How to Write Something Truly Beautiful (Alain de Botton Interview)
发布时间 2025-07-16 12:24:07 来源
And you've written so many books and then also with the School of Life, I mean, jeez, almost 10 million YouTube subscribers. And as I was thinking about what is it that you're doing, what is it that gives you joy as a writer for yourself but also kind of a sense of relief for us as the viewer on a School of Life video or as a reader, it's this joy of capturing sensations and emotions and words. You know, so much of the world is, it's not concrete and writing makes it concrete and by doing that gives us clarity, gives us peace, whatever it is. That's beautiful. I think you've got it there. Let's end it there. End of the podcast.
你写了这么多书，而且还参与了生活学校，我是说，哇，YouTube 上快有一千万的订阅者了。我在思考你在做什么，是什么让你作为一个作家找到快乐，也让我们作为生活学校视频的观众或读者感到轻松。就是这种捕捉感觉和情感并将其转化为文字的快乐。你知道，世界上的很多东西都不是具体的，而写作让它们变得具体，通过这样做给我们带来了清晰感、平和感，无论是什么。这很美。我觉得你抓住了重点。我们就此结束吧。播客到此结束。
I mean, yes, it is all about, I mean, I think two things interest me in particular, pain and pleasure. So anything that is painful, I want to put words to it. Anything that's very beautiful, I want to put words to it. It is about capturing and, to use a slightly strange word, controlling the experience, controlling pain in order to lessen it, controlling beauty in order to keep a hold on something that is fugitive. And the idea is that, you know, the more, the more I can do, I mean, it's broadly therapeutic. It's why people journal.
我的意思是，对我来说，这一切都与两件事情有关：痛苦和快乐。任何让我感到痛苦的事情，我都想通过语言表达出来。任何非常美丽的东西，我也想用语言描绘。这关乎于捕捉体验，或者换个稍微奇怪的说法，控制体验——通过控制痛苦来减轻它，通过控制美来留住那些稍纵即逝的东西。我的想法是，我能做的越多，就越有疗愈效果。这也是为什么人们会记录日记。
I mean, I began as a writer, as a teenager, trying to master emotions that felt bigger than me. I felt a basic sense of relief, which has not changed to this day, at turning an emotion into an idea, at putting words to feelings. And they just lessen. And that brings enormous relief. So I think you can divide humanity into what people do with their pain. Some people drink their pain away. Some people talk their pain away. Some people exercise their pain away. Some people achieve their pain away. And some people want to write it away. And I'm one of those.
我从青少年时期开始成为一名作家，尝试掌控那些让我觉得难以承受的情绪。把情绪转化为想法，用文字表达感受，这一过程给了我一种基本的解脱感，至今依然如此。情绪因此变得不再那么强烈，这让我感到莫大的轻松。从某种角度看，人类可以按照他们如何处理痛苦来分类。有些人通过饮酒来麻痹痛苦，有些人通过倾诉来排解痛苦，有些人通过锻炼来释放痛苦，有些人通过取得成就来化解痛苦，而有些人则选择用写作的方式来疏导痛苦。我就是其中之一。
And it is all about processing, you might say, difficult feelings. So I wrote my first book, which in the United States was called On Love. And in the many other parts of the world was called Essays in Love. And that was an attempt to understand sensations around love that had basically been very painful and mysterious. And I gained relief. And in a rather sort of magical process, you know, it ended up in the hands of other people who would say things like, how did you know that about me? Wow.
这段话的意思主要是关于处理情感，尤其是那些困难的情感。因此，我写了我的第一本书，在美国它被称为《On Love》，而在其他许多地方被称为《Essays in Love》。这本书是我尝试理解与爱情相关的感觉，而这些感觉一直以来既痛苦又神秘。通过写作，我获得了一种舒缓的感觉。而且在一种可以说是神奇的过程中，这本书传到了其他人手中，他们会对我说，"你怎么知道我也是这样想的？真是不可思议。"
And of course, I would say, I have no idea about you, but I'm just keeping a track of me. And, you know, if I'm doing that faithfully, then it may have an echo in somebody else. And, you know, it's very strange how that happens. You know, sometimes people say to me, what research have you done? You know, what's your authority base? Like, what are you claiming this on? And I go, you know, it's just empirical observation of me.
当然，我想说，我对你一无所知，但我只是关注我自己。你知道，如果我忠实地这样做了，它可能会在其他人身上产生共鸣。这很奇怪，人们有时会问我，你做了什么研究？你的权威基础是什么？你是基于什么来声称这些的？我就会说，这只是我对我自己的经验观察。
And I think that all of us are this incredible library of sensations, this incredible data source. And so often, particularly in the academic world, the feeling is, let's ignore ourselves as a source of data. Let's go and find out what Cicero said, what Socrates said, or what Michel Foucault said. And, well, you know, that could be helpful. Far better to mine your own mind. But there's not much encouragement for that. The whole school system is based on trying to get you to find out what other people thought rather than going into what you might think.
我认为，我们每个人都是一个惊人的感知库，一个不可思议的数据源。然而，在学术界，常常倾向于忽视我们自己作为数据来源的作用，更多去研究西塞罗、苏格拉底或者米歇尔·福柯说过什么。当然，这些是有帮助的。但更好的是深入挖掘自己的思想。然而，这方面的激励并不多。整个教育体系更多是为了让你了解他人怎么想，而不是引导你思考自己的观点。
So what do you do when you, there's like a sort of pain or an emotion that you're just grappling with and you can't quite name it? You know that there's something there. Because I've always struggled to feel my emotions. This has been a lot of what I've learned over the last five years in particular. I've really struggled with it. And so a lot of writing for me, and actually the pain of writing, is to almost force myself to feel the thing and to really feel the thing and to stop the resistance.
那么，当你感受到某种痛苦或情绪，却无法准确命名时，你会怎么做呢？你知道那里有一些东西。因为我总是很难感受自己的情绪。过去五年来，我一直在努力学习这个问题。我一直为此感到挣扎。因此，对我来说，写作的过程，包括写作带来的痛苦，几乎就是强迫自己去感受这些情绪，真正去感受，并停止抗拒。
And then to somehow name the thing is to constrain the thing. And once you've constrained it, now you can look at it as almost an object that's separate from you. But it's remarkably painful. So how do you do that? I mean, partly, you know, there's definitely a moment when certain feelings are not ready to be turned into literature, into words. It's not ready. It's not cooked.
翻译：给某样东西命名实际上是对它的一种限制。一旦你限制了它，你就可以把它看作是一个几乎与自己分离的对象。但这过程是极其痛苦的。那么，你该如何做到这一点呢？我的意思是，有时候某些情感还没有准备好转化为文字或文学作品。它还未成熟，还没“熟透”。
And partly that has to do with one not understanding what it is sufficiently. And after all, you know, a piece of prose has to obey certain rules of coherence. You have to be able to understand it well enough to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who doesn't know it. You know, you have to be able to introduce a stranger to a feeling. And in order to do that, you have to know it a little bit, you know, yourself.
这在某种程度上是因为人们对事物了解得不够深入。同时，你知道，一段文章需要遵循某些连贯性的规则。你必须足够理解它，才能设身处地为不懂的人着想。你要能够让一个陌生人感受到一种情感。而要做到这一点，你自己就必须对这种情感有一定的了解。
So let me give you an example. Yeah. So I'm writing again about love at the moment. And for maybe three weeks or so, I was toying around with you. I saw a couple in a restaurant and they were having a lovely meal and it was summertime in London and they looked really happy. And I had a thought. And the thought was, if their relationship breaks down, it's an evening like this that will cost them both dear or one of them dear. This will be a locus of pain. Let's say the man is abandoned or the woman's abandoned. You know, they will return to that. Oh, that lovely meal when we, when the future looked beautiful, when, you know, et cetera.
让我给你一个例子。嗯。我最近正在写关于爱情的东西。有大概三个星期的时间，我一直在考虑这个问题。有一次我看到一对情侣在餐厅里享用美味的晚餐，当时正值伦敦的夏天，他们看起来非常快乐。我心里冒出一个想法：如果他们的关系出现问题，那么像这样的夜晚将会成为今后让其中一方或双方都感到痛苦的记忆。这会成为他们痛苦的一个集中点。假设那个男人被抛弃了，或者那个女人被抛弃了，他们会不断回想起那个美好的晚餐，那时候他们的未来看起来很美好，等等。
So I became interested in, right, how does a pleasurable experience later turn into a nightmare? And observing my own life, I've seen how much when a relationship breaks down, you don't really sit around lamenting the argument that you had or the, you know, the bad times about their sibling or whatever it is. You really, your mind turns towards the beautiful times, that holiday you took, that, that amazing walk you took, you know, one evening, whatever. These are the moments of pain when it's beautiful.
我开始对一个问题感兴趣：为什么愉快的经历会在后来变成噩梦？通过观察我自己的生活，我发现当一段关系破裂时，人们不会一直纠结于曾经发生的争吵或者对方的家人的问题。相反，我们的思绪会回到那些美好的时光，比如一起度过的假期，某个晚上一起散步的美好景象等等。当想起这些曾经美好的瞬间时，心中的痛苦就会浮现。
And I thought, isn't it, it's a sort of dark thought. It's, it's the beautiful things that are storing up cost that the pleasurable participant isn't yet fully aware of. I mean, it's, it's really the, the psychology of mourning and loss. You, you only lose what's beautiful and good. Therefore, while achieving anything beautiful and good, if you're a wiser, older person, you're thinking, wow. This is what I'm going to need to maybe have to pay for later on. So anyway, these thoughts were in my head, but for a while they were tangled and couldn't really, whatever.
我想，这是不是一种颇为阴暗的想法。那些美好的事物正在积蓄某种代价，而享受其中的人还没有完全意识到这一点。我指的是，实际上，这就是哀伤和失落的心理。你失去的，往往是美好和珍贵的东西。因此，当你在追求任何美好和珍贵的事物时，如果你是一个更有智慧、更年长的人，你会想，哇，这就是我可能以后需要付出的代价。不管怎样，这些想法在我脑海中盘旋了一阵，但一时之间也理不太清。
And then yesterday, it all came to me. And often it does come in a sort of moment of like, right, this is cooked. This is bubbling. This is, this is a boiling point. And I was looking through my notes and thought, okay, I, I know this, this is like a little essay on the debt that we may have to pay for our pleasures. You know, so it emerges a little piece. And, but I say that's a journey from fragments to something more, more complete. You have to be able to, to name it and see it. Because as you were hinting, sometimes you don't know what it is.
然后，就在昨天，我突然明白了。通常，这种领悟会在某个瞬间到来，就像是对自己说，好吧，这件事情已经煮熟了，已经开始翻滚了，达到了沸点。我翻阅着我的笔记，想，好吧，我知道这是什么了，这就像是一篇关于我们享受中的代价的小文章。于是，它逐渐显现出来。但我说，这是从片段到更完整的事物的一段旅程。你需要能够命名它，看见它。因为就像你暗示的，有时候你不知道它是什么。
You don't know what a feeling is. You don't know where it belongs. We're in, if you imagine a giant library, our minds are giant libraries and they've got an index system and a stack system. But sometimes you, you get some words and you think, I don't know what the book is. I don't know where it would go on the stacks. I don't know. You know, and it takes a while. And then eventually you, you find a location for it in your, in your intellectual worldview. You got to tell me about that word fragments, fragments, fragments. Because I think that that's where so much of writing starts is fragments.
你不知道什么是感觉，也不知道它属于哪里。可以想象，我们的大脑就像一个巨大的图书馆，里面有索引系统和书架系统。但有时候，你获得了一些词汇，却不知道这些词属于哪本书，也不知道该放在哪个书架上。经过一段时间后，你终于在你的认知世界中找到了它们的位置。你要告诉我关于那些词的片段，因为我认为，很多写作都是从这些片段开始的。
Absolutely. And I think it should start. I think that novice writers often get this wrong. They say things like, I, you know, I just don't know where to start with my book. I don't know. I don't know what the story, et cetera. And I always say, look, I compare it to archeology. In archeology, you come across a little broken bit of a pot and you know that there's other bits of the pot. They're going to be somewhere in the area. And you have to dig through the dirt to assemble them and find them and then, and then assemble them into a plausible pattern.
当然可以。我觉得应该马上开始写。我认为新手作家常常犯这样的错误，他们常会说：“我就是不知道从哪里开始我的书，我不知道故事是什么等等。” 我总是会说，看，我把这比作考古。在考古中，你会发现一个小小的破碎的陶片，你知道在这个区域里一定还有其他的碎片。你需要在泥土中挖掘，找到这些碎片，然后把它们拼凑成一个合理的图案。
You have to go, right. And, you know, my first thought is this, what's the next bit that it could fit into? And it takes a long while, like, like archeology, like archeological sort of reconstitution. It takes a while. And one can panic and think, I never get this. But I think that many books start with an image, a thought, a fragmented idea. You know, if I think of certain books, they literally began with half a scene. And I thought, right, what's, you know, I'm working on a book now. And I just have an image of a man emerging from a visit to a dental hygienist in Wimpole Street in London.
你必须走，对吧。你知道，我首先想到的是，接下来它能融入什么。这个过程需要很长时间，就像考古学、考古重建一样。这需要一段时间。而且人们可能会感到恐慌，觉得自己永远不会理解。但我认为，许多书籍都是从一个画面、一种想法或一个破碎的念头开始的。比如我想到某些书，它们确实是从半个场景开始的。我心想，好的，我现在正在写一本书，而我脑海中只有一个画面，是一个男人从伦敦温波尔街的牙科保健师那里出来的情景。
He's gone there in a moment of some despair and in a turmoil. And he's had his teeth cleaned and he's emerging into the street. Anyway, I'm slowly assembling bits and bits will come from all over. I'd be marshaled by that scene. But it's like a powerful magnet that draws in filaments from elsewhere. But for a long time, you know, the magnet is not switched on. And so the filaments are just lying around. So no one thinks in book terms. I mean, a book is an arbitrary construction dictated by the book industry.
他在一种绝望和混乱的时刻去了那里。他在那里洗了牙，现在正在走出街道。不管怎样，我慢慢地将各种片段拼凑在一起。这些片段来自四面八方，让那个场景聚集起来。但这就像一个强力磁铁，把其他地方的细丝吸引过来。不过，在很长一段时间里，这个磁铁并没有开启，所以那些细丝就只是随意地散落着。没有人会从书的角度来思考。毕竟，书是一个由书籍行业强加的任意构造。
It's, you know, a certain number of words. It's glued together, blah, blah, blah. No one thinks in terms of books. We think in sentences, images, fragments, et cetera. And gradually we may end up with this thing called a book. But it's always a slightly artificial construction, which is why I've also, you know, I began by being interested in aphorisms, maxims, you know, the tradition of like, you know, the short, pithy. The original tweets. Right. The original tweets. And I remember this 17th century character, French character, La Rochefoucauld. Do you know him? No. La Rochefoucauld. He wrote this book called The Maxims in the 17th century. And it's a beautiful book. It must be, it's about 200 fragments. Let me give you an example. To say one never flirts is itself a form of flirtation. Another one is, there are some people who would never have fallen in love if they hadn't heard there was such a thing. Another one is, we all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
这段话的意思是，人们通常不会以书的形式来思考，而是以句子、图像、片段等方式来思考。一本书往往是这些片段经过加工后的人为构造。正因为如此，我才对格言、箴言这类短小精悍的表述感兴趣，就像早期的推特一样。我记得17世纪法国有个叫拉罗什富科的人，他写了一本名为《箴言录》的书，非常出色，大概由200个片段组成。举几个例子：说自己从不调情本身就是一种调情；有些人如果没听说过爱情这回事，就永远不会坠入爱河；我们都有足够的力量去承受别人的不幸。
And I remember reading this book thinking, I love this. It's not a novel. It's not a biography. It's not a poem. It's like a psychological, as the French would say, aperçu, a little glimpse of a truth. And it's two lines long. Great. And that's how we began writing. I wrote a whole selection of aphorisms for friends at university. And we would sort of laugh. And, you know, some of them were about people that we'd know. They are funny, right? I mean, Shakespeare said brevity is the soul of wit. Right. And, like, there's kind of a wit and a humor and an aphorism, a maxim. Yeah. So that's what I like. But I've always found, as a writer, I've always found it really hard to fit into a preexisting form. So my books tend to be quite odd. I mean, I wrote a book called The Course of Love. Well, real quick, before you get there, I think you're saying something really profound, which is, you know, there's that stupid line. It's like, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you write a book? One sentence at a time.
