#5 After Academia: Intentionality and Self-Confidence, or the lack of either
I'm in Milan and a strange few days in Northern Italy's industrial capital induced some irritatingly familiar anxieties
Tuesday morning:
An inauspicious admission to kick off my latest missive: I lost a not inconsiderable chunk of writing that was to the backbone of what you about to read. Often, I’ll venture into tangential aside that don’t make it into a finished piece, but then becomes an article in its own right.
I’d woven a masterly critical detour, deconstructing associations between guilt and productivity, in an Alan Watts inspired, philosophically nuanced, follow-up to last week’s bit on narratives of work. Isn’t always the way? Writing that "disappears” down the digital black hole feels like that singular expression of genius that is lost to the world forever. Okay, maybe that’s slightly narcissistic exaggeration.
Come to think of it, my process of writing is susceptible to such garden-variety digital faux-pas.
I was “certain” I’d created a new draft file and pasted the relevant text in, only to open Substack this morning and spend a good forty-five minutes in an exasperated, but ultimately futile, search.
I’m not sure if it’s a common reaction, but ever since losing an entire chapter of my PhD to a broken hard drive—which resulted in a kind of two-week, semi-depression fuelled by sullen self-recrimination and cheap red wine—I find it impossible to dive back into the same subject after having lost the work. So, that subject is going to have to wait for now.
A swift rethink is necessary.
One might concede that I had a ready-made opportunity to write something of interest, as I’ve been in Milan for most of the week.
That sounds very exotic as I write it. This trip was paid for by some research money I was granted at the beginning of the year. A conference on the history of science fiction cinema and television was supposed to be the point of the visit—I was to show an extract of a video essay on synthesised voices in sci-fi film. But maybe three weeks ago, out of nowhere, the conference was canceled. This was due to, let’s just say, geopolitically inflected reasons.
(I don’t want to get into the minutiae of this right now. The difficult political ethics of public intellectualism in the digital age is a thorny issue that does interest me, but the context isn’t right).
I was in two minds about canceling the trip, but I would have lost the cost of the flight and a good portion of the hotel booking fee. Also, this could be my last excursion abroad for a while. One rarely looks back at travel experiences and thinks they should have stayed home and saved the money.
So, a few days in a hotel in a major city, without the burden of a conference schedule, should be a perfect opportunity to dive into the flow of writing.
As I’ve intimated in a previous blog, mornings are my most productive hours. But I have to adapt this due to sleeping so poorly in hotels. The white noise of air conditioning doesn’t sooth me into dreamland. My strategy is to get to the breakfast early, stake out an anonymous spot, and set up camp for the entire serving period. The room here doesn’t have the brutalist panoramic splendour of the last hotel I stayed at, in Espinho near Porto. But the funky 50s tables here are respectfully distanced, the coffee works, and the continental breakfast covers all my meagre requirements.
Maître d's can be a blessing or a curse. The one here, a tiny, bustling Italiana, exudes efficient friendliness. She recognised my MO and has generously kept me topped up with black coffee all morning. And, yes, if anyone is wondering, I do have a strange fascination with hotel breakfasts.
Then, of course, there is the unbounded potential of the city.
I was hoping to feel a lightness of mood to venture into Milan without the nuisance of obligation. However, along with annoyance of losing my draft blog, I still had to finish the indexing for my book project. Arriving on Saturday, I had planned to spend a couple of hours on the index each day. But after spending an hour on this monotonous necessity on Sunday, I realised there was still a lot to do. Rather than have it on my mind, I decided to power through to the end in one day. By 9pm ish I was done, the file sent.
On Monday, I got out into the city, heading by tram down from my hotel in the north to the Fondazione Prada, a large exhibition space for modern art...
Wait, wait, where am I going with this? Does anyone want to read basic descriptions of me visiting random places, even if they happen to be in Milan?
(I have just deleted three paragraphs that were the beginnings of what, in my mind’s eye, was to be a kind of audio-visual postcard—thoughts and images combining as a sort of irreverent Hemingway-esque literary impression. But this was reading to me as a steaming confluence of banality and pomposity, which lead to a mini-crisis of confidence.)
