this excess of magical thinking. Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote the famous book Nickel and Dimed just published another book with an exciting title:
Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

The practice of positive thinking is an effort to pump up this belief in the face of much contradictory evidence. Those who set themselves up as instructors in the discipline of positive thinking— coaches, preachers, and gurus of various sorts—have described this effort with terms like “self-hypnosis,” “mind control,” and “thought control.” In other words, it requires deliberate self-deception, including a constant effort to repress or block out unpleasant possibilities and “negative” thoughts. The truly self-confident, or those who have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny within it, do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling their thoughts. Positive thinking may be a quintessentially American activity, associated in our minds with both individual and national success, but it is driven by a terrible insecurity.

For a fun take on the book, watch the interview that Jon Stewart did with Barbara Ehrenreich.

Going in a similar direction, the writer Alain de Botton recently gave a TED talk titled A kinder, gentler philosophy of success.

There’s a real correlation between a society that tells people that they can do anything, and the existence of low self-esteem.

Everybody agrees that meritocracy is a great thing and we should all be trying to make our societies really meritocratic. A meritocratic society is one in which if you’ve got talent and energy and skill you will get to the top. Nothing should hold you back. It’s a beautiful idea. The problem is, if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top get to the top, you’ll also by implication, and in a far more nasty way, believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there. In other words, your position in life comes to seem not accidental, but merited and deserved. That makes failure seems much more crushing.

We’re perceived as being in the driving seat. That’s exhilarating if you are doing well but crushing if you’re not. In the worst cases, it leads to depression and suicide. They own their success but also own their failure.

The whole talk is available on video here.

If you’re not convinced yet that grumpier is better, you might want to consider this recent study:

An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.

In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.

Professor Forgas said: “Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world.”

Grumpy people of the world unite! Let’s all get a sweet, global reality check. Way to start 2010!