我记得读这本书的时候，我在想，我很喜欢它。它不是小说，不是传记，也不是诗歌。它更像是法国人所说的"洞察"，一种对某种真理的小小一瞥。而它只有两行长。太棒了。这就是我们开始写作的方式。我在大学时为朋友们写了一整套警句，我们会一起笑。有些是关于我们认识的人。它们很有趣，对吧？我意思是，莎士比亚说过简洁是智慧的灵魂。是的，警句和格言中蕴含着一种机智和幽默。这就是我喜欢的东西。但作为一个作家，我一直发现很难适应现有的形式。所以我的书往往很奇特。我写过一本书，叫《爱的过程》。嗯，先说这个，我觉得你说得很有道理，就是有一句傻傻的话：“要如何吃掉一头大象？一次一口。”“要如何写一本书？一次写一句。”
Like, it's fine to just think in sentences and paragraphs and stories. You've got the big, giant thing. I mean, let alone, like, I want to be a writer, you know. So often you get blocked by the identity of that giant thing. And also, you know, the fact that most nowadays, you know, I mean, for a long time, if to be a writer is to write a certain kind of genre, the novel has hugely dominated our sense of what it means to be a writer. Yes. And also, not just the novel, but a certain kind of novel. A certain, still based on the 19th century narrative structure of characters in a realistic setting, where the narrative voice is essentially offstage. It's a kind of disembodied voice telling you what everybody's thinking. You don't really know who this person is, who this voice is, but it's kind of taking you through a story. Action over reflection, et cetera.
可以这样理解：在思考时，可以自然地用句子、段落和故事的形式思考。你有个宏大的想法在脑海中。更不用说，比如“我想成为一名作家”这样的念头。很多时候，你被那种宏大的、自我认同的概念阻碍了。而且，在当今，成为作家通常意味着要写某种特定类型的作品——长篇小说，这种想法长期以来极大地主导了我们对于“作家”意义的理解。不仅仅是小说，而是某种特定类型的小说：仍然基于19世纪叙事结构的小说，人物处于现实背景中，而叙述的声音则在幕后。这是一种无形的声音，告诉你每个人在想什么。你并不知道这个声音来自谁，但它引导你穿越整个故事，注重情节推进行动，而不是内心反思等等。
And I remember thinking, this is not for me. I don't like this kind of book. I mean, I kind of like it, but I don't love it. It's not dead on course. And it took me a while to discover certain kinds of books that I really liked. So, um, the Czech writer, Milan Kundera, who's extremely important for me, um, the book of laughter and forgetting, uh, and the unbearable likeness of being, and also his book, The Art of the Novel, immensely significant texts that seem to have an incredible freedom. Um, they were messing around with the rules. Um, he would tell a bit of a story, Kundera, and then stop and give you like a reflection on, you know, tonal music and Beethoven. And then there'd be another bit of narrative. And then there'd be a kind of reflection on three words, uh, from a dictionary. And you're thinking, wow, why not? And this opened up a whole horizon.
我记得当时心里想着，这种书不适合我。我不是很喜欢这样的书。我是说，我有点喜欢，但谈不上热爱。这不是我心目中的标准之作。过了很长一段时间，我才发现了一些我真正喜欢的书。捷克作家米兰·昆德拉，对我来说非常重要，他的《笑忘录》、《不能承受的生命之轻》以及《小说的艺术》，是极具意义的作品，这些书展现了不可思议的自由。他在书中打破常规。昆德拉会讲一点故事，然后突然停下来，给你一些关于音乐和贝多芬的思考，然后再继续叙述故事。有时他会对字典里的三个词进行反思，这让人惊叹地觉得，为什么不可以呢？这打开了全新的视野。
It's like a collage. Yeah. Yeah. In this, I was also really inspired by paintings and certain kind of modern artists. And I thought, you know, people like Joseph Cornell, Cy Twombly, um, Robert Rauschenberg, um, Agnes Martin, uh, Christo. These are all people who in different ways, in different media were messing it about and just, I don't know, it seemed to have a certain kind of sensibility. And, um, yeah. So, so that was, that was important. Um, and, and, you know, I ended up writing, I've ended up writing books that don't really quite fit. So I've written, uh, a couple of novels, as I said, Essays in Love and, um, The Course of Love, which are picking up from what, you know, very inspired by Kundera in the sense of a mixture of narrative and psychological analysis.
这就像一幅拼贴画。是的。在这方面，我真的受到了一些绘画作品和某些现代艺术家的启发。我想起了像约瑟夫·康奈尔、赛·托姆布雷、罗伯特·劳森伯格、艾格尼丝·马丁和克里斯托这样的人。他们在不同媒介中以不同的方式探索和尝试，我不知道，就是感觉他们有某种特别的感性。所以，这对我很重要。我最后写了一些不太合常规的书。我写了几部小说，比如《爱之随想》和《爱情的历程》，它们在某种程度上受到昆德拉的启发，将叙事与心理分析结合起来。
Um, and, and then I've written, I don't know, collages of things. I've written books that rely heavily on images. Um, I'm very interested in, uh, using pictures in intriguing ways so that the text and the picture are bouncing off each other. How do you think about what it means to live like a writer? You know, when you are a writer, so little of the work actually happens with your fingers pecking at a keyboard. So much of the work happens when you're thinking, whether you're in the shower, whether you're on a walk, whether you're traveling. Yeah. How do you think about that, which is actually the majority of the work in terms of time?
嗯，然后，我写过一些东西，像拼贴画一样。我还写过大量依赖图片的书。我对如何巧妙地运用图片非常感兴趣，使文字和图像能够相互碰撞。你怎么看待以作家的方式生活？你知道，当你是一个作家时，实际上很少有工作是在用手指敲击键盘中完成的。大部分工作发生在你思考的时候，无论是在洗澡时、散步时还是旅行时。这些思考其实占据了大部分时间，你怎么看待这样的工作方式？
Um, I think it's paradoxical. It, it, you know, it takes, it takes writers, it takes me a long time to realize, you know, if I'm not doing anything at nine o'clock in the morning on a Monday, when most sensible people are, you know, gearing up for really intense stuff, it doesn't matter. The, the really good work could be happening on a Sunday night at 4am. And, you know, real work, as you say, is feeling, thinking, and it may not happen in the standard places. So I was always like a good boy who wanted to be, you know, a dutiful member of society. And, and I think I've got to sit at my desk. I can't go to the park. But now I think, well, if the park is where you might think, go for it. If going on holiday is the place where you might think.
嗯，我觉得这有点矛盾。你知道，作家，包括我自己，都要很长时间才能意识到这一点，比如在周一早上九点，当大多数理智的人都在为繁重的工作做准备时，如果我没在做任何事情，其实也没关系。因为真正的好作品可能是在周日凌晨四点完成的。真正的工作正如你所说，是在于感受和思考，而不一定发生在标准的地方。我一直想做一个循规蹈矩的好孩子，想成为社会中尽职尽责的一员，所以觉得自己必须坐在书桌前，不能去公园。但是现在我觉得，如果在公园里能激发灵感，那就去吧。如果度假时能带来思考，就去度假。
Proust has this, Proust, by the way, who I love, Marcel Proust, the great French novelist, wrote this really weird book called In Search of Lost Time, which is, again, a mixture of essay, novel, and I don't know, disquisition on the meaning of life. It's a philosophy book, really. He mixed it all up. When he was talking about creativity, he said, if you want to recommend somebody to have insights into life, and you could give them a magical choice between meeting a great mind like Plato or Descartes for an evening, or going out, he's having sexist, heterosexual assumptions, with a woman who will make him suffer.
普鲁斯特在谈论创造力时提到，如果你想让某人对生活有所见解，可以给他们一个魔法般的选择：要么在晚上与像柏拉图或笛卡尔这样伟大的思想家见面，要么和一个会让他痛苦的女人约会。（这里存在性别歧视和异性恋的假设。）顺便说一下，我非常喜欢普鲁斯特——这位伟大的法国小说家马塞尔·普鲁斯特。他写了一本非常奇特的书，叫做《追忆似水年华》，它结合了散文、小说，甚至对于人生意义的探讨。其实，这本书可以说是一部哲学书，因为普鲁斯特将所有这些元素融合在了一起。
We know who that person should spend the evening with, the woman who will make him suffer. He had this particular view that suffering, come back to what we were talking about, pain, he had the view that suffering is the great catalyst of insight. And therefore, if you want to get some material, suffer. And we know this from music, right? Think of the break-up, the great break-up albums. Think of, you know, I don't know, Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks, that's a break-up album. Think of Phil Collins, Face Value, break-up albums. Great bits of music that emerge out of pop music, but also classical music. It's always break-up.
我们知道那个人应该和谁共度晚上，那位将让他经历痛苦的女人。他有这样一个特别的看法，就是痛苦能催生洞察力。我们之前谈到过，痛苦在他看来是洞察力的强大催化剂。因此，如果你想获得一些灵感，那就去经历痛苦吧。我们在音乐中也了解这一点，对吧？想想那些关于分手的经典专辑。比如说，鲍勃·迪伦的《Blood on the Tracks》，这是一个分手专辑。再比如，菲尔·柯林斯的《Face Value》，也是分手专辑。这些伟大的音乐作品不仅出现在流行音乐中，也出现在古典音乐中，很多都是在分手后产生的。
There's something about being, you know, torn apart that, you know, good writing is partly on the side of madness, death, dislocation, chaos, and just otherness. If things are going well for you, you unite with the world. You feel kinship with the way things are. You're not a rebel or a revolutionary or a tragic figure. You quite like the way the world is because it's doing good things for you. Right. But when you're desperate, you want to kill yourself. You want to jump out of the window. You want to, I'm just being autobiographical. You, you know, you're not on the side of, you're run, you're reading life against the grain.
有时候，当你感到心碎或被撕裂时，优秀的写作往往带有疯狂、死亡、错位、混乱和异质的元素。如果你的生活一切顺利，你就会与世界融为一体，感受到对现状的亲近感。你不会是一个叛逆者、革命家或者悲剧人物，因为世界对你来说充满了美好。但是，当你感到绝望时，你可能会有轻生的念头，想从窗户跳出去。这些是我个人的经历。那时候，你觉得自己不属于现有的秩序，而是与生活对着干。
And in those moods, you're more likely to kind of find the great truths that are outside of the normal, satisfied, smug perfume. Well, let me add one thing to that. I also think that there are the places where reason disappears. And when reason disappears and sort of the, the, the emotion or almost the animal within us takes over, we often, I mean, we escape preconceived language, right? Like if you get really mad at someone, like you're just freaking angry and you're yelling at them, you will say things that you've never said before that you've been feeling that have been deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep down that all of a sudden have come out.
在这些心情下，你更有可能发现那些超越常规、满足和自我陶醉的伟大真理。我想再补充一点，在某些时候理智也会消失。当理智消失时，我们内心的情绪甚至动物性本能会占上风。比如当你对某人非常生气时，你可能会大发雷霆，对他们大喊大叫。这时，你会说出一些自己从未说过的话，这些话可能一直埋藏在内心深处，现在突然冒了出来。
And a lot of when writing feels trite or contrived, it's because you're kind of rearranging other words and thoughts that other people have given you or that you've kind of had in the past. And in suffering and in anger and in sadness and grief, it's the times when the way that we've always done things or conventional wisdom, whatever it is, just sort of disappears and boom, like the animal within us comes out. That's right. In a way, you kind of have to have nothing left to lose. You don't give a shit anymore.
当写作感到陈词滥调或显得做作时，通常是因为你在重新组合别人给出的词语和想法，或者是你过去曾有的想法。而在痛苦、愤怒、悲伤和悲痛中，通常是那些我们一直以来习以为常的方式或传统智慧消失的时候，我们内心的动物性会突然爆发出来。没错，某种程度上，你需要达到一种无所顾忌的状态，因为你不再在乎任何事情。
You say, fuck this. And you just, and you're just there. You're there with certain truths. And because you've, you've given up lying, deceiving or sentimental reassurance, et cetera. And so there is, you know, the great works of literature do often have a relationship to desperation in some way that there is, which could be, could be driven by death. You know, the, again, the sense of like your time's coming up now, you know, you've got anything left to say, you know, is there something you still want to tell us something that you didn't dare before, you know, it's, yeah. Good thinking is, someone says, right? Good thinking is good feeling. But what good feeling is, is, is not caring to subscribe to the kind of normal bromides that, that we live by.
你会说，去他的。然后你就在那里。你在那里面对某些真相。因为你已经不再撒谎、欺骗或寻求感伤的安慰。因此，文学中的伟大作品通常与某种程度的绝望有关系，而这可能是由死亡驱动的。就是那种“你的时间快到了，你还有什么想说的吗？有什么是你以前不敢说出来的吗？”这样的感觉。有人说，好的思考就是好的感受。但这所谓的好感受，就是不再在乎我们日常生活中那种普遍的陈腔滥调。
Well, it hit me the other day, actually, as I was preparing for this, that, you know, sometimes you'll read somebody's writing and be like, wow, I really want to write like that. And then you realize that actually, you can't just write like that. In order to write like that, you have to think like that. In order to think like that, you have to live like that. Live like that. And actually, that's where it begins. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And, you know, look, there are certain kind of cliched images of the writer in a black cape escaping bourgeois society, et cetera. We're not talking necessarily these kind of cliches. You could be wearing a T-shirt from wherever. It's not, it's not the outward signs. It's, it's where your soul is.
好吧，实际上，就在我为此做准备的那天，我突然意识到，有时你会读到某人的作品，然后感叹，哇，我真希望自己能像他们那样写作。然后你会意识到，其实你不能仅仅通过模仿写出那样的作品。要写出那样的作品，你必须要像他们那样思考；要像他们那样思考，你必须要像他们那样生活。其实，这一切都是从生活方式开始的。没错，就是这样。而且，你知道的，有一些关于作家的刻板印象，比如身披黑斗篷逃离资产阶级社会等等。但我们不一定是在谈论这些陈词滥调。你可能穿着某个地方的T恤，这不是关键。关键是你的内心世界在哪里。
I also think, you know, writing is an act of communication between the people. And if your communication is just brilliant with the people around you and in your life, what's the point of writing? You know, loneliness, loneliness of experience is also absolutely key. A sense that no one understands. A lot of writing begins with a sense no one around me understands. I mean, if we think about it, what is writing? It's, you know, Socrates is quite good on this. Socrates' view was, you know, we shouldn't write books because books are, books are born out of a despair at intra-human communication. And he optimistically thought that, you know, the way to do writing, the way to do philosophy was not to write it down, but to get a group of people in a dialogue. Look, that's what you should do. And, you know, he was perhaps living at a time when living in a small, amazing city at a golden age. You know, you could have those conversations.
我认为，写作是一种人与人之间的交流。如果你的交流已经在你周围的人中进行得很出色，那写作的意义又在哪里呢？孤独的体验也是绝对重要的，这种无人理解的感觉是许多写作的起点。很多写作是从“没有人理解我”这种感觉开始的。想想看，写作究竟是什么呢？苏格拉底对此有一些见解。他认为，我们不应该写书，因为书籍源于对人际交流的绝望。他乐观地认为，我们应该通过对话进行写作和哲学思考，而不是把它写下来。在他所处的时代，可能是在一个辉煌时期的小城市里，能够进行那样的对话。
But for many of us, we can't have conversations. So we become writers because no one's listening and no one's speaking properly. And so there's that basic kind of, you know, Freud has this word sublimation to describe the origins of artistic activity. It's like the artist sublimates. The artist is faced with a particularly acute version of all the dilemmas that afflict people. The conflict between duty and pleasure, the conflict between life and death, between money and creativity, you know, all these conflicts. But Freud saw the artist as especially disturbed and compromised by them. And the artistic work arising as a way of reconciling fantasy and reality. It's like the world can't be as you'd wish it to be. One option is to kill yourself or go mad. And the other option is to create a work of art.