Is this straying from the tenor of my previous “After Academia” posts? Does it matter that much if it does?
Nowhere does my strain of imposter syndrome avail itself more than in my writing. But I’ve fallen into a bit of mental quicksand here. Perhaps the demon of post-academic life is the challenge of thinking through, but not overthinking.
But coming back around to the writing: I hit on a compromise. I decided to record some voice notes. I wanted the work I’m doing on Substack to embrace various forms. The idea of translating one’s “voice” across mediums is going to be an active requirement anyway. And with the new season of the podcast coming up, a little bit of vocalised rehearsal couldn’t hurt.
So here is a short podcast with more random thoughts about my time in Milan. It’s admittedly somewhat rambling. I do talk a bit about the ups and downs of confidence I’m still managing. And the fact that this trip has been a strange one, not quite syncing up with my frame of mind. So feel free to take it or leave it.
Voice note from Milan:
Something I forgot to add, but did want to mention, is my thinking about the aims and form of this series. There is still a lot percolating at the forefront of my mind regarding academia. With the new academic year upon us, I want to take the opportunity to channel those thoughts and feelings. In a conversation with Neil (my Cinematologists partner) after he read the last blog, he mentioned that he detected a strain of anger—if not explicitly articulated, definitely apparent between the lines. I suppose that is true. But I’m conscious of not letting this become a long-winded version of rage-tweeting.
Thankfully, a few colleagues have said they felt less alone after reading this. Feelings of being gaslit by one’s own institution, and Higher Education as a whole, seem to be shared by many of us.
That would be a good intention and outcome for this stage of the blog. And though I don’t feel like I’m expressly writing this for catharsis, it’s probably implicit, not just in the content, but the very act of writing it. There is so much I still want to unpack, particularly as there are stories coming out regularly about the perilous state of universities as the start of the academic year hoves into view.
Wednesday afternoon:
I’m now having lunch in the Caffé Triennale in central Milan’s Parco Sempione.
A couple of people have said they like the coffee shop situationism I’ve used as the starting point (is that a good title for a podcast?). I don’t know how long I’ll keep it up—maybe until it starts to feel tired, I guess. It’s already something of a default entryway into the writing, a rhetorical tic that needs burning out.
If I lived here, this place would become a regular work spot. A shallow set of steps invites you to the mezzanine floor at the far side of the gallery’s broad foyer. The room is airy and bright, with tremendous plant pots housing palm trees. The relaxed vibe is a welcome change after some not-so-hospitable encounters over the last few days (which I discuss in my audio notes). I know Parisian service has a reputation for ostentatious obnoxiousness, but the Milanese answer to this is a stylish, low-key umbrage, especially if you don’t know exactly what you want straight away.
There’s clearly no pressure to eat and be gone here; I can see various patrons in their noise-cancelled bubbles, jazzing their MacBooks (as am I).
I enjoyed the lunch, too—the Penne Arrabiata lived up to its presentation.
I’ve Walked a good way the last couple of days. Today I stayed in the North of the city and the more hipsterish area of Isola. Then down to the Parco Sempino and round the Castello Sforzesco.
One question has come to mind though. Is it hard to effectively flâneur in the digital age? I’ve felt a psychological contradiction, trying to give oneself up in a joyous, playful way to a state of aimless yet active wandering. But those small electronic tethers so completely define the relationship between thought and action that we may as well have chips implanted in our brains.
Maybe I have to relearn how to do it, which I realize sounds ridiculous.
There is a book on my shelf at home called A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros. I’ll have to put that at the top of the pile—maybe it can be used as an instruction manual.
I decided to set aside thoughts about who’s reading this and what they are thinking. Such things can’t be controlled; you all have the option to stop reading at any point.
Along with that, I remembered that the whole point is to reconnect with the more abstract ways of living a cultural life, and simultaneously write in a more free form way. So here are some hopefully effervescent notes and images from around Milan.
I’m obsessed with transport systems in European cities, especially trams that retain their early modern charm. My first encounter with Milan’s trams immdiately engendered a romantic feeling. The polished wooden seats are hardly comfortable, and the drivers seem to care less about the smoothness of the ride. But old-school charm trumps comfort when one is flâneuring. They have contactless too, so modern functionalism has been added in right way. These rickety beauties seem to only operate only in the north of the city. In the south and east, fiberglass functionalism has won out.
