Dear L,

Today morning, right when I woke up, my first thought was RISC-V. The second thought was Brian Eno. I got up and instead of putting on the radio; I put on one of Brian Eno’s new albums, Lateral. I am not very familiar with Brian Eno’s work. I am also not very familiar with RISC-V. These are objects living in my mind, objects that haven’t materialised much, but has a vague shape. Its qualities aren’t tangible yet, its shape yearning to be discovered.

The first Brian Eno album that I ever heard is Ambient 1: Music for Airports. The name trivialises the music the album holds. It made me wonder why Brian Eno chose to name it the same way a commodity is sold; liquid for glass cleaning, it usually says on the bottle. It makes me wonder whether the album was released on other mediums, such as a reel to reel, that can actually be played on an airport. I wonder if Heathrow Airport ever played his music. The music itself stayed almost irrelevant in my mind. Why didn’t the man choose to name his albums same way The Flying Lotus names his album. Cosmogramma, for example, is a deconstructed questionnaire for the cosmologically inclined; That album name is grand! What does that tell me about Brian Eno? Is that man so very laid back that he named his album Ambient 1, as in the genre. Much like Aphex Twin names his songs akin to glitched computer filenames. Almost as if there is no need to put a title. Brian Eno's newer work has names one can somewhat hold on to, Lateral, Luminal and so on. Not as grand as Cosmogramma, but still, Music for Airports?!

While his music kept playing, I went on to reading the documentation for RISC-V, as one does. It's a computer architecture, that is relatively recent, handmade, and becoming more and more popular. Reading about RISC-V is a little bit like reading a rule book of a board game; and it is very enjoyable because it's practically useless to me, maybe one day I'll play the RISC-V game for an hour and never again. But practically speaking, most likely, I will never need to interact with a computer at a level where it's RISC-V-ness matters. I wondered if I was trying to imitate Brian Eno, trivialising my time to read about something that's so very useless, to me. Morning Read: Instruction set of a RISC-V computer.

I think I want to title episodes of my time and I think it should at least be named like Brian Eno's album names. Coffee: Activity before breakfast, Writing: Something to do on the phone, Books: Ways to rearrange it, Vacuum Cleaner: Leave the corners alone. Naming is one way to not rot1, I suppose. Or, I could write field notes like Aphex Twin songs,

  • Sunday, 1100: How difficult would it be to write a CHIP-8 interpreter?.
  • Sunday, 2300: RISC-V looks more interesting.
  • Tuesday, 1030: Learned to relegate control to the operating system with ECALL, still need to figure out the return pointer2.

Probably means nothing to you, but I would get to lay back and leave the questioning to you...

Once my time is named, it would be like writing chapters with my time. When I see field notes and diaries from folks who published parts3 of theirs, from the forests of Borneo, or a journey through Antarctica, I find those so very interesting; Even the idea of field notes is so very exciting4! Compare that to mine, during my time, most of what I delve in is obscure, niche, or both. It's a type of loneliness that I am familiar with. For the longest time, there were very few people around me to witness what I was doing with my time. Crafting, creating, honing in isolation is doable, but can be difficult and existentially dreadful; which is why doing useful things is with our time is enticing; it is relatable to the world around us. But how does Brian Eno do it? Why does Brian Eno's album name sound like no one is looking for it? Does Brian Eno produce music in isolation? I do not know.

What relative isolation does for an activity or piece of work? Does it put one at ease or makes them anxious? The simplest answer would be it depends, but at this point I am a little tired of the cult of depends. Also taking a stance is one of my new hobbies.

Deep work in isolation is anxiety inducing5, specially if the pathway isn't clear. It's like stumbling in the dark, but no one hears you groaning. Recently, I had a little discussion about flow with a friend of mine; and it dawned on me that if one is not in a state of flow, which is rarer than I wish for it to be, it is categorically better for a human being to be in a community than be isolated. I have grown rather comfortable stumbling in the dark, circumstantially6. But, I am starting to question deep work in isolation.

But isolation is a two-way street; I will blame7 endless content, entertainment, attention economy and social media8, for this. If all my friends were writing letters to me when they are stumbling, or when they are not, I would be more than happy to read, watch & complain with them. I wouldn't be able to solve their problems, but no one would have to groan in the dark. But when do we have time for that when we are thumbing through scrollable clips8? It is also a lot fun to stretch my mind willy nilly. A friend of mine sends me whatever obscure problems he is having with engineering or chemistry projects, and most of the time I barely follow anything. I love to stay up late to listen to another friend of mine speak talk about genetics & reverse transcriptase. I love engaging with all of it because it is so very real coming from friends; gives me a way walk in their worlds, interact with a realm that's not usually mine to walk in; it's a gift of being a human. Who knows what would all the others would say to me if they had the time to sit & tell!

Best, A

  1. An Existential Guide to Making Friends ↩︎
  2. RISC-V Hello World ↩︎
  3. Sometimes comes in form on novels to; such as Mathias Énard's The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers Guild. ↩︎
  4. An entire stationary brand is dedicated to this idea. ↩︎
  5. There are exceptions, obviously. ↩︎
  6. To no one's fault! ↩︎
  7. Another one of my new hobbies. ↩︎
  8. If we are lucky we a tiny glimpse of someone we know, being somewhere. ↩︎