对许多人来说，我们无法顺畅地交谈。因此，我们成了作家，因为没有人倾听，也没有人好好地表达。因此，有一种基本的东西存在。弗洛伊德用“升华”这个词来描述艺术活动的起源。这就像是艺术家的升华。艺术家面临着一种特别尖锐的困境，这种困境是所有人都会遇到的，比如责任与享乐的冲突、生命与死亡的冲突、金钱与创造力之间的冲突等等。但弗洛伊德认为艺术家在这些冲突中尤其容易受到影响和妥协。艺术作品因此而生，成为一种调和幻想与现实的方法。就像是世界不能如你所愿，有一个选项是结束自己的生命或陷入疯狂，而另一个选项则是创作一部艺术作品。
So the work of art is like the best thing you can do with your dislocation and distress. It is an alternative to, as it were, in a broad sense, losing your mind. You're focusing your mind when it's complete loss and disintegration is in the air. Yeah, you have me thinking about pleasure and pain and how sometimes in a moment when things, when I'm riding high, it's like, wow, we get to live in this world. And there's so many different things that we can explore and people we get to meet and places we get to go. It's all so vast and infinite and magical. And then in the moments of pain and there's just a tragedy of it all. It's like you get this one life and you're stuck on this dang thing. And how am I going to cope with this?
所以，艺术作品就像是你在迷茫和痛苦中能做的最好的事情。它在某种广义上是避免失去理智的一种选择。当一切似乎要崩溃瓦解时，创作让你专注于自己的内心。是的，你让我想到了快乐与痛苦，以及有时在得意时刻的感受。比如，当我情绪高涨时，我会惊叹：哇，我们能够生活在这个世界上。有这么多不同的事物可以探索，还有这么多人可以结识，很多地方可以去，一切都如此广阔无垠，充满魔力。然而，在痛苦的时刻，一切又充满了悲剧。人生只有一次，而你被困在这条悲伤的长路上，那么我该如何应对呢？
Right, right, sure. And I mean, you know, almost every life, let's just say every life, has moments of severe distress. I mean, you'd have to be extremely unimaginative not to quite regularly run into, or just very lucky to not to regularly run into quite a lot of distress. I mean, if you think about, you know, here we are living in the privileged West, so we're not even talking about, you know, some of the more egregious events that can come from the outside. We're just talking about, you know, life in a relatively peaceful, relatively prosperous, well-ordered society, which already is an amazing achievement. You're going to hit so many problems. Someone you love will not love you, first big problem you're going to hit. Or someone's going to love you, but not in the way that feels right.
好的，好的，当然。我是说，你知道的，几乎每个人的一生中——我们就说每个人吧——都有极度痛苦的时刻。我的意思是，如果一个人没有经常遇到这些情况，那要么就是缺乏想象力，要么就是非常幸运。我是说，想想我们生活在发达的西方社会，甚至不是在谈论那些更极端的外部事件。我们只是在讨论生活在一个相对和平、相对繁荣、秩序良好的社会中，要达到这样的成就已经很了不起了。但即便如此，你还是会遇到很多问题。比方说，你爱的人不爱你，这是你会遇到的第一个大问题。或者有人爱你，但不是你想要的方式。
Or there's going to be a conflict between two people, or someone's going to betray you, et cetera. So, you know, already welcome to, you know, eons of suffering. Then there's going to be a difficulty somewhere along the line between your sense of who you are, how you want to be seen, and how others see you. You know, you will be misheard, misrepresented, et cetera. There's going to be, then there's going to be a conflict around money and status and achievement. There's going to be something about a pull between money's here, but fame is there, happiness is there, respectability, whatever, some kind of conflict.
或者两个人之间会发生冲突，或者有人会背叛你等等。因此，你知道，欢迎来到无尽的痛苦。然后，在你的自我认知、希望被人看待的方式和他人看待你的方式之间，某个地方会出现困难。你知道的，你会被误解，被曲解等等。接下来，还会在金钱、地位和成就方面发生冲突。可能会在金钱、名声、幸福、声望等之间产生某种矛盾。
So, already before knowing anything about someone, you could look at a baby in their cradle, and you think, the person's going to hit these walls. And that's before anything major has gone wrong. And, you know, talk to anyone over, well, say anyone over 30, anyone over 40, definitely anyone over 50. You know, you're going to find evidence of these incredible scars. And it's from this that I think is born our receptivity to the arts. I mean, if you look at Van Gogh's irises, the man was in pieces. The man was suffering like, you know, a religious saint. He was a very, very unhappy man, poor thing. He was lonely.
在你对一个人一无所知的时候，你可以看看摇篮中的婴儿，心想，这个人可能会遇到这些障碍。而这是在任何重大问题出现之前。你知道的，和任何超过30岁的人交谈，或者超过40岁的人，尤其是超过50岁的人交谈，你会发现他们身上有这些不可思议的伤痕。我认为这就是我们对艺术产生共鸣的原因。如果你看看梵高的鸢尾花，这个男人心碎了，受苦得像个宗教圣人。可怜的人，他是一个非常不幸福的人，他很孤独。
He was desperate. He was misunderstood. He ached for love. He was just so alone. It sounds crazy. Vincent van Gogh, one of the most famous people of the 19th century, was absolutely abject and desperate. And when he looks at flowers, he's not just telling you about a flower. He's telling you about a flower seen through the lens of agony. And when you look at beauty through the lens of agony, it becomes something slightly different. It becomes a life raft. Like, the guy's not just painting a flower. He's painting, like, a last reason to live. And, you know, in the end, he didn't make it.
他很绝望。他被误解了。他渴望爱。他感到无比孤独。听起来很疯狂。文森特·梵高，19世纪最著名的人物之一，却是如此悲惨和绝望。当他看着花儿时，他不仅仅是在描绘一朵花，而是通过痛苦的视角来看待花朵。当你通过痛苦的视角看待美时，它就会变得略有不同。它变成了一种救生之舟。就像，这个人不只是在画一朵花，他是在绘画一种继续活下去的最后理由。可惜，最终他没有坚持下去。
But, you know, and that's what lends the kind of poignancy. So some of the most beautiful things that humans have created have been born out of a kind of negotiation with something appalling. Yeah, it's really, you know, it's easy to think, wow, I want to produce something beautiful. But the image that came to mind as you were talking is like two sides of a rubber band. It's like as you stretch the pain on one side, you almost get the beauty on the other side. And it's quite hard to create something that's truly beautiful and astonishing. It's almost as if it requires a kind of sacrifice, not just a sacrifice in work ethic, but a sacrifice in terms of what we've been through in order to get there or something.
你知道，这就是赋予某种特殊情感的原因。因此，人类创造的一些最美丽的事物，往往是在与一些可怕的东西博弈中诞生的。是的，真的，很容易产生“哇，我想创造出一些美丽的东西”这样的想法。但当你说话时，我脑海中浮现的画面就像橡皮筋的两端。当你拉伸痛苦的一侧时，几乎就能在另一侧获得美丽。创造出真正美丽和惊人的事物是相当困难的。这几乎就像是需要某种牺牲，不仅仅是在工作态度上的牺牲，还包括为了到达那个状态，我们所经历过的牺牲或磨难。
But, you know, again, let's not go and hunt out that stuff. It'll come to you. It'll come to you. Just sit still. But anyone who's sitting there going, oh, when's that great suffering? Just like, you know, don't worry. That's a good catch. That's a good catch. You know, Agnes Martin. Do you know the painter Agnes Martin? Abstract artist. Amazing. She just does lines across abstract things. And I read about her life. Her life is so full of pain. She had a kind of psychiatric disorder.
但是，你知道的，我是说，我们不用去刻意寻找那些东西。它会自己来的。它会自己来的。你只需要静静地等待。但是如果有人在那里想，“哦，那巨大的痛苦什么时候来呢？”只要别担心。没关系。这个心态是对的。你知道阿格尼斯·马丁吗？你知道那位画家阿格尼斯·马丁吗？一位了不起的抽象艺术家。她只在抽象物品上画一些线条。我读过她的生平。她的一生充满了痛苦。她有一种精神障碍。
She lived in New Mexico on her own. And she just makes these beautiful regular canvases that are just trying to hold on to basic order and stability in a chaotic world. And they're so moving, again, because you sense the opposite of what the painting is. It's like those beautiful flowers of Van Gogh. You know that there's something opposed to that, as you say, the rubber band, the other side of it. Tell me about things that you love and hate. Because what you said that I thought was so beautiful is that you're not just inspired by beauty and wisdom, but also inspired by ugliness and cruelty.
她独自在新墨西哥生活，她创作出这些美丽而规整的画布，试图在一个混乱的世界中保持基本的秩序和稳定。它们之所以如此感人，是因为你能感受到画作背后的对比，就像梵高的那些美丽花卉一样。你知道在这些美丽背后隐藏着相对的东西，就像你所说的橡皮筋的另一面。请讲讲你爱和恨的事物。因为我觉得你说得很美妙，你不仅被美丽和智慧激励，也同样被丑陋和残酷所激发。
Yeah. I'd never heard somebody say that before. I mean, let's just think of the visual. London, a city where we're in, has got some really ugly parts, like all big cities, like all modern cities. And why are they so ugly? What on earth has gone wrong? Like, how can humans build beautifully in one place and time? And then when the world's even richer and more resources, they suddenly build in a really ugly way. What is going on? It's in a visual form, a translation of the kind of dumbness of the human animal. And it enraged me.
是啊，我从来没有听人这样说过。想象一下这个画面。伦敦这座城市，像所有大城市和现代城市一样，有一些非常丑陋的地方。为什么会这么丑？到底出了什么问题？为什么人类在某个时间和地点可以建造得如此美丽，而当世界变得更富有、资源更丰富时，却突然建得如此丑陋？这是怎么回事？这是一种对人类愚蠢的视觉化表达，让我感到非常愤怒。
And I wrote a book called The Architecture of Happiness, which was an attempt to think about buildings. But it was born living in a horrible part of London, not a beautiful part of London. If I'd lived in a beautiful city, I mean, London is beautiful in parts, but small parts. It was an ugly part of London. And I wrote it because I couldn't bear the circumstances in which I was living. And I just thought, oh, this is so unnecessary. So that kind of got me going. But that's a visual example. And there are psychological examples, too. So, you know, mean-mindedness, sentimentality, cruelty, humiliation, these things I want to protest against.
我写了一本书，名叫《幸福的建筑》，这本书是尝试去思考建筑的意义。但这个想法是源于我生活在伦敦一个很糟糕的地方，而不是一个美丽的地方。如果我住在一个美丽的城市——当然，伦敦有一些地方是很美的，但只是很小的一部分。我生活的地方很丑陋，我写这本书是因为我无法忍受我所生活的环境，我只是觉得，这些丑陋都是完全不必要的。就是这种感觉推动了我。不过这只是个视觉例子，还有心理上的例子。比如说，狭隘、小题大做、残酷、羞辱这些事情，我也想要抗议。
I want to make a stand against. I want to get revenge against. A lot of writing is about revenge. Let's face it. It's about revenge. What do I mean by revenge? You know, the silenced person who gets to have their say on the page. I mean, you know, a lot of writers are quite meek in person. You meet them and you think, oh, they wouldn't hurt a fly. And you pick up the text. Wow. You know, they're doing it because they're not so good at, you know, hitting back on in life. But they're very, you know, it all comes out on the page. So, there are people who don't believe in you. There are people who don't understand you. There are people who trample on you, etc. And to say, here's a book, you know. Look at who books are dedicated to. They're fascinating. It's not just the loved ones. It's often the hated ones. The ones who didn't believe, etc. So, yeah. Writing is revenge.
我想要抗争。我想要复仇。写作有很大一部分是在讲复仇。面对现实吧，这的确是关于复仇。我所说的复仇是什么呢？你知道，就是那些曾经被压抑的人，终于可以在纸上发声。很多作家本人看起来都很温和，你见到他们时可能会觉得，他们连只苍蝇都不会伤害。但当你读他们的作品时，哇，你发现他们在写作中尽情表达，因为他们在生活中可能不太擅长反击，但在文字中，他们可以畅所欲言。
世上有些人不相信你，不理解你，甚至践踏你。而你可以通过一本书来发声，书籍的致谢页是非常有趣的，书不仅仅献给我们所爱的人，也常常献给那些我们憎恨、不相信我们的人。所以，是的，写作就是一种复仇。
Writing is cure. Writing as memorial. You know, all these, lots of different headings. We could write about what writing is. What's so cool about the written word is that it is, I think, the closest, the way that we can best translate our consciousness, state of sort of what's going on. And one of the things that I found particularly interesting about your process is that sometimes at the end of the day, you'll kind of come home and you'll download thoughts and ideas. And I had this image of, like, the different levels of consciousness. There's like, hey, what do you think about right now? Hey, what did you think about today? But over time, as you kind of just sit there in stillness and you just jot down ideas, you realize there's all these layers and the first thoughts that we have when somebody asks, what are we thinking about, actually, often doesn't even capture the core thing that we are thinking about.
写作是一种疗愈。写作作为纪念。你知道，这些都是不同的主题。我们可以写关于写作是什么。写作的魅力在于，它是我们能够最好地将意识、当前状态翻译出来的方式。我发现你写作过程中一个特别有趣的地方是，有时一天结束后，你会回家，把各种想法和点子“下载”下来。我想到不同意识层次的画面，比如现在你在想什么？今天你在想什么？但随着时间的推移，当你静下来记录这些想法时，你会意识到有很多层次。其实，当有人问我们在想什么时，最初的想法往往并不能捕捉到我们真正思考的核心。
I mean, you know, it's not just words that do this. Music, obviously, musical notes. Absolutely do it. Arguably, if you said to people, you know, would you rather have an amazing facility at music or at words, I want to say that most of us would choose music. There is something extraordinarily direct. You know, music is the motions of the soul with the minimal intervention, you know, which is why music speaks across the ages, speaks across cultures, etc. It is the language of the soul and therefore has this extraordinary power. You know, would you rather have written Hey Jude or, you know, War and Peace? You want Hey Jude. Of course you want Hey Jude, in a way. Don't you think? I don't know. We're trying this out. We're trying this out.
我的意思是，你知道，不仅仅是语言能够做到这一点。音乐，显然，乐谱也绝对可以做到这一点。可以说，如果你问人们，他们更想在音乐上有非凡的才华还是在语言上，大多数人会选择音乐。音乐有一种特别直接的力量，你知道，它是心灵的律动，几乎没有任何干扰。这就是为什么音乐能穿越时间，跨越文化，与各个时代和文化对话。音乐是灵魂的语言，因此拥有非凡的力量。你知道，你会更愿意创作《Hey Jude》还是写出《战争与和平》？你可能会想要《Hey Jude》。当然，你可能会想要《Hey Jude》，对吧？我也不确定。我们只是尝试一下这个想法。
Yeah, I don't know. That's an interesting conversation. And, you know, to some extent, also the visual language, the language of painting, again, to translate the movements of the soul into a visual. Wow. Would you have rather painted the Sistine Chapel, written Hey Jude, or written War and Peace? I don't know. That'd be a fun bar conversation. Yeah, that would be, wouldn't it? That would be. I mean, Sistine Chapel doesn't do it for me, but there are other paintings. Van Gogh's Irises. Yeah. I mean, because I can do writing, I'm naturally attracted to doing something I can't do. So I do envy the songmakers and the artists. But maybe if I was a songmaker or an artist, I admire the writers. Yeah.
嗯，我不知道。这是个很有趣的对话。而且，在某种程度上，说到视觉语言或绘画语言，把灵魂的运动转化为视觉，真是太神奇了。你会更愿意画西斯廷教堂的壁画，写《Hey Jude》，还是写《战争与和平》呢？我不知道。这是个很适合在酒吧聊的话题。是啊，是不是？确实是这样。我对西斯廷教堂没什么特别感觉，但有一些别的画，比如梵高的《鸢尾花》。是啊，因为我会写作，所以我自然而然地被我无法做到的事情所吸引。我确实羡慕那些创作歌曲和艺术的人。但如果我是一名音乐创作者或艺术家，也许我会欣赏作家。
So I don't know. I guess when it comes to writing, the reason I say that point about consciousness is like when I read David Foster Wallace, I feel like I'm putting on his glasses and stepping into his brain in a way that no other medium can quite do. Now a painting can show me how somebody is seeing something. Music can make me feel something deeply into writing. I can feel what the contents of their soul. But writing is unique for the contents of the mind. Look, we need all of these things. We need all these things. I mean, you know, remember this line in Flaubert where he says we're all mute bears banging desperately on a drum as we look at the beauty of the stars.