I’ve already done my quota of culturing before getting to the café today. Architect/designer/installation artist Alessandro Mendini has a major retrospective here at the Triennale. A career in which one moves from staid company man to radical postmoderist disruptor is not a bad moniker to have. The models of his mid-period architectural design possess a 60s toyshop quality.
The exhibition focusing on Gae Aulenti, was in interior designer who had obviously influenced much of mid-20th century modernity. It’s so easy to read the Mad Men vibe as a kind of reference point. The symbolic assertions imbue through the ways in which the “object” is placed in context fashioned what we recognise as the highly mediated experience of commercial spaces.
Going back to Monday, my first destination was the Fondazione Strada. I caught a tram into the centre of Milan and then walked south the more retail and industrial streets before turning right left onto Via Giovanni Lorenzini (a biologist and entrepreneur apparently). There was a tremendous amount of building work going on, which gave the Frondazione and even more modernist emphasis. I was somewhat reminded of the Antonioni film Il Deserto Rosso, where Monica Vitta ambles between depersonalised modernist structures and wastelands of rubble.
As much as I might enjoy individual pieces of work in art galleries/ museums the two things that I’m really interested in (a) the space itself. How does the building manifest an experience of being in the space? What does the architecture do to arrange your perspective? How does the integration of an artists work in the space impact on your experience. And (b) how am I affected by the sense of a life’s work, the dedication to craft and expression. Thinking through someone’s commitment to being an artist I do find inspiration, but it also stirs feelings of envy. I wish I’s have understood earlier in my life the idea of a commitment to a calling. Maybe it’s a unique feeling that not everyone has access to.
The main exhibition was dedicated to Pino Pascali. whose work I appreciated, but did love. His sculptures and installations were as much about the strange “feeling” given to familiar objects and surroundings by altering textures, materials and sizes.
"The studio as exhibit" I always find a fascinating genre of arts exhibition.
At the Prada, a recreation of Jean Luc Godard's "atelier" - Le Studio d'Orphee - struck me as the filmmaker trying to construct himself as a living embodiment of cinema. A space suggesting he sees himself not as a mere filmmaker but somehow existing inside the processes of filmmaking. As though he’s more than a figure of cinema, he’s constitutes part of the very concept of cinema. Slightly less esoterically, I always enjoy being reminded of Godard’s affinity for tennis, which he used as a metaphor many times across his filmography.
Probably the most impressive singular piece I saw in Milan was Thomas Demand’s Processo Grottesco. A recreation of a grotto in Majorca designed through a collection of postcards (and other promotional paraphernalia) which you pass at the entrance way. Virtual 3D modelling was then used by the artist to create the depth of layering to create such a precise recreation. The exhibit really draws you into a feeling of being in space, even with the process of the making there in plane sight. Depending how you look, how you focused, the more immersed in the depths of the cave you can become.
Early photo-journalism work, through which the social aesthetics of photography were essentially set in place, is an area that I’ve been interested in since my PhD (indeed I often think what might have been if I’d chosen photography practice for my undergraduate degree). Here are some images from the Robert Capa exhibition at the Diocesan museum, which covers 1932-1954:
My other plan was to visit the San Siro today. But’s a forty minute tram ride and time is getting on. I’m coming back here for a Curtis Harding concert later. The American soul and blues singer is someone I discover a couple of years ago when holidaying in Nice and the Jazz festival happened to be on. I couldn’t believe when I researched what was on in Milan this week and his name popped up.
Thursday morning:
Writing this final note on the train to the airport. The hot weather has comprehensively broken and I got a thorough dousing on the walk to the train station.
Everything I’m carrying is wet through.
I’ve handled this with a certain jour de vivre however, due in no small part to the uplifting evening I had last night at the Curtis Harding gig. His understated lyricism and groove (if a man my age and whiteness can say that) I’m just seem to be “in tune” with. Just joyful to be sonically immersed in his back catalogue, which I’m quite familiar with now, in the sultry air of the Triennale garden.