As the year draws to a close, a poem of Lina Bo Bardi has stayed with me since I encountered it in ‘What Freedom Means To Me’ – an inspiring celebration of the multi-screen films of Isaac Julien at Tate Britain, London this summer.
The Italian-born Brazilian architect wrote : ‘Linear time is a western invention; time is not linear, it is a marvellous entanglement where, at any moment, points can be chosen and solutions invented, without beginning or end.’
I like to think of time like this because it encapsulates the need to avoid becoming a slave to deadlines many of which are self imposed.
Taking time is important in order to be open to possibilities and free to improvise.
If a biography is judged solely by its length and detail, then Blake Gopnik’s 900-page doorstopper about Andy Warhol can be safely adjudged to be definitive. But while I have no doubt that the book covers the key facts of the artist’s life, there still seems to be something missing.
Since 2014, I have set and maintained a relatively modest reading target on ‘