所以我不知道。我想说到写作，我提到意识这一点的原因是，当我读大卫·福斯特·华莱士的作品时，我感觉自己仿佛戴上了他的眼镜、走进了他的脑海，这是其他任何媒介都无法做到的。画作可以让我看到某人如何看待事物，音乐可以让我深深地感受到某种情感，而通过写作，我可以体会到他们内心的深处。但写作在于展现思想的内核是独特的。我们需要所有这些东西。我们真的需要它们。我是说，你知道，记得福楼拜的一句话，他说我们就像哑巴的熊，在看着星星的美丽时绝望地敲打着鼓。
In other words, we're this kind of trapped, caged animal that's just like aware of living in the universe. And we don't know what to do other than mutely like bang our fists against this drum. And it's this image of inarticulacy. I mean, all of us go to our graves with most of our experience still locked inside us. You know, when somebody dies, it's not just their physical form that dies. It's millions and billions of impressions of thoughts, of sensations, et cetera, that have evaporated. You know, as every brain switches off, an enormous memory is just deleted. And every now and then, it's what we call the history of culture. A few things are rescued from this burning library.
换句话说，我们就像被困住、被关在笼子里的动物，只是意识到自己生活在宇宙中。而除了默默地用拳头敲击这面鼓外，我们不知道还能做些什么。这种形象表现了无法表达的感受。其实，我们每个人走向坟墓时，都带着大部分未曾表达的经历。当一个人去世时，不仅仅是他们的身体消逝，还有数百万亿的想法、感觉等印象也随之消逝。每当一个大脑停止运作时，就有一大段记忆被彻底删除。而偶尔，我们所说的文化历史，就是从这座燃烧的图书馆中拯救出的少数几件事物。
Think of every person as like a library containing millions of books that are tipped into the ocean. And every now and then, just as those books are cascading down into the sea, someone rescues one book or two or three or four. And we get a little fragmentary impression of what it was like for that person to think. But this is a fraction. I mean, just think of the history of culture, not just as, you know, think of all the books in the world and think that those books are a fragment of what humans have actually thought and felt.
想象每个人就像一个图书馆，里面有上百万本书被倾倒进大海。偶尔，在这些书涌入海中的时候，有人救起了一本、两本、三本或者四本书。于是，我们对这个人的思维有了一点片段式的印象。但是这只是一小部分。想想整个文化历史，不仅仅是所有的这些书，而是那些书只是人类实际思考和感受的一个片段。
And then you're starting to get a sense of the scale of mental activity, of which these people we call artists are only just, you know, it's just a few extracts from that unwritten story. So writers are writing the story that most humans have no time or inclination to write for themselves. You know, they're just, they're the scribes of humanity's thoughts, not just their own thoughts, but humanity's thoughts more generally.
然后你开始感受到心理活动的规模，在这其中，我们称为艺术家的这些人只是未写故事中的几个片段。作家们正在撰写这个故事，而大多数人没有时间或兴趣为自己写。可以说，他们是记录人类思想的书写者，不仅仅是他们自己的思想，而是更广泛意义上的人类思想。
Which is, to come back to that other thing I was saying, you know, why people will say to me or other writers, that was my life you were describing. That was my thought that, you know, that you had for me or with me. And that's just because we bathe in this much wider community of thoughts that's wider than the common sense thoughts. There's a lovely quote from Emerson where he says, in the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts.
回到我之前提到的那个问题，为什么有人会对我或其他作者说：“你写的就是我的生活，你描绘的就是我的想法，为我或者和我产生的共鸣。” 这是因为我们沐浴在一个比常识更广泛的思想社区中。爱默生有一句优美的话，他说：“在天才的心灵中，我们找到了自己被忽视的想法。”
In the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts. In other words, geniuses do not have thoughts that are fundamentally different from other people. What they do have is a kind of fidelity to the more neglected thoughts, the thoughts that are not mentioned in the parlor, as it were, that are not brought up at the dinner table, but that are inside everybody. And that are neglected through habit, embarrassment, shame, status seeking, whatever it is that gets in the way of a more honest dialogue.
在天才的思维中，我们发现了自己被忽视的想法。换句话说，天才并不是拥有与普通人截然不同的想法。他们所具备的是对那些更被忽略的想法的一种坚持。那些想法虽然常常不在客厅里被提起，也不会在餐桌上讨论，但其实存在于每个人心中。因为习惯、尴尬、羞耻、追求地位等各种原因，这些想法被忽视，妨碍了更诚实的对话。
How much of your experience as a writer has been about a kind of discipline where you sit down, you do the work, you show up, I sit down at 9am, the inspiration comes and finds me versus something where you're channeling something from beyond you. It's like the proverbial example of sailing, isn't it? You've got to be with your ship and you've got to have the sail and you've got to have the sail out and you're hoping for a prevailing wind. Right.
作为一名作家，你的经验中有多少是关于一种纪律的，也就是说你坐下来，投入工作，按时到场，比如我早上9点坐下来，然后灵感就会出现？还有多少是关于从某种超越你自己的地方获取灵感？这就像一个常用的航海比喻，你必须和你的船在一起，你要有帆，而且你必须把帆升起来，然后你期待着有利的风。对吧？
Yes. But you need that wind. That's a good analogy. You need to be out. You need to be out on the lake with your boat. That's a good analogy. You know, you're there with your butterfly net. You've got to be there with the butterfly. Occasionally, a butterfly may fly into it. You've got to be there with the net. Otherwise, you're not going to catch it. But what does that actually mean? What does it mean to be out on the lake or to be with the butterfly net?
是的，但你需要那阵风。这是一个很好的比喻。你需要在湖上航行，你需要在湖面上和你的船一起。这是一个很好的比喻。你知道的，就像拿着蝴蝶网在那儿，你必须在那里等待蝴蝶。有时候，蝴蝶可能会飞进网里，但你必须在那里拿着网。否则，你就抓不到它。但这实际上意味着什么呢？在湖上航行或者拿着蝴蝶网等待，又代表着什么呢？
Does it mean you need to be at your desk at 9 o'clock? You know, I don't know. I mean, you've got to have your brain switched on. You've got to be attentive to your own sensations and thoughts. That's the real work. Attentive to your own sensations and thoughts. Sure. So, you know, if you're scrolling endlessly on your phone, you're lost. Your mind is not with you.
这是否意味着你需要在九点钟坐在办公桌前呢？其实，我也不太确定。你的大脑需要保持清醒，你需要专注于自己的感受和思维——这才是真正的工作。专注于自己的感受和思维。所以，如果你一直在手机上无休止地刷屏，那你就迷失了，你的心思不在当下。
I love that. So I've been doing this thing where at the end of the day, I'll just sit down for 20, 30 minutes and I just use this index card. I'll just try to fill the index card with just attentive to my own sensations and thoughts. I love that turn of phrase. And I am just mystified and blown away by how many sensations and thoughts there are that I just do not realize. Most of which have no substance, but some of which really do.
我非常喜欢这样。所以我最近开始养成一个习惯：在一天结束时，我会坐下来二三十分钟，只用一张索引卡片。我会尽量把卡片写满，专注于自己的感觉和想法。我非常喜欢这个表达方式。我对于自己居然会有如此多未能察觉到的感觉和想法感到惊奇和震撼。大多数都是没有实质的，但其中一些是真正有意义的。
But I do not realize in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. That's right. So we would need, you know, all of us hours to process minutes to really pay attention to what's going on in a minute. Yeah. And of course, you know, the human kind of perceptual mechanism is purposefully dampened down. There's a quote from George Eliot where she says something like, if we were truly attentive to the mystery and complexity of things, we would hear the squirrel's heartbeat.
但在日常生活的忙碌中，我没有意识到这一点。没错。所以我们所有人需要花费数小时去处理几分钟，以真正注意在每一分钟中发生的事情。当然，人类的感知机制是有意被削弱的。乔治·艾略特有句名言，说如果我们真的留意到事物的神秘与复杂，我们甚至能听到松鼠的心跳。
And we would hear the grass grow. And we would, paraphrasing it badly, something like we go mad from the multiplicity of things. We would lose our minds. But the key thing is we would hear the squirrel's heartbeat and we would hear the grass grow. In other words, what she's saying there is you're hearing it anyway, but you repress it. To use Freudian language, you repress it. These things are in you, but you haven't paid them attention because to be alive to their resonance is to, would be to kind of lose yourself.
我们会听到青草生长的声音，也会，简单地说，就像因为事物过多而变得疯狂一样，我们会失去理智。但关键是，我们能够听到松鼠的心跳声，能听到青草生长的声音。换句话说，她在说你其实一直在听，只不过你把它压抑了。用弗洛伊德的语言来说，就是你压抑了这些东西。它们存在于你体内，只是你没有注意到它们，因为如果你对这些声音保持敏感，你可能会迷失自己。
Yeah. And so in order to speak to you now, I'm having to push away so many thoughts. Every time I create a sentence, I'm sacrificing other sentences in the name of trying to sound logical. But I'm dimly aware as we sit here and speak that I'm thinking also of other things, things I'm going to do later, things that have happened. Things that whatever. And they're just like, but because I'm not yet mad or senile, I will go mad, will go senile probably at some point, but not yet. I'm still able to maintain a kind of coherent, more or less coherent narrative so that we're speaking. But, you know, as I'm sure, is it going on in your mind? There's things going on, many things going on in the mind. I'm mystified by the history of this room and all the things that have happened. Right, right. All of these things.
好的，所以为了现在能和你交谈，我得努力排开许多思绪。每当我构建一个句子时，我就得舍弃其他句子，以便听起来更有逻辑。不过当我们坐在这里交谈时，我朦胧地意识到自己也在想着其他事情，比如我等会儿要做的事情，或者已经发生过的事情，等等。然而，因为我还没有到精神错乱或老年痴呆的地步——或许有一天会变成那样，但至少现在还没有——我仍然能够维持一种比较连贯的叙述，所以我们才能聊天。但你知道的，我相信你的脑海中也在发生着很多事情。这个房间的历史和这里曾经发生过的那些事情让我感到困惑。没错，就是这些事情。
And our minds are such rich instruments. I can look at you and I'm also partly looking at those books and thinking about those books and the shape of their spines, et cetera. But it's almost as though there's some kind of triage system in our minds, which has evolved, obviously, over thousands of years of evolution. It's like, what's important now? And our minds are very good at going, right, this is what's important now. So I'm going to sacrifice other things. I'm not going to look at that. You know, this is what makes, you know, very old people or mad people or small children.
我们的思维工具非常丰富。当我看着你时，我同时也在用一部分注意力看那些书，想着那些书和它们书脊的形状等等。但就好像我们的思维中有一种排序系统，这是经过数千年进化发展出来的。这个系统会决定现在什么是重要的，我们的头脑非常擅长判断什么是当前重要的，然后舍弃其他东西，比如不去看那些不重要的东西。这正是为什么一些非常老的人、精神错乱的人或小孩会有不一样的表现。
This is what makes them fascinating but also maddening to talk to is that they can't keep a coherent thread. So you'll say to the child, you know, what have you been doing in the garden? And it'll say, I've been playing. And then it'll go, table. And you think, oh, hang on. What did you do in the garden? And they'll forget because they'll be suddenly seized by. So they can't triage their thoughts. Now, good art, a good artist, a good writer, is someone who's borrowing from the art of triaging, I'm putting inverted commas, badly. In other words, they are triaging not according to the standard sense of, like, what's important, but according to a more diffuse, pretty associative sense.
这就是为什么和他们交谈既让人感到有趣又令人抓狂的原因：他们无法保持连贯的思路。当你问孩子，你在花园里做了什么？他们会回答，我在玩。接着他们会突然说，桌子。你会想，哦，等一下。你在花园里做了什么？但他们会忘记，因为他们的思绪突然被打断，无法整理清楚。 而好的艺术、优秀的艺术家或作家，正是那些擅长“整理”想法的人，只不过他们整理得不那么“标准”。换句话说，他们不是按照通常的重要性来整理，而是更倾向于一种分散的、富有联想的方式。
They're going outside the normal bounds. You know, you mentioned David Foster Wallace. If you said to David Foster Wallace, go on a cruise ship, what are you noticing? You wouldn't go, I'm noticing that the bar's here. And he's like, no, I'm alive to other resonances that are outside the normal purview. And that's what all writers do. Yeah, I think that – so I had this experience, I've been in London, working on this documentary. And the first day, we were on the embankment on Waterloo Bridge for five hours. And you have this really interesting sensation. I was sort of responsible for holding this caution tape and making sure that all the walkers by – I mean, a few thousand over the course of however many hours would see and then wouldn't disrupt what's going on.
他们正在超出常规的边界。你知道，你提到了大卫·福斯特·华莱士。如果你对大卫·福斯特·华莱士说，去一艘游轮上，你注意到了什么？他不会回答：“我注意到了酒吧在这。” 而是说，不，我感知到了其他在常规视角之外的共鸣。这就是所有作家所做的事情。是的，我认为——所以我有过这样的经历，我一直在伦敦，为这个纪录片工作。第一天，我们在滑铁卢大桥的堤岸上待了五个小时。你会有一种非常有趣的感觉。我负责握着警示带，确保所有路过的行人——在这几个小时内可能有几千人——注意到这个区域，但不会打扰到正在发生的事情。
And if you look at these people, no one is looking at the embankment. No one is looking at the buildings around them. Everyone's just going from point A to point B. But then you sit there and you just look and you just stare at the same thing for six hours. And all these things come alive. You realize all these subtleties in the architecture, in how the sun changes the buildings. And you just realize, oh my goodness, I've never actually looked at what's going on. And I think that that's a lot of what writing is, is you're almost like taking handcuffs to an idea and you're just tethering yourself to that idea.
如果你观察这些人，没有人注意堤岸，没有人注意周围的建筑。每个人都只是从A点走到B点。但是当你坐在那里，看着同一个东西凝视六小时时，所有这些事物都会活起来。你会发现建筑中的细微差别，发现阳光如何改变建筑的外观。然后你意识到，天哪，我从来没有真正注意过发生了什么。我认为写作就是这样，你几乎像给一个想法戴上手铐，然后把自己紧紧拴在那个想法上。
And you're just forcing yourself to look. Painting is the same way. And I'm continually mesmerized by all the things that I didn't see in hour one, hour two, hour three that begin to reveal themselves. And then you share that with other people. They're like, how do you see so deeply? You're like, no, no, no. I just looked at it for longer than you did. That's right. That's right. And again, small children are a guide to this. I mean, anyone who's taken a small child to the park will know how this works.
你只是强迫自己去看。绘画也是一样。我总是被那些在第一小时、第二小时、第三小时没有看到的东西所吸引，它们开始慢慢展现出来。然后，你把这些分享给别人。他们会问：“你怎么看得这么深入？”你会说：“不是的，不是的。我只是比你多花了一些时间去看。”没错，没错。同时，小孩子是这方面的指南。不管是谁，带小孩子去公园的人都会明白这是怎么回事。
So you as the adult, they're like, right, we're going to the park. And the child's like, hang on. I don't care about the park. I'm just like waking up to the mysteries of existence. So I've just seen a brick wall and I want to run my hand along the mortar of that wall. Or there's a bit of moss and I just want to like stroke my cheek against it. And you're thinking, okay, well, that's their priority. And the artist is a little bit like that. The artist is somebody who everybody's going to go to the park and they're going, actually, I've just been detained by something a little unusual.
作为成年人，你可能会说：“好，我们要去公园了。”而孩子却可能会说：“等等，我才不在乎去公园。我刚刚开始对这个神秘的世界产生好奇。我刚看到一堵砖墙，我想用手摸一摸那些砖缝。或者看到一团苔藓，我就想用脸颊贴上去感受一下。”这时候你会想：“好吧，这就是他们现在感兴趣的事情。”艺术家有点像孩子，当大家都要去公园时，他们反而因为某个特别的事物而被吸引，流连忘返。
And to turn that into something we call a work of art is a great achievement. What's been the role of poetry in your life, both as a consumer, but especially as a writer? So from an early age, I felt on the back foot in relation to poetry. There was some early class in poetry that I should have gone to that I somehow didn't, I felt I didn't get. And so I remember always reading poems and thinking, what's going on here? Like, what are we supposed to do here? It's slightly weird language. And I don't know what's going on.
将其转化为我们所称的艺术作品是一项伟大的成就。在你的人生中，诗歌扮演了什么角色？无论是作为读者，尤其是作为一名作者。从小，我在诗歌方面就感到有些落后。我应该参加某个早期的诗歌课，但不知何故我没有参加，所以总觉得自己没弄明白。我记得总是读着诗歌，心里想着，这里到底发生了什么？我们该做些什么？语言有点奇怪，而且我不知道发生了什么。
At the same time, I started to notice that I sometimes had a poetic turn of phrase, by which I really mean that I wasn't, you know, there's a distinction between prose and poetry. And prose is like, summarized broadly, you know, you're trying to get to a destination and you don't care so much the words that are being used. You're just trying to say it. That's why Safety Instruction Manual is written in prose, not this thing called poetry.
