What I Thought About Mr. Turner

The night before last my hubby and I watched Mr. Turner. I knew it was critically acclaimed and about the mid-nineteenth century painter JMW Turner. While I couldn’t have named any of Turner’s paintings beforehand (and not really even now) I was familiar with his style and I liked it enough to remember the spirit of his work if not the specifics.

The things I liked about the movie: Timothy Spall’s performance was excellent, his grunts and mumblings were so expressive that you knew what he was saying even if you couldn’t understand it completely. And the cinematography was beautiful! There were specific vignettes that just had the feel of a painting (and in some cases were drawn from Turner’s actual works) and the color, light, and costumes were just so mood setting.

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament [detail: 1] Painted by: Joseph Mallord William Turner Location: Philadelphia Museum Of Art, Philadelphia, PA courtesy of http://www.william-turner.org

What I wished there was more of: a cohesive plot. I got the jist of Turner’s life, but it was definitely from the perspective of an outsider observing it. There was no sense of his motivations, plus I would’ve liked to see more of his painting. I did like that Timpothy Spall learned to paint for this role (according to his interview on Graham Norton’s talk show), but it would be cool to see him more in the moment.

All in all I’d recommend this movie. Turner was at times abrasive and he didn’t seem to have done right by either his ex lover or his housekeeper, but the relationship with his father, his fall from the Academy’s graces, and just the sheer beauty of the film give a round enough picture of him to make it worth it.

Moonwalking with Einstein

Joshua Foer – National Book Festival – 2011 (Photo credit: squeakychu)

The other day I mentioned I was reading this book, Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. It turns out that it doesn’t really teach you ways to improve your memory, even with the subtitle: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Though it does touch on the memory palace technique that I knew about before. It’s really more about what the author learned while training for the US Memory Championship.

He talked a lot about memory through the ages and especially about the differences in reading and learning pre- and post-Gutenberg. But what really stuck out for me were the passages on experts.

Foer mentions the old 10,000 hours rule at the beginning of the book. But he goes further into the making of an expert. It’s not just putting in the time. It’s learning something so thoroughly that it seems to become instinctual. And those 10,000 hours? Those are 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice.”

Top achievers do three things to keep improving: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented, and getting constant and immediate feedback on their performance. You have to consciously push yourself past the “OK Plateau.” That means you have to be aware of your concentration, you have to stay vigilant instead of zoning out. You must be present in your practice.

I went into this book looking for techniques to help improve my memory. What I got instead were techniques to improve my metalwork. It’s helped bring my determination and inspiration back (which always seem to flag this time of year.) I enjoyed the book and it was really interesting to follow one man’s journey in becoming an expert (or at least a champion.) Now, if only I could remember what it was I was going to do next…

Related articles

• How to train your mind to remember anything (cnn.com)