Lungs

While looking through Evernote for references to the word lungs, I came across a couple of quotes from Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens. It's not his best-known novel, and some critics disregard it entirely.  However, the great section in the second half in which the Gordon riots take place is phenomenal reporting.  How Dickens got his facts, and how he built on those, is irrelevant;  this section is amongst the most vivid and violent in the Dickens canon, matching the similar horrors that are written about in A Tale of Two Cities.  

The quote that includes the word lungs is this: Many of those who were banded together to support the religion of their country, even unto death, had never heard a hymn or psalm in all their lives. But these fellows having for the most part strong lungs, and being naturally fond of singing, chanted any ribaldry or nonsense that occurred to them, feeling pretty certain that it would not be detected in the general chorus, and not caring much if it were.

And the next paragraph that I noted when I was reading this has a kind of delightful charm, although it has only a small connection with lungs: It is a familiar expression in describing a great crowd, that a person might have walked upon the people's heads. In this case it was actually done; for a boy who had by some means got among the concourse, and was in imminent danger of suffocation, climbed to the shoulders of a man beside him and walked upon the people's hats and heads into the open street; traversing in his passage the whole length of two staircases and a long gallery.


And having got those out my hair I can focus a little better on the reason I was looking up lungs. I wanted to check what a spirometer was, since they were discussing spirometers at medicaldevicedepot.com.
According to Wikipedia, a spirometer is an apparatus for measuring the volume of air inspired and expired by the lungs. It is a precision differential pressure transducer for the measurements of respiration flow rates. The spirometer records the amount of air and the rate of air that is breathed in and out over a specified period.  

I think those three sentences pretty much say the same thing, but sometimes that's useful if you don't get the hang of it the first time.  I always find it intriguing that, medically, 'inspire' and 'inspired' are used of breathing in, whereas the common use of the words is somewhat different.  We don't think of breathing in when we say we're inspired; at the very least we might think of taking something into ourselves, but it isn't usually breath.  

Ah, the joys of language!

The artist's work

If the artist works only when he feels like it, he's not apt to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration far more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of the artist is to listen to the work, and to go where it tells him to go.

Madeleine L'Engle
Walking on Water

Seth Godin on dealing with ideas

One blogger I read every day (mainly because he sends me a copy of his posts via email - much the best way to get read!) is Seth Godin. I may have mentioned him once or twice before in this blog(!)

Today he has three posts on the go, but the one that really appealed (mainly to my artist-struggling-to-market-his-product-type-person) was the one that starts in this way.

If you've got an idea worth spreading, I hope you'll consider this random assortment of rules. Like all rules, some are made to be broken, but still...

I won't include all the rules here, but here are some of my favourites.

• Waiting for inspiration is another way of saying that you're stalling. You don't wait for inspiration, you command it to appear.
• Don't poll your friends. It's your art, not an election.
• The hard part is finishing, so enjoy the starting part.
• Figure out how long your idea will take to spread, and multiply by 4.
• Think big. Bigger than that.
• Try not to confuse confidence with delusion.
• Surround yourself with encouraging voices and incisive critics. It's okay if they're not the same people. Ignore both camps on occasion.
• Be grateful.