与此同时，我开始注意到自己有时会使用富有诗意的表达方式。我真正的意思是，诗歌和散文之间是有区别的。广义来说，散文就像是为了到达目的地，而不太在意使用的具体词汇，你只是想把意思传达出来。这也是为什么安全说明手册是用散文写的，而不是用我们称之为诗歌的这种东西。
Poetry takes a more meandering route. It's interested in the associations around words, interested in making things more resonant, prettier, whatever it is, more thoughtful. It's taking a serendipitous route to a destination. And I remember thinking, oh, I'm interested in that. I'm interested in that as a writer. But I haven't gone to poetry school and I don't know what these poets do. And there's this idea that the thing that really makes poetry is the length of the lines, you know, the meter, the, you know, an iambic, this thing and that, you know, all of those, all of that stuff that I don't know about.
诗歌是一种更曲折的创作形式。它关注的是词汇之间的联想，关注如何让事物更有共鸣、更美丽或者更富有思考性。诗歌就像是在偶然中发现灵感，走向一个目标。我记得当时自己想着：噢，我对这个很感兴趣，作为一个写作者我对此很有兴趣。但我没有上过诗歌学校，也不知道那些诗人具体在做什么。人们常说，诗歌的真正特点是行的长度，比如韵律、抑扬格之类的东西，而这些恰恰是我不太了解的。
And I'm not sure whether that is the case. I think that poetry exists within, you can put it in prose sentences. There is this odd hybrid called the prose poem. Baudelaire, a great French writer, wrote prose poems. Lots of people have written prose poems, which is really, you know, you're abandoning the, some of the formal structure of poetry, but retaining some of what I want to call the resonance of poetry within a prose structure. And I'm interested in that.
我不确定是否真的是这样。我认为诗歌存在于其中，你可以把它放在散文句子中。有一种奇特的混合体叫做散文诗。法国伟大的作家波德莱尔曾写过散文诗。很多人都写过散文诗，这实际上意味着你放弃了一些诗歌的形式结构，但保留了我要称之为诗歌共鸣的东西，而这些是存在于散文结构中的。我对此很感兴趣。
The poets that I favor are what you might call easy to read poets, poets that are not necessarily always talking about Achilles and, you know, Ajax and all those mythological figures that slightly fry your mind. But they're speaking in, they're using ordinary words in ordinary situations, but putting them in slightly, you know, new ways. So the English poet Philip Larkin has been incredibly important, like many people who get confused with poetry. He's like, he's a poet for people who don't understand poetry, very easy to understand.
我喜欢的诗人是那种你可能会称之为"容易读懂"的诗人，他们不总是谈论阿基利斯、埃阿斯这些让人头疼的神话人物。而是用普通的词语在日常情境中表达，但又以稍微新颖的方式展现出来。就像英国诗人菲利普·拉金，他对我有极大的影响，就像许多对诗歌感到困惑的人一样，他是一位"为不懂诗歌的人准备的诗人"，非常容易理解。
Someone like WH Auden, again, very easy to read poet from which, from whom you can get an awful lot, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm with the easy to read guys. Yeah. And girls. For me with poetry, the rules don't help me. The only thing, the only way that I get anything out of poetry is to try to memorize it and then somehow it comes alive. Yeah, interesting. That's really interesting. That's really interesting.
像W.H.奥登这样的人，又是一个非常易读的诗人，从他的作品中你可以获得很多启发等等等等。所以我倾向于那些易读的诗人——无论是男诗人还是女诗人。对我来说，诗歌的规则并不能帮助我。唯一能让我从诗歌中获得什么的方法就是尝试去背诵它，然后不知怎么地，它就活起来了。嗯，很有趣，真的很有趣。
I can't read poetry. I have to just read it and read it and say, oh, wow, that struck me. I don't know why. And then I memorize it. And, you know, that suggests also that it might be fun to do it with someone, that, you know, if you were reading it to someone, speaking poetry, which, of course, is how poetry began. Yes, of course, of course. You know, that's kind of fun. So, yeah, so memorizing it, speaking it, socializing it might be a really good way in.
我没法直接读懂诗。我必须一遍又一遍地读它，然后心里感叹，哇，这句让我印象深刻。我也不知道为什么。然后我就把它背下来。而且，这也说明，和别人一起读诗可能会很有趣。如果你把诗念给别人听，朗诵诗歌，这不正是诗歌的起源吗？当然了，当然了。这样做挺有趣的。所以，把诗记下来，念出来，与人分享，可能是进入诗歌世界的一种很好的方式。
What moved you to spend so much time distilling other writers, right? A lot of the School of Life videos early on was, hey, guide to Nietzsche, guide to Sartre. What moved you to summarize their work? Well, because as a writer, I'd written a book called The Consolations of Philosophy, which is a look at a number of six philosophers. And I'd written a book on Proust called How Proust Can Change Your Life and et cetera, et cetera. So I'd always been interested in how you talk about other writers, other thinkers.
是什么促使您花这么多时间去提炼其他作家的作品呢？对吧？早期的 School of Life 视频很多都是关于哲学家的指南，比如尼采和萨特的指南。是什么促使您总结他们的作品呢？因为作为一名作家，我写了一本名为《哲学的慰藉》的书，这本书探讨了六位哲学家。我还写过一本关于普鲁斯特的书，叫做《普鲁斯特如何改变你的生活》，等等。所以我一直对如何讨论其他作家和思想家很感兴趣。
And I was never interested in being an academic. Academics are always claiming to be very faithful to the ideas of the people they talk about. I was less interested in being absolutely faithful as interested in charting what a writer made me think about, where they took me. And so it no longer becomes just the writer. It's the interaction between me and that writer, which could go to a slightly different place.
我对成为学者从来没有兴趣。学者总是声称他们非常忠于他们所讨论的人的思想。我不太在意绝对的忠诚，我更感兴趣的是一个作家让我思考了什么，他们让我走向了哪里。因此，它不仅仅是关于那个作家，而是我与作家之间的互动，这种互动可能会走向稍微不同的地方。
Not necessarily what did Nietzsche actually say, but what can he say to us now, given the things that he did say? What resonances exist between what he said and our own times, or just my reading of it? So I'm interested in a more flavored, more personal response to things. I often imagine thinking, someone saying, okay, you've read this thinker. What's really stayed with you? Let's be really honest here. What is sticking with you? And that's different from trying to write a Wikipedia page on somebody. It's a very different exercise.
这段文字的大意是：并不局限于尼采实际上说过什么，而是考虑他所说的话在当下能给我们带来什么启示。他所讲的话与我们这个时代或者我的个人解读之间有什么共鸣？因此，我更感兴趣的是一种更具个性色彩的回应。 我经常会想象，有人问我：“好吧，你读过这个思想家，那么真正让你印象深刻的是什么？我们得老实说，到底是什么让你记忆犹新？”这种思考与撰写维基百科页面是很不同的，这是完全不同的练习。
It's trying to, you know, you were describing a typical day when you might ask yourself, what really happened today. Imagine doing that similar exercise. You know, you shut somebody else's book. You've been reading Nietzsche and shut somebody else's book. And you think, okay, what's really stayed here? And the answer could be quite different. So it's not an academic exercise. And I think insofar as, you know, my books on other thinkers have resonated. They've sold extremely well. YouTube videos have gone extremely well. I think the reason is that we're doing something, I'm doing something there that's different from the standard, you know, what ChatGPT would do for you, what Wikipedia page entry, what an academic would do for you. I'm not doing it academically.
这句话的意思是，让你回想一下，你在描述自己一天的日常时，可能会问自己，今天到底发生了什么。想象一下做类似的回顾练习。你合上了一本别人的书，比如刚读完尼采的书，然后想，书里真正留下了什么？答案可能会很不一样。这不是一个学术性的练习。我认为，之所以我写的关于其他思想家的书能够引起共鸣并且销售很好，视频在YouTube上也很成功，是因为我在做一些不同于标准做法的事情，不同于ChatGPT给你的东西，不同于维基百科的条目，也不同于学术圈的人所做的。我不是以学术的方式来做这些。
The thing that's coming to mind for me is how much of writing, how much people are bogged down by what they feel like they're supposed to do. You keep saying, ah, you know, I'm not an academic, you know. And even in school, it sort of pushes us in a certain direction. I was going to pop in, but it didn't feel right. When you were talking about poetry, I was like, it's probably a good thing that you didn't take that poetry class because so much of the way that we talk about poetry is super left-brained and analytical. And you were talking about the iambic pentameter, this and whatnot. Like, what about just appreciating poetry? Like, someone comes in like, hey, appreciate poetry. But so often you're just bogged down by, oh, you're just not supposed to do that. I mean, look, it's one of the great problems of life, this rule of what you're supposed to do.
让我想到的是，写作中有多少人被他们觉得应该做的事情所困扰。你一直说自己不是学术界的人。即便是在学校里，他们也总是把我们引向某个特定的方向。我本想插句话，但感觉不太对劲。当你谈论诗歌时，我觉得你没去上那门诗歌课可能是件好事，因为我们谈论诗歌的方式常常是偏理性和分析性的。你在谈论五音步之类的东西。但是，为什么不简单地欣赏诗歌呢？有人进来告诉你说，嘿，欣赏诗歌。但我们常常被困在‘你就不应该这样做’的想法中。这就像是人生中的一大问题——那些你应该做什么的规则。
Let's stop talking about writing and talk about business for a minute just because it's a nice place to go, unexpected place to go. So businesses are creative enterprises, structures that consumer businesses that get this wrong all the time, right? Because a consumer business is an attempt to try and work out what will please somebody else. And very often people are guided by what you're supposed to do rather than what, you know, you think really might be nice for you. And so the same fakeness, sentimentality, plastic quality enters as enters into creative works. So imagine that sort of the bad restaurant, the bad restaurant, let's say a restaurant wants to be really elegant and lovely. And, but it doesn't think about what elegance and loveliness really, it doesn't really go like, do you, do you really need flowers on the table? Like, are you, you know, do you really need, do you really want to start with a melon? Do you really like melon or, you know, whatever it is, right?
让我们暂时不谈写作，而聊聊商业，因为这是一片有趣且意想不到的领域。商业其实是创意的企业，是一种结构，而消费型企业常常在这方面出错。因为一个消费型企业试图找出什么能取悦别人。人们通常被引导去做那些被认为应该做的事情，而不是去思考什么对自己来说真正令人愉悦。因此，这种虚假、感伤以及塑料般的品质往往也渗入到创作作品中。想象一下一个糟糕的餐厅，一个想要显得非常优雅和可爱的餐厅。但是它并没有真正思考什么是优雅与可爱，它没有认真考虑：餐桌上真的需要鲜花吗？你真的需要一份甜瓜作为开胃菜吗？你真的喜欢甜瓜吗？或者其他什么东西，对吧？
And, and it might not be that, like, you know, and think about people hosting dinner parties. So, you know, imagine that first time where you invite a friend around for dinner and you're like, please come around. And like, you know, people reach a certain stage in kind of bourgeois urban life where they're like, they'll, they'll invite, you know, the colleague from work to, to their home to like, let's break bread together and, you know, whatever. And suddenly it's like, wow, I've got to give a dinner party. So I've got to, I don't know, I've got to buy some chicken or something because that's what you do. And then we've got to have like the first course and then the second course. And then we've got to sit down and people get terribly hampered. Rather than thinking, okay, what do I really want to do here? And it might be totally different.
而且，这可能并不是那么简单，比如说，你知道，想想人们举办晚宴的时候。所以，你可以想象第一次邀请朋友来家里吃晚饭，你会说：“请过来。”随着生活在城市里的中产阶级达到一定阶段，他们会邀请同事到家里来一起吃顿便饭。突然之间，他们会意识到：“哇，我得举办一场晚宴。”所以，我不知道，我得买些鸡肉或者其他东西，因为这就是别人做的呀。然后我们得有前菜，再有主菜，接着我们就要坐下来。但人们因此变得非常拘束，而不是想想：“我到底真的想要做些什么呢？”也许完全可以不一样。
I mean, imagine saying, okay, let's just have some, let's just have some crisps and a can of tuna and, and then, and then just like lie on the sofa and just chat. Because that's actually who we are and what we want to do. Let's turn out the light and look at the stars. Let's go for a walk between courses. Let's cry together. Let's do the washing up. Let's just be weird because we are weird. And, you know, there's this, there's what you're supposed to do and be and feel. And then there's the truth, which is the weirdness of, of life. I mean, this happens also in relationships. I mean, this is, this is a fun thing about a good relationship, right? You meet someone and you're like, you're dating them and you're like, how are you? You know, I'm very fun. How are you? You know, et cetera.
我的意思是，想象一下，说好吧，我们就吃点薯片和一罐金枪鱼，然后就躺在沙发上聊天。因为那才是我们真正的自己，也是我们想做的事。关掉灯看看星星，吃完一道菜我们去散步吧。我们可以一起哭泣，一起洗碗。就做些怪异的事情吧，因为我们本来就很怪异。你知道，有些事是你应该去做、去成为、去感受的，然后还有真相，而真相就是生活本身的怪异。这种事情也会发生在关系中，这也是良好关系中的一种有趣之处吧。你遇见某个人，正在约会，然后你问他们，你好吗？我很好玩，你呢？等等。
And then, you know, three months down the line, you're like, did you mean any of those things? Oh, no. You know, do you really like ice skating? Oh, God, no. You know, I just, I thought it would impress you or whatever it is. And, and you suddenly emerge as a much more complicated, ultimately more lovable, more weird kind of person. And it's okay. Well, isn't this so weird when it comes to writing how all the people that you like, you like for their idiosyncrasies? And whatever it is, they've leaned into something to a degree that you've kind of never seen before. Sometimes they just bend grammar in all sorts of weird ways. But like, whatever they're doing, it feels true to who they are.
然后呢，你知道，过了三个月，你开始质疑：你真的当时是认真的吗？哦，不。那你真的喜欢滑冰吗？哦，天哪，不是的。我只是想给你留下好印象或者类似的理由。然后你突然发现，一个更复杂、其实更可爱、更古怪的自己浮现出来了。这没关系。写作方面也是这样，有趣的是，我们喜欢的人，往往因为他们的独特之处。不论是什么，他们都在某个方面达到了你前所未见的程度。有时候他们会用各种奇怪的方式扭曲语法。但不管他们在做什么，都让人感觉这是真实的他们。
And then yet, once you sit down to write, you're like, oh, I'm not supposed to do that. I'm not supposed to do that. And then you kind of get boxed in, especially when you start off as a writer. Which is why, you know, those exercises are rather good to think, okay, if there were no rules, if you couldn't fail, if no one was going to laugh, if you were going to be dead tomorrow, what would you actually do and say? And how would you write, let's say? And that's the thing you should write. Yeah.
当你开始动笔写作时，你可能会觉得，“哦，我不该这么做，我不该那么做。” 这种心态会让你感到束缚，尤其是当你刚开始写作的时候。这就是为什么有些练习是很有帮助的。比如，想象一下如果没有限制、不能失败、没有人嘲笑，或者假如你明天就要离开这个世界，你会真正想去做什么、说什么？你会怎么写作？这才是你应该写的东西。
So for me in my writing career, I thought, I want to be a novelist. So I've got to write these things called novels based on the 19th century novel. And then gradually, I just thought, fuck it to all those rules and ended up producing a book which was much weirder, more original, and some people like it. Which one was that? That was my first book called On Love, Essays in Love. But as I say, now I'm a spoiled boy. Now I just only do what I want. Right. And I kind of think, if I'm getting bored, the reader will be getting bored. Totally.
对于我的写作生涯，我曾想成为一名小说家。所以我觉得我必须写一些基于19世纪小说风格的作品。逐渐地，我对那些写作规则感到厌烦，最后创作出一本更奇怪、更有创意的书，有人喜欢它。是哪本书呢？那是我的第一本书，叫做《论爱》，也叫《爱恋笔记》。不过就像我说的，现在我就是个被宠坏的孩子，我只写我想写的东西。对，如果我感到无聊，读者也会无聊。确实如此。
So I just want to write. And that doesn't mean the opposite is not true. Just because I'm interested doesn't mean the reader's interested. But it's got a much higher chance of interesting someone. And so I am now, I wake up every morning and I just think, right, what do I feel like writing about? I'm no longer thinking about books, weirdly. I'm thinking about pieces of prose that are around 800 words long. And I don't care what it's about. And I just want it to feel like the thing that I most want to write that day.
所以我只是想写作。这并不意味着相反的情况不成立。只是因为我感兴趣，并不代表读者也会感兴趣。但这样一来，吸引某个人的机会会大大增加。所以现在每天早晨醒来，我都会想，好吧，今天我想写些什么呢？我不再总想着写书，奇怪的是，我更倾向于写大约800字的短文。我不在乎主题是什么，我只想让这个作品成为我当天最想写的东西。
And I write in the early morning when I'm feeling like other people's agendas, et cetera, are not really on the horizon. So I'm coming from sleep. It's a protected personal space. And I just write what pleases me. And then I think, I'll find a place for it. I'll find somewhere to slot it in. Because I've got about 22 books on the go now. And I just think, oh, I'll put it there. I'll put it there. One day it will belong to somewhere. But it's written, as it were, from the heart.
我在清晨写作，因为那时我觉得别人的事情还没有干扰到我。我刚从睡梦中醒来，这是一段属于自己的宁静时光。我只写让我快乐的东西，然后想，总能找到合适的位置把它放进去。因为我现在在写大约22本书，经常想，这可以放到这里，那可以放到那里。总有一天，它们会找到它们的归宿。而这些文字，都好像是发自内心而写的。
And I have totally given up the old way of working whereby I'm working on a book. And that means I just need to knit the next bit of the tapestry. I'm like, I'm just going by feeling. I mean, sometimes, okay, I'm slightly exaggerating. Sometimes I have a sense of like, it would be good to try and fill this bucket of like, if you're having a bucket of like thoughts around pictures, like, okay, maybe drop them in that bucket. But on the whole, I'm trying to keep things fluid and feeling very authentic.
我已经完全放弃了以前那种写书的工作方式。这意味着我现在只需要一点一点地编织整幅挂毯。我就是凭感觉去做。有时候，我可能稍微夸张了一点。有时候我会觉得，或许可以尝试去填满某个想法“桶”，比如当你有一些关于图片的想法时，可以把它们放进那个“桶”里。但总的来说，我尽量让一切保持流动性，并且感觉非常真实。
Yeah, my friend Jeremy Giffon once said to me, if you're ever struggling with writer's block, three words, be more honest. Yeah. Be more honest. Yeah, that's what writer's block is. Writer's block is a conflict between sort of the shame and the desire for honesty. It's like a sense of what you're supposed to do and feel and what you're actually feeling and doing, which has gone numb.
我朋友杰里米·吉芬曾经对我说，如果你遇到写作阻碍，记住三个词：更加诚实。是的，更加诚实。这就是写作阻碍的原因。写作阻碍是一种羞愧感和追求诚实之间的冲突。这种情况就像是你认为自己应该做和感觉到的，与实际上的感觉和行动之间的脱节，导致你麻木不仁。
And so again, I mean, it's, look, it's a very useful exercise to say to yourself, what am I actually feeling? What do I actually want? Where am I actually? And seeing. And I mean, it's a very good rule of thumb with people as well. You know, if you've got a blocked relationship with someone to say, you know, sometimes we get stuck in sort of games playing and double guessing and, you know, all the rest of it. And just go, what would I really want to tell this person? What do I really, you know? And sometimes it's not always possible to say it, but at least if you've got it in view, that's very helpful.
因此，我的意思是，这样做确实是个很有用的练习，问问自己：我现在到底是什么感受？我真正想要什么？我现在所处的境地是什么？这也是处理人际关系的一个很好的基本原则。当你和某人的关系遇到障碍时，我们有时会陷入到互相揣测和做戏中。这个时候，不妨问问自己：我真正想对这个人说什么？我到底是什么想法？虽然有时无法直接表达出来，但至少心里有个清楚的认识，这会很有帮助。
Yeah. So I've got to credit you with changing my mind on one thing more than – there's one thing you really changed my mind on, and it's the news. And there's a – I still remember exactly where it was. There's a part early in the book where you talk about Hegel, and he says that a society becomes modern when it elevates the news to the level of what religious faiths used to be in society. And I was like, whoa.
好的，所以，我得感谢你让我改变了一个想法——是的，有一件事情你真的改变了我的看法，那就是关于新闻。我仍然清楚地记得那段话的位置。在书的前面部分，你谈到了黑格尔，他说，当一个社会把新闻提升到曾经宗教信仰所占据的位置时，这个社会就开始现代化了。当时我心想，哇。
And it made me realize to sort of step away from this book, and you just realize everyone is in this constant consumption of the news. It's a weird head-scratcher about the modern world, of this obsession with people we'll never meet, places we'll never go. And, of course, it shapes the horizon, the mental horizon in an unbelievable way, the news media. It gives us a sense of what you're supposed to be thinking about, you know. Back to supposed to. Back to supposed to. And it's so powerful.
这让我意识到，我需要暂时远离这本书，因为我发现每个人都在不停地消耗新闻。这是现代世界一个让人困惑的现象，人们对那些我们永远不会见到的人和我们永远不会去的地方如此执着。当然，这以一种难以置信的方式塑造了我们的思维视野，新闻媒体给了我们一种你应该思考什么的感觉，对，“应该”。“应该”如此强大。
So people will say – people will routinely say things like, well, of course, we're living in this very sad age. And sometimes I think, okay, let's just take a step back here. Like, assess who? Like, when did this age get anointed? And, like, compared to what? Like, you know, the 4th century in Abyssinia or, you know, the 12th century in Syria? And they're like, well, because of certain things that have happened in, you know, Place X that, you know, CNN has alerted them to. And, I mean, look, you can see how it happens and we're all prey to that.
人们常常会说，当然，我们生活在一个非常悲伤的时代。有时候我会想，我们先冷静一下，想一想是谁决定了这个时代是悲伤的？和哪个时代相比呢？比如，阿比西尼亚的4世纪，或者12世纪的叙利亚？他们可能是因为CNN报道了某地发生的某些事情而有这样的感受。其实，你可以理解为什么会这样，我们都会受到这种影响。
But any artist worth their salt does not think this way. I mean, this is a very programmatic, you know, industrial way of thinking. Our inner lives have been industrialized. Wow. And commercialized. And that's no good for, you know, the free thinker and the honest thinker, the authentic thinker. So, yeah, we've got to take care around this thing called the news. And I think you're not really a responsible adult until you don't know certain significant things that people around you think of as very important.
但任何真正有才华的艺术家都不会这样想。我的意思是，这是一种非常程序化和工业化的思维方式。我们的内心世界已经被工业化了，甚至被商业化了。这对自由思想者、诚实的思想者和真实的思想者来说是不利的。因此，我们必须对所谓的新闻保持警惕。而且，我认为，直到你对于某些周围人认为非常重要的事情并不知情时，你才算真正成为一个有责任感的成年人。
You know, if there's a singer that you don't know about at all, if there's a movie that you just, you know that people know about it, but you just don't know about it. You just haven't crossed that threshold. Congratulate yourself. You're doing well. You're keeping a bit of your mental experience for yourself. We don't need to know everything that everybody else knows. We need to know the interesting bits of our own experience.
你知道吗，如果有一个歌手你完全不了解，或者有一部人人都知道的电影，但你就是不知道，不用担心，恭喜你。这说明你过得很好，你为自己保留了一部分精神空间。我们不需要知道所有别人知道的事情，我们只需要了解自己经历中有趣的部分就够了。
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if this is actually the etymology of it, but we'll run with the bit and pretend it's true. But, like, you could almost think of the news, the new, all the new things, like the news, the new is in news. And, like, I would almost say that knowing all the new things is almost the antithesis of the pursuit of wisdom, which is actually about cultivating the small percentage of old things that have stood the test of time. Or spotting the archetypes, spotting that the so-called new is a repetition of something old.
好的，我不确定这是否真的是词源，但我们可以假装它是事实。你可以把“新闻”看作所有新事物的集合，在“新闻”这个词里就有“新”的意思。但我几乎想说，了解所有新事物几乎与追求智慧背道而驰，因为智慧实际上在于培养那一小部分经受住时间考验的事物。或者说，识别出那些所谓的新事物其实是对旧事物的重复。
And what is it? What's the story that keeps getting repeated? It's the story of a tyrant who, you know, forgave their enemy. It's the story of a society that became decadent. It's the story of greed that got in the way of goodness or whatever it is. And, you know, the news doesn't want us to think that way. It wants us to think that anomalous things have always happened, you know, whereas, again, art pulls in another direction.
这故事是什么呢？是什么故事不断重复上演呢？是一个暴君宽恕敌人的故事，是一个社会走向堕落的故事，是贪婪阻碍善良的故事，或其他类似的情节。然而，你知道，新闻不希望我们这样思考，它希望我们认为这些异常事件总是会发生。而艺术则引导我们朝另一个方向思考。
It's like, here again, you know, think of Jericho's Raft of the Medusa. Do you know that painting in the Louvre in Paris? There was a ship called the Medusa in 19th century France. And it went, it ran aground and the passengers ended up on a raft. They ended up eating each other. There was cannibalism and they're waving. It shows them waving at, you know, in hope of rescue. Various people have said various things about this Raft of the Medusa.
这就像，你知道的，再次让我想到热里柯的《梅杜萨之筏》。你知道这幅在巴黎卢浮宫的画吗？19世纪的法国有一艘名为梅杜萨的船。它搁浅了，乘客们被迫留在一个木筏上。最后他们陷入了相互残食的境地，成为了食人族的惨状，挥舞着手臂希望获救。关于这幅《梅杜萨之筏》，很多人都有不同的看法。
I think it was Victor Hugo. Someone said the people on the Raft of the Medusa, that's France. France is on the Raft of the Medusa. It's a painting about the whole of France, which is a way of saying, OK, it's one. And it was, so it was a news item with the, it was the, an accident of like, it was like a plane crash, like one of our, you know, but it, but it, it was mined for its metaphoric association. And so suddenly it could be like a metaphor for how the nation has run aground and how, you know, people are eating one another as it were.
我觉得这可能是维克多·雨果说的。有人提到《梅杜莎之筏》上的人们，那就是法国。法国就像是《梅杜莎之筏》上的人。这幅画象征着整个法国，换句话说，它代表一个国家。它本来是一个新闻事件，就像一次空难一样，但它被赋予了隐喻的意义。因此，这个事件突然成了一个隐喻，表达国家如何搁浅，人们如何互相吞噬。
And, but all large scale events have that potentially metaphoric quality. I mean, if you think of all the ancient Greek myths, Troy, or stories, you know, Troy and, you know, Odysseus and Penelope, et cetera, you know, let's imagine they were news items, but they're also myths. And what we mean by a myth is something with an application way beyond itself. It's speaking about something eternal in ourselves, which is why they work, you know, which is why the story of Odysseus returning to his beloved Penelope and going through all these adventures is something that, you know, is part of your story and my story and everybody's story right now.
而且，所有的大型事件都有潜在的隐喻性质。我的意思是，如果你考虑所有古希腊神话，比如特洛伊战争或其他故事，比如特洛伊、奥德修斯和佩内洛普等等，可以把它们想象成新闻事件，但它们同时也是神话。我们所说的神话，是指一种超越其本身意义的东西。它在诉说某些我们内心永恒的东西，这就是它们为何能打动人心的原因。这就是为什么奥德修斯经历各种冒险最终回到深爱的佩内洛普身边的故事，是你我以及所有人故事的一部分，即使在今天也是如此。
But again, the news doesn't want to think that way. You know, news wants to direct us towards only the very surface novelty. So, so it's thinking in a media way and thinking in a mythic way. And I think it's very good to try and think in a mythic way. Yeah. And also the, in the tapestry of the news, the threat of politics is so bound within and politics is the mind killer. Say we're having a conversation about, about Van Gogh's water lilies. Okay. So pretend I don't like the water lilies. You like the water lilies. It's like, we'll look at them and we can just look at this thing and we can come to the thing fresh and we can say, Hey, I like this painting. I, I don't know something about the way that the blues and the greens are interacting kind of bothers me. Actually. Wow. I really don't like that.
但再次强调，新闻并不以这种方式思考。你知道的，新闻总是想引导我们只关注表面的新奇事物。所以，它是在以媒体的方式思考，并且以神话的方式思考。而我认为，以神话的方式思考非常好。在新闻的复杂结构中，政治的线索紧密相连，而政治是心智的杀手。假设我们正在讨论梵高的《睡莲》。好吧，假如我不喜欢《睡莲》，而你喜欢。我们可以一起看看这幅画，以全新的视角来看待，然后可以说，嘿，我喜欢这幅画，我不知道为什么，蓝色和绿色的搭配让我有点不舒服。实际上，我真的不喜欢这样。
Whereas when we have a conversation about a politician, what now has happened is we're coming to that topic with a bunch of preconceived notions. And because of that, we're in like these word traps of, you know, just as you were talking about earlier, like this age of sadness, right? It's like the right and the left and stuff like that. And because of that, we're in these sort of boxed in and already the fault lines of divisiveness and separation and this team versus that team are kind of rooted inside of it. Whereas when we read about events that happened, say in ancient Greece, we don't have those preconceived notions. I understand. So we can approach them more freshly. Again, it's, it's where we're back to what you're supposed to think.
当我们谈论政治人物时，我们通常带着许多先入为主的观念进入对话。这导致我们陷入一种词语陷阱，就像你之前提到的这个悲伤的时代，左派和右派之争等。因为这样，我们被困在一种已经存在的分裂和对立中，仿佛两队对抗般的局面。相反，当我们阅读有关古希腊的事件时，由于没有这些先入为主的观念，我们能够以更开放的心态去理解。这种情况下，我们可以更清晰地回到最应该思考的问题上。
And what we want to say is political structures give you a map of what you're supposed to think if you are a certain sort of person. So, you know, if you're from the left, you should have certain kinds of antipathies and certain kinds of loves. If you're from the right, you know, ditto. But what's really interesting, once you go beyond politics and once you get to know people really well, this is the fun stuff of life. So I remember being with a group of friends and we started playing a game. So it was trying to reduce the shame around the idea of which politicians you found kind of sexually attractive, despite maybe not agreeing with their politics. Was there any kind of sexual, you know, feeling around certain politics? And of course, you know, we all ended up giggling a lot because there was such striking dissonances or discrepancies between what you were supposed to feel and what people actually felt around certain politicians and ideas, et cetera.
我们想表达的是，政治结构就像一张地图，告诉你如果你是某种类型的人，应该持有什么样的想法。例如，如果你是左派，你应该有某些反感和某些喜爱；如果你是右派，也一样。但是，一旦你超越了政治，真正了解一个人之后，生活就变得十分有趣。我记得有一次和一群朋友在一起，我们开始玩一个游戏。这个游戏是为了减轻与哪位政治人物有一些性吸引力的想法带来的尴尬，即使你可能不同意他们的政治观点。我们探讨是否对某些政治人物存在某种性的感觉。当然，结果是我们都笑个不停，因为我们发现理应存在的感觉和人们对某些政治人物及其理念的实际感受之间竟然有如此明显的差异和矛盾。
So no one actually thinks in a purely left or right way. They just think they're supposed to. The reality is much more nuanced and complicated. Just like, you know, think of ideas of masculinity and femininity, which we know that, you know, an archetypal man really in many points does not think like an archetypal man and feel like an archetypal man. Look at Napoleon's letters to Josephine. Right. I'm just amazed every time I read those. You think of Napoleon's military conqueror. It's like the sweetest. Right, right. The most desperate love. Right, right. And yeah, I mean, it's a good example. Millions of other examples, exactly, that, you know, a true picture of human nature is so much more nuanced and politics is a massive abbreviation.
没有人真正以纯粹左派或右派的方式思考。他们只是觉得自己应该这样。事实上，情况要复杂得多，也更加微妙。就像我们讨论男性气质和女性气质时，我们知道一个典型的男人在很多方面并不像我们想象的那样思考或感受。看看拿破仑写给约瑟芬的信。每次读这些信，我都感到惊讶。你想象中的拿破仑是一个军事征服者，而他的信却如此温柔、充满绝望的爱情。这是个很好的例子，说明人性的真实面貌要复杂得多，而政治只是其中的一个高度简化的缩影。
And when people argue about politics, they're half the time also arguing with themselves of trying to make the world simpler than it is. And, you know, inside every right winger, there's a left winger inside and vice versa. Blah, blah. You know, it's inside every man, there's a woman inside every woman, there's a man, you know, inside every adult, there's a child. But, you know, these things are multiple. And whenever you come across a more simplified version, you know, we know it's not true. We know it's not true. The thing that surprised me the most from this conversation so far is how much you've referenced painting. That's not something I expected coming into the conversation. And I want to hear more about how you look at paintings and how you pull from paintings to bring them into your own creative expression.
当人们为政治争论时，他们有一半的时间其实是在和自己争论，试图把世界简化。你知道的，每个右翼者心里都有一个左翼者，每个左翼者心里也有一个右翼者。每个男人心里都有一个女人，每个女人心里都有一个男人，每个成年人心里都有一个孩子。但是，这些事情是多面的。每当你遇到一个更简化的版本时，我们都知道那不是真的。到目前为止，这次谈话中最让我感到惊讶的是你提到绘画的次数，进入讨论时我并没有预料到这一点。我想听听你是如何看待绘画，以及如何从中汲取灵感融入自己的创造性表达的。
So, you know, I think in many ways, one could point to various paintings and go, that's a bit of me. If you want to understand me, like, look at these paintings. So the work of Cy Twombly, for example, is really important to me. Take some of those chalk writing images of Twombly, where essentially it looks like someone's writing on a chalkboard in a crazy script, meaning something profound and archaic and strange. That to me is like a portrait of what thinking looks like. He's like making mental maps of what thinking looks like. And I think you could apply that metaphor to lots of things, like a certain artist is giving you a picture of what X looks like. And it could be an inner state. I mean, abstract artists are obviously very good at this.
所以，你知道，我觉得从某种角度来说，人们可以指着各种画作说，那就是我的一部分。如果你想了解我，可以看看这些画作。例如，赛·托姆布雷 (Cy Twombly) 的作品对我来说非常重要。看看托姆布雷那些用粉笔写的画面，看起来就像是有人在黑板上用疯狂的笔迹写字，蕴含着一些深刻、古老和奇异的意义。对我来说，这就像是一幅什么是思考的画像。他好像在绘制思维的心智地图。我想你可以把这个比喻运用到很多事情上，比如说，一个艺术家正在给你呈现“X”的样子，它可能是某种内心状态。我是说，抽象艺术家显然对此非常擅长。
You could look at a Rothko and go, this is what, you know, melancholy looks like. This is what dejection looks like. It's what humiliation looks like. But you could also look at a, you know, realistic representation and go, this is what hope looks like. This is what courage looks like. Serenity. Serenity, et cetera. But yes, paintings matter a lot, as does indeed architecture, design. The visual environment is constantly communicating values to us. There's a lovely quote from the French writer Stendhal, beauty is the promise of happiness. So in other words, when we find something beautiful, it's really promising. It's not just an isolated aesthetic experience. It's promising us a happy way of living. But that's a much richer kind of complicated thing.
你可以看一幅罗斯科的画，然后感叹道，这就是忧郁、沮丧、屈辱的样子。但你也可以看一幅写实的画作，然后感叹道，这就是希望、勇气、宁静的样子。是的，绘画很重要，正如建筑和设计一样，视觉环境不断地向我们传达价值观。有一位法国作家司汤达说过一句优美的话，"美是幸福的承诺。" 换句话说，当我们觉得某样东西美丽时，它不仅仅是一个孤立的美学体验，而是在向我们承诺一种充满幸福的生活方式。这是一个更加丰富而复杂的概念。
So it's always good to ask somebody who says, you know, I find Greece beautiful or I find, you know, this house beautiful. You might go, okay, well, what's the way of life that you imagine? What are the values that you associate with this? How would an average day look like? How would you want to live? You know, there's a Rilke poem where the poet sees the bust of Apollo in a museum. And the challenge is the bust of Apollo is beaming to Rilke a vision of life. It's like it's saying, imagine what it would be like to live as this bust is suggesting that I live. And these are sort of archaic, you know, mythic Greek, ancient Greek values.
所以，当有人表示觉得希腊很美，或者说这栋房子很漂亮时，询问他们一些问题总是不错的。比如，你可以问：你想象中的生活方式是什么？你将与之关联的价值观有哪些？普通的一天会是怎样的？你想过怎样的生活？就像有一首里尔克的诗中提到，诗人在博物馆看到阿波罗的半身像。这个挑战在于，阿波罗的半身像向里尔克传达了一种生活的愿景，就像在说：想象一下，如果按照这个半身像所暗示的生活，你的生活会是怎样的。而这些传达的都是一种古老的、神话般的希腊和古希腊的价值观。
But every object is essentially beaming out to you, like how to live. This chair, which I don't particularly like, is suggesting, you know, how to be a person. It's got a vision of life. I mean, advertisers sometimes do this, but it's quite helpful. It's like, if your car turned into a person, what kind of a person would it be? If your chair turned into a person, what kind of person would it be? If your font, if your font on your book turned into a person, what kind of font, you know, what's its character? So things have character much more than we normally.
但每个物体基本上都在向你传递生活的方式。比如这把我并不特别喜欢的椅子，它在暗示你如何做人。它有一种对生活的理解。我是说，有时候广告商会这么做，但这其实很有帮助。就像，如果你的车变成了一个人，它会是什么样的人？如果你的椅子变成了一个人，它会是什么样的人？如果你书上的字体变成了一个人，这种字体有什么样的性格？因此，事物拥有的性格比我们通常认为的要多得多。
So if this cloud in the sky was a person, what would it want to tell you? We're very good at that kind of synesthetic connection once we allow ourselves to. As writers, how should we think about our readers? Like, in what way should we serve our readers and write for them? And in what ways should we say, ah, no, I'm writing for myself here and I'm focused right now. Maybe I'll worry about the reader later. But how do you navigate that relationship? I think you've got to have a reader inside you. So it's not like me, I'm the speaker and the reader is out there and they're the reader.
如果把天上的云当成一个人，它会想告诉你什么呢？一旦允许自己这样去想象，我们就很擅长这种感觉的联结。作为作家，我们应该如何看待读者呢？我们应该以怎样的方式为读者服务并为他们写作呢？同时，在什么情况下我们应该对自己说，我现在是为自己而写，暂时不考虑读者？这种关系，该如何把握呢？我认为你心中要有一个读者。也就是说，读者并不只是外在于你的某个人，而是你内心的一部分。
We all of us have a reader inside us. And what I mean by that is, you know, we are all readers as well as writers. And we, you know, we host as well as, you know, perform. And so you just have to appeal to the inner reader. And by which I really mean, I mean, what makes people very boring as conversational partners is they've stopped wondering how their words might sound to somebody else, right? I mean, we all know those people who have just lost the, they're not asking themselves a cruel but necessary question, which is, how is what I'm saying, how might what I'm saying or want to say fit into somebody else's life? Where could this go?
我们每个人心中都有一个阅读者。我所指的是，我们不仅是作家，也是读者。我们既可以主持也能表演。因此，你必须吸引内心的阅读者。我真正想表达的是，让人显得无趣的谈话伙伴，就是那些不再考虑自己说的话在别人听来会是什么感觉的人。我们都认识这样的人，他们不再自问一个残酷但必要的问题，那就是，我说的话或者想说的话如何与他人的生活产生联系？它能走到哪里？
Totally oblivious. So, you know, we all know those people who tell you very boring stories and they're like, you say, how was your trip? And they go, well, it was great. But the thing is that like, that when you get to the airport, you know, the form has to be, and you're thinking, okay, I understand that this was very, very impactful for you. But like, I can't use this. I can't use this. So like, where somebody else might be using the same material, but just have prepared it a bit differently.
完全没有意识到。所以，你知道，我们都认识那些喜欢讲非常无聊故事的人。比如你问他们：“你的旅行怎么样？”他们会说：“哦，挺好的。”但接着他们就会开始讲：“不过你知道吗，到了机场，你得填那个表格。”你心里想，我明白这对你来说很重要，但是我用不上这些信息。而另一些人可能会用相同的材料，但是准备得更好，让故事变得有趣。
They'll go, they'll go, you know how bureaucracy like gets in the way of things. And the bureaucratic mindset has got a certain sadism. So, you know, when they say like, get to the back of the line, do you ever wonder, you know, and suddenly you're like, okay, they're telling you about their holiday, but they're also, they've given you something that you can eat and absorb and metabolize. Something's nicely being prepared. So I think a good writer is thinking, where could this go inside the reader's mind? But they're also really faithful to a bit of themselves.
他们会去的，他们会去的，你知道官僚主义如何阻碍事情的发展。官僚思维中有一种悲观情绪。所以，当他们说“到队伍后面去”的时候，你有没有想过，突然之间，他们在告诉你他们的假期，但同时，也给了你一些可以吃掉、吸收和代谢的东西。有些东西被精心准备好了。所以我认为，一个好的作家在思考，这可以在哪里进入读者的心灵？但同时，他们也忠于自己的一部分。
And they're saying, okay, do I, you know, it has to stop. It has to, I think the order of kind of priority is it has to start with you and what you want to say. And then you've got to find a way of bridging that to what a reader could possibly absorb. So a very perceptive friend of mine once looked at my writing style. And let me tell you a bit about my history as a person. I had a very academic father, very erudite and very, yeah, very academic, a person of not great originality of thought, but very, you know, had read many, many books and spoke in a solemn and pedantic way, like a proverbial professor.
他们在说，好的，你知道，这件事必须停止。我认为这里的优先顺序应该是，它必须从你自己和你想表达的东西开始。然后你需要找到一种方法，把这些与你的读者能够理解的内容连接起来。一位非常敏锐的朋友曾经评价过我的写作风格。让我简单说一下我的家庭背景吧。我父亲是个非常学术化的人，博学多才，非常严肃地说话，像是典型的教授那样，虽然他不是特别有原创思维，但他读了很多书。
And then I had a nanny who brought me up, essentially. My parents were off the scene for long periods. And I was left in the charge of a woman who was very uneducated, very clever, but, you know, not an academic at all. Someone who loved nature, been brought up in a rural village in Switzerland and was, you know, didn't think in academic terms. And always want to think about nature and quite religious, et cetera. And this friend of mine said, you're basically trying to write a book that could be understood and liked by your father and your nanny. And I thought, oh, wow, that's true. That's exactly what I'm doing. Trying to speak to two different audiences.
然后，我有一个保姆，基本上是她把我带大的。我的父母长期不在身边。我由一个非常聪明但没受过多少教育的女人照看。她不是学术型的人，而是热爱大自然。她是在瑞士的一个乡村长大的，不以学术视角来看待事物，总是喜欢思考自然，非常虔诚等。我的一个朋友说，你基本上是在试图写一本既能让你父亲理解又能让你的保姆喜欢的书。我心想，哇，确实如此。这正是我在做的，努力与两种不同的读者对话。
So to answer your question, one of the things about people and their readers, it's not just like, are you thinking of the reader? But what sort of reader are you, like, are you picturing? Are you kind of imagining? Are you honoring? Let me tell you the other origins of my writing. So I had a teddy bear when I was little. So I had all sorts of problems as a kid, as a little kid. And I invented this bear. And this bear had a life that was quite similar to mine. And I was its father.
所以回答你的问题时，我想说，关于人与读者的关系，不仅仅是你是否在考虑读者，而是你心里想象的读者是什么样的？你在意的是什么样的读者？让我告诉你我的写作起源之一。当我还是个小孩子时，我有一只泰迪熊。小时候我有很多问题，于是我创造了这只熊。它的生活和我的生活非常相似，而我是它的“父亲”。
So I would speak to the bear in my mind. And I would say, OK, I know this thing. So I went to boarding school when I was eight years old. I was shipped to England from my native Switzerland. And in my mind, my way of processing and dealing with that is my bear also went to boarding school. And I was its father. And I was a really sweet and kind father. And I would basically tell it nice things every evening. And I'd say, look, I'm really sorry that those, like, boys, you know, threatened you today. But it's OK, because, you know, it's OK.
所以，我会在心里和那只熊对话。我会说，好吧，我知道这件事情。于是，在我八岁的时候，我被送去了寄宿学校。我从我的祖国瑞士被送到了英国。在我心里，我处理和应对这种情况的方式就是，我的熊也去了寄宿学校。而我是它的父亲，一个非常温柔和善良的父亲。我基本上每天晚上都会对它说一些好听的话。我会说，看，我真的很抱歉，那些男孩今天威胁了你。不过没关系，因为，没关系的。
You've got to go to school. And, you know, the holidays will come, et cetera. And I was the father to this bear. And someone said to me, the school of life is just your continuation of your bear. You're just like, you're doing for people what you did for that bear, which is kind of translate your own experience into something digestible for an imaginary audience that's cheering you up and might be cheering them up, too. So I thought that was perceptive, too.
你必须去上学。假期会到来等等。而我就像是这只熊的父亲。有人对我说，生活的学校就是你和这只熊的延续。你就像在为人们做你为那只熊所做的事情，把自己的经历转化为一些让观众容易接受的东西，这个观众是想象中的，它会给你打气，也可能给他们打气。我觉得这也很有洞察力。
And that could be something of that. So, you know, if we think about religions, because religions are very onto this, you know, a religion, I'm not a believer. And I'm sorry, members of your audience, I have huge, huge respect for religious belief. I think religion is a fantastic way of externalizing, metaphorizing our inner lives, ascribing to a supernatural figure, an authority, a wisdom of kindness that actually exists within all of us. But it's refracted in this theological, beautiful theological system.
这可能就是那种情况。所以，如果我们考虑宗教，因为宗教对此非常重视，你知道，一个宗教，我并不是信徒。我为你的听众感到抱歉，但我对宗教信仰抱有极大的尊重。我认为宗教是一种奇妙的方式，可以将我们的内心生活外化和形象化，把我们内心中存在的权威、智慧和善良投射到一个超自然的存在上，只不过这些在宗教体系中被折射出来并表现得非常美妙。
I would say, I don't want to be impious. I mean, I am impious. But I say it with respect, because I don't think, by the way, that this is a, you know, a Richard Dawkins editor would go, and that's very immature. And that's a silly thing. No, this is an amazingly beautiful and complex things that humans can do. We reify some of our own mental processes.
我会说，我不想表现得不敬。我是说，我确实有些不敬。但我说这话时是带着尊重的，因为我不认为这就像某些人，比如理查德·道金斯那样，可能会觉得这很幼稚，而且有点傻。其实，这实际上是人类能够做到的一件惊人美丽且复杂的事情。我们把自己的一些心理过程实体化了。
And this helps us to cope with the agonies of being alive. And that's an amazing thing that we humans do. And I think there's a link between, as I say, how children play, when they'll say, you know, that table's watching me. Or that's a good table. That table's kind. It's got my interest in mind. And you're like, OK, wow, you've lodged something from in you, in there, and it's helping you to cope and to live.
这帮助我们应对生活中的痛苦。这是人类一个惊人的能力。我认为这与儿童的玩耍方式有关，比如他们会说，“那张桌子在看着我”或者“那是一张好桌子，那张桌子很友善，它关心我的利益。”然后你会觉得，哇，你把自己的某种情感投射到外部事物上，而这正帮助你应对和生活。
And, you know, artists are doing elements of this, too. So I just want to kind of get on the table, these different elements. Children playing, imaginative play, art, the creation of art, and the creation of religions. I think that we're dealing with quite common elements, common maneuvers are taking place in those three arenas, I would say. What else do you think that we can take from the faiths that you've studied?
好的，艺术家们其实也在做这方面的事情。我想把这些不同的元素摆到台面上来讨论一下。比如说，孩子们的游戏、富有想象力的玩耍、艺术创作和宗教的创立。我认为这三者之间都有一些共同的元素和行为。那么，你觉得从你所研究的信仰中还能学到些什么呢？
Like, one of the things that you've spoken about that I definitely see in your writing is the difference between a lecture and a sermon. That a lecture is there to give you information. A sermon is there to give you information and maybe a story so that it yields a change in behavior. That's right. That's right. That's right. And I'm obviously much more on the sermon side of things.
这段话的意思是：正如你所提到的，我在你的写作中确实看到了你说过的一个观点，就是讲座和布道之间的区别。讲座是为了传递信息，而布道不仅是传递信息，还可能包含一个故事，从而引发行为上的改变。没错，没错，我显然更倾向于布道的方式。
Yeah, exactly. I mean, look, religions have been, you know, I know there are a lot of people who've been traumatized by religion, hurt by religion. Yeah. You know, we want to honor those people and hear them, too. And then the people who've been very helped and are religious. And then there are people who are, might be atheists and quite totally indifferent.
是的，没错。我的意思是，你看，宗教确实一直以来都是这样。我知道有很多人因为宗教受到创伤、受到伤害。是的。我们希望尊重这些人，倾听他们的声音。同时也有那些从宗教中获得帮助并信仰宗教的人。此外，还有一些人可能是无神论者，对宗教完全无动于衷。
And I would want to say to that constituency, look at these structures, because they're really rather interesting. Like, you thought they had nothing to say to you because you don't believe. But, oh, my goodness, there's a lot going on here that you need to find out about. I mean, we're not just talking, but we are also talking about the cultural aspect, the paintings, the whatever. But it's really what's animating, you know, these structures. I look at religions and think of religions as the most sophisticated attempts to persuade and change the inner life of humans. Art also tries to do this, but it's so much weaker. Largely because in post-romantic art, the artist is a lone creator. They don't, they're not trying to build a church. They're not trying to build a movement. It's just them. And they have their own utterances. And that's fine. But it's going to be weak in the world, in a noisy world.
我想对那个群体说，看看这些结构，因为它们真的非常有趣。你可能以为因为你不相信，所以这些结构与你无关。但实际上，这里面有很多事情是你需要了解的。我们不仅谈论这些结构，我们还在谈及其文化方面，比如绘画之类的。但真正引人入胜的是这些结构内部的活力。我看待宗教时，认为宗教是最复杂的试图说服并改变人类内心生活的方式。艺术也试图做到这一点，但在这方面显得弱很多。主要是因为在浪漫主义之后，艺术家通常是孤独的创造者。他们不试图建立教堂或一场运动，而是仅仅表达他们自己的想法。这没问题，但在这个嘈杂的世界中，这种方式显得有些薄弱。
So what we really have nowadays are corporations who know how to amplify their messages and lone creators who are tiny next to the messages of these corporations. And in the olden world, we had religions. I mean, of course, we still have religions, but, you know, we're not creating new religions. Sometimes we are. But at the height of the creative potential of many religions, there was this idea of using art, architecture, poetry, fashion, smells, locations, et cetera, to amplify a message. And I'm very interested in that. Well, one of the through lines of this conversation of your work and this particular topic, the word that's coming to mind is enchantedness. And we live in an age of disenchantment. And part of an age of disenchantment is a time when logic and reason and things that we can point a cause and effect to, those are the things that we value and trust.
所以，如今我们实际上看到的是公司知道如何放大他们的信息，而单个创作者在这些公司信息面前显得非常渺小。过去的世界里，我们有宗教。当然，现在我们仍然有宗教，但是你知道，我们不再创造新的宗教，有时也会有例外。在许多宗教创作力巅峰的时候，人们常常利用艺术、建筑、诗歌、时尚、气味、地点等来放大一个信息。这让我非常感兴趣。在这个关于你作品和这个话题的对话中，一个贯穿始终的概念是“魅力”。我们生活在一个失去魅力的时代。在这个时代，逻辑和理性以及那些我们可以找出因果关系的事物，是我们所重视和信任的。
And what I see you doing, talking about here, but also doing just in the way that you speak is, I'm sorry for this word, mining, because you're doing something far richer than that. But mining is what came to mind, like mining these more ancient philosophies, sort of bathing in how they think. And then I think that a lot of the reason why your work resonates with actually non-believers, people who are atheists, is because they're feeling that enchantment so that when I say, hey, I'm interviewing Alain de Botton, you know, usually people are like, cool. And you're one of the people where people are like, wow, you know, that person had an impact on me. They spoke to my heart because the tools of enchantment are the things that sort of seep past the gates of the rational mind.
我看到你在做的事情，不仅是在谈论这些内容，也是在你说话的方式中体现出来的。我对不起用了“挖掘”这个词，因为你实际上做的比这要丰富得多。但“挖掘”这个词浮现在我脑海，像是在挖掘这些古老的哲学，沉浸在它们的思维方式中。我认为你的作品之所以能够引起很多非信徒，甚至是无神论者的共鸣，是因为他们感受到了那种魔力。所以当我说“嘿，我要采访阿兰·德波顿”时，人们通常会觉得，“太好了。”而你是那种让人们觉得，“哇，那个人对我有影响，他们触动了我的内心。”因为魔力的工具能够渗透过理性思维的屏障。
Yeah. I mean, you know, and that's the most wonderful thing about religions. They're alive to what gets called the numinous or mystery, mysterium tremendum. You know, the German theologian invented this term to capture the idea of the religious mindset being open to things that transcend the understanding, ordinary understanding, the thing you're supposed to understand. And we all have intimations of this. I mean, look, the night sky is the, you know, and the great thing about the night sky is it's there every night. But my goodness, we're not picking up on the resonances of the night sky. I mean, the night sky has got all sorts of things to tell us. You know, a clear night sky is a challenge to everything.
是的，我的意思是，你知道，这就是宗教最奇妙的地方。宗教能够感受到那种被称为神秘或神秘震撼的东西。你知道，德国神学家发明了这个词来描述宗教思维对理解之外的事物的开放性，这些是我们应该理解但超越普通理解的东西。我们都对此有一些隐约的感觉。看，夜空就是这种神秘感的体现，让人惊叹的是，每天晚上它都在那里。然而，我们却没有领会到夜空带来的各种共鸣。实际上，夜空有许多东西可以告诉我们。一片清澈的夜空对一切都是一种挑战。
I mean, if we really took on board what that night sky is telling us, we'd have to lie down and just question absolutely everything. Because twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky, that is, kids can feel that enjoyment. How I wonder what you are. Wow. But, but yeah, it's wonder. And I mean, you know, we've let the scientists take over that area and scientists can build planetariums and they want to tell us exactly how many moons Saturn has and exactly the distance between, you know, Pluto and, you know, some next galaxy. Fair enough, these guys are sometimes doing great work, but most of us don't care about the stars from that point of view.
意思是说，如果我们真的认真思考夜空所传达的信息，我们可能会躺下来，质疑一切。因为"一闪一闪亮晶晶，满天都是小星星"这样的童谣，孩子们可以从中感受到快乐和好奇。科学家们确实研究得很深入，他们建天文馆，并且能够告诉我们土星有多少颗卫星，以及冥王星到某个星系的距离。这些研究成果当然很了不起，但实际上，大多数人对星星并不关心这些具体的数据和事实。
We care about the night sky in terms of reorienting us as human beings and reminding us that the earthly priorities and the priorities of the thing that's a meter ahead of you is only one part of existence and that it's just a permanent reminder of otherness. And I think this is what, it's what we always forget, that our own minds and thoughts are only one part of this giant, you know, thing that we could be thinking about. Every time we travel, every time we land in a foreign destination, we're like, oh my God, the world's so strange. I was in one place at one time and now we're in another place. And here's a guy reading a newspaper by a palm tree and I didn't know that they existed, that palm tree existed, that newspaper existed, that font existed.
我们关注夜空，因为它能够重新定位我们作为人类的存在，并提醒我们地球上的优先事项以及面前一米的事物的优先性只是存在的一部分，它是对“他者”这个概念的永久提醒。我认为这正是我们经常忘记的：我们的思想和思维只是可以思考的这个巨大世界的一部分。每次我们旅行，每次我们到达一个陌生的地方时，我们都会感叹世界的奇妙。我曾在某个地方，而现在我们又到了另一个地方。在这里，有人在棕榈树下看报纸，而我不知道棕榈树、那份报纸、甚至那种字体的存在。
What's going on? The world is so amazing, beautiful, strange, et cetera. And suddenly we're jolted out of habit. But most of the time, habit, you know, we're living under the habit. So art is the most, it's a stabilized form of dislocation. It's a way of seeing beyond habit at the true mystery and strangeness and beauty and pain of everything. How does AI factor into your writing, reading process? You're like, I hate that. Or you're like, wow, I use it all the time. Where are you at? I don't really use it in my writing, but I use it as a therapist, which is quite strange because I'm actually a trained psychotherapist. I am a psychotherapist. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. I practiced one day a week. I did a training a few years ago. And so it's quite strange that I would say, you know, I think it's pretty good at taking fragments of, you know, interpersonal psychology. And especially if you prompt it right, teasing out certain resonances that are pretty good. So I think it's good at that.
发生了什么？这个世界如此神奇、美丽、奇特等等。突然之间，我们被习惯中断带出的震惊。但大多数时候，我们都生活在习惯之中。而艺术是最稳定的“脱离”的形式。它是一种超越习惯来看待事物真正的神秘、奇特、美丽和痛苦的方式。那么人工智能是如何影响你的写作和阅读过程的呢？你是讨厌它，还是觉得它很棒，天天使用？你现在处于什么状态？我其实不太在写作中使用它，但我把它当作一个治疗师来使用，这还挺奇怪的，因为我其实是个受过训练的心理治疗师。我确实是一名心理治疗师。哦，我不知道这一点。是的，我每周工作一天，几年前进行了有关的培训。所以说这种情况很奇怪，我认为人工智能在处理人际心理的片段方面相当不错。特别是在提示得当时，它能很好地解读出某些共鸣。所以我认为在这一点上它很有作用。
I think it's, look, it has awesome powers. Any creative person will be asking themselves, okay, is the game up or do I have anything to contribute? And the good news is, I mean, the good news is that it really forces you to do that thing that you should always have been doing as an artist, which is stop doing what you're supposed to do, do what you really want to do, be really honest, explore your own experience with renewed honesty. Because the AI only provides a summation of what has already been thought and said. Yes, it can be recombined, et cetera. But essentially, it's giving you standardized answers, sometimes very good standardized answers. Sometimes standard answers are great and way in advance of what you would know yourself. But sometimes there are still bits of our own minds that remain distinctive. But the pressure is on creatives to further up their level of self-exploration to get ahead of this machine.
我觉得，这个东西，应该说，它有强大的能力。任何有创意的人都会问自己，好了，游戏结束了吗，还是我还有什么可以贡献的？好消息是，这确实促使你去做一件你作为艺术家始终应该做的事情，就是停止做那些你觉得应该做的事情，去做你真正想做的事情，真正诚实地去探索自己的经历。因为人工智能只能提供已经被思考和表达过的东西的总结。是的，它可以重新组合，等等。但基本上，它给你的是标准化的答案，有时是非常好的标准答案。有时候，标准答案很好，甚至远远超出你自己所知道的。但是有时我们的思维仍然有一些独特之处。但是，对创作者而言，压力在于要更深入地自我探索，以在这台机器面前领先。
Why don't you use it in your writing? Look, I use it for bits of research, provide me with where is there a cafe that looks like this, or is there a painting that was, you know, blah, blah, blah. But if I said to it, if I was going to write an essay on nostalgia, and I said, okay, so I said to AI, right, structure me an essay on nostalgia. In the style of. In the style of me. In the style of me, right? It would do a perfectly decent job. But it wouldn't be picking up on why I'm a writer, why I want to be a writer. I mean, I don't just want to be a writer to produce a certain number of words. I want to be a writer in order to honor certain feelings. And AI can't know those feelings, because it's not me. So it doesn't know what I really want to say.
为什么不在写作中使用它呢？你看，我可以用它进行一些小的研究，找出哪里有像这样的咖啡馆，或者有没有一幅类似这样主题的画作。但如果我对它说，我要写一篇关于怀旧的文章，然后对AI说，帮我构思一篇关于怀旧的文章，以我的风格来写。它会做得很好。但它无法理解我为什么要成为一个作家，我想成为作家的原因。我不仅仅是想写出一定数量的文字，而是想通过写作来表达某些情感。而AI无法理解这些情感，因为它不是我，所以它不知道我真正想说的是什么。
And if I simply give it over to AI, it will crush my nascent sense, my intuition about what it is that I want to say. So, I mean, sometimes, you know, I actually don't tend to do this, but one could, you know, I'd rather write the essay and then go, right, now I'm going to ask AI to see if I've missed out anything. Oh, yes, I've missed out something. Let me go back and add something that, you know, the generic had some insight that I wasn't picking up on. But normally, I can't be bothered to change it anymore. It's like, it was what it was. It was what I thought. I'm not trying to, again, write a Wikipedia article on a topic. I'm trying to honor my own state of mind. So I've got a more selfish project. I don't want to know what everybody thinks or what the last word is. I want to try and do justice to what I happen to be feeling.
如果我只是把这件事交给AI，它将扼杀我刚刚萌芽的感觉和我想表达的直觉。所以，我的意思是，有时候，我不太倾向于这样做，但有些人会选择这么做，我宁愿先自己写一篇文章，然后再请AI看看我是否遗漏了什么。哦，对，我确实漏掉了一些内容。让我回去添加一些AI提供的我没有想到的见解。不过通常，我懒得再去改了。文章就是当时的样子，就是我的想法。我不是在试图写一篇关于某个主题的维基百科文章，而是想忠实于我自己的思维状态。所以这对我来说是一个更自我的项目。我不想知道大家的想法或最后的定论。我只想努力忠实于我当下的感受。
If I invited you to a university and I were to say, all right, this is your class of writers. You're going to do a semester to teach writing. How would you structure that curriculum? What would you tell them? This is what I've learned. This is what you need to know from my experience about how to be a writer. First, I'd really want to play around with the notion of what it means to be a writer. What's the kind of book that a writer writes? And I'd really want to see whether they are being oppressed by a notion of a kind of literature that they're supposed to write. I'd also explore whether they, you know, what it is that made them want to be a writer. You know, because maybe they shouldn't be a writer. Maybe they should be a something else or could be a something else, something easier, something more fun. It's not that great fun to be a writer.
如果我邀请你到一所大学，并对你说，好，这就是你的写作班。你将教授一个学期的写作课程。你会如何设计课程结构？你会告诉他们什么呢？这是我所学到的，这是根据我的经验你们需要了解的关于如何成为作家的内容。首先，我会很想探讨成为作家的意义。作家应该写什么样的书？我会想看看他们是否被某种他们“应该”写的文学观念所限制。我还会探讨是什么让他们想成为作家。也许他们不应该成为作家，可能他们适合做别的事情，也许是更简单，更有趣的事情。成为作家并不总是那么有趣。
You know, so just to explore where that career ambition kind of came from. I think I want to look at that. We might want to have fun with, you know, introspection, introspective exercises, trying to, you know, you talk about sort of downloading the brain after every day. You know, I think those exercises are very fascinating. You know, let's all go to have an experience. Let's all go to the park.
你知道，就是想探讨一下这个职业抱负是从哪里来的。我想要研究一下这个问题。我们可以在内省这个过程中找点乐趣，比如尝试一些内省的练习，类似你们所说的每天对大脑内容进行记录和整理。我觉得这些练习非常有趣。我们也可以一起去体验一下，比如一起去公园。
Let's see the same thing. And then let's all reflect on it in our own way. Maybe do an exercise where we try and describe what we think we're supposed to say about a visit to the park. Let's do the objective visit to the park. And then we say, what was really going on in your mind? Which might have absolutely nothing to the park. Maybe you're thinking about something completely different. Just to show that contrast between the supposed and the inner thing.
让我们一起去看同一件事情。然后，各自用自己的方式来反思它。可以试着做个练习，比如描述一下我们认为自己应该在访问公园时说些什么。先描述一下客观的公园之行，然后说说你心里真正想的是什么。也许这和公园毫无关系，可能你在想着完全不同的事情。这是为了展示所谓的想法和内心真实想法之间的对比。
So to flex that sort of inner muscle. I'd essentially want to try and awaken or further develop students' relationship to their, what you might call, inner voice. Or fragments of authentic feeling. What Emerson was calling neglected thoughts. You know, so they become more attentive to the neglected thought. It was really striking, even in that answer.
为了锻炼这种内在的能力，我想尝试唤醒或进一步发展学生们与他们所谓的内心声音的联系，或是那些真实情感的片段。爱默生称之为被忽视的想法。我希望学生们能更加关注这些被忽视的想法。在那次回答中，这一点真的很引人注目。
You didn't mention any of the things that we learned in school. You didn't mention grammar. You didn't mention syntax. You mentioned the authenticity of feeling. The difference between what you're supposed to feel and what you actually feel. And then you start off with, like, why do you want to do this in the first place? That's not how most people talk about teaching writing.
你没有提到我们在学校学的任何东西。你没有提到语法，也没有提到句法。你提到了感觉的真实，即应当感受到的和实际感受到的区别。然后你开始问，比如，为什么你一开始想要这样做。这不是大多数人谈论如何教授写作的方式。
No surprise that I've never been asked to teach. Thanks, man. Such a cool person to talk to. Thank you so much for doing this. That was, what a joy. What a joy. Thank you for coming on. Thank you. What a pleasure.
难怪没人找我去教课。谢谢你，哥们。和你聊天真好。非常感谢你做这件事。真是太高兴了。太高兴了。感谢你的到来。谢谢。这真是太愉快了。