Review: The Seven Deadly Chess Sins by Jonathan Rowson

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Seymour

The Seven Deadly Chess SinsThe Seven Deadly Chess Sins by Jonathan Rowson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fascinating analysis of the seven “most common causes of disaster in chess”, Grandmaster Jonathan Rowson’s book, “The Seven Deadly Chess Sins” provides virtually inexhaustible material to provoke thought and study for the serious player.

As a beginner/improver whose ratings bumble around the 1000 mark and who rarely has the patience to play through worked examples, 50% of this book was beyond me. However, it will be returned to over and again in the future and there is enough to fascinate and provoke at any level. Rowson analyses both the psychological and practical outworking of each of the “sins”.

The book is divided into seven sections dealing with problems that are loosely tied to the traditional “Seven Deadly Sins” (Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed, and Sloth).

Thinking – sometimes there is too much of this.

Blinking – lapses of attention that cost too dearly.

Wanting – being too focused on the result.

Materialism – thinking too much in terms of material.

Egoism – missing your opponent’s point of view.

Perfectionism – taking too much time.

Looseness – failing to maintain a grip on the game in front of you.

Each chapter begins with a discussion of the more conceptual and psychological aspects of the game. How does your personality affect your play? What do you see when you look at the board? Is it possible to be objective? How does the Chess Mind work? Are you too attached to certain lines? What is really going on? The discussion is delightfully buoyed up by quotes from Grandmasters and diverse sources such as Kierkegaard, Sartre, De Bono, and the I-Ching. There is a wonderful sense here that Chess is about life and who you are that has much wider implications. This is what really excites me about the game and it blew my mind open to new possibilities and taught me a lot about myself.

The second part of each chapter is given to the worked examples drawn from historic and lesser known matches of over 60 different players. Here Rowson’s encyclopedic breadth of detail guides the reader through the trips and turns that demonstrate each “sin” on the board.

Every chapter is worthy of at least a year’s study and application and it is small wonder it took me a few months to plough through it all. The reader never feels patronised or dictated to as the author has a way of presenting ideas in a way that encourages them to mature and stand on their own feet; to explore and develop through shedding the kind of formulaic mantras that all of us tend to have absorbed. It’s like coming under the tutelage of a Zen master.

This book will remain close to hand, a challenging resource for a lifetime of learning.

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Review: The Man Who Was Magic by Paul Gallico

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Seymour

The Man Who Was Magic The Man Who Was Magic by Paul Gallico
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What would happen if one day a genuine magician with real magic came to a city of illusionists who live entirely in a world of artifice and sleight of hand?

This is one of the very few books that I have read more than once. It left a very deep impression on me the first time round, aged 13 or so, and not just because I got some sort of fictional-character-crush on the girl in the story. It was my first exposure to Paul Gallico’s profound gift for the allegorical and, with hindsight, I have to acknowledge that it must have shaped my impressionable mind in a very significant way.

The fact that first I read this book at a fairly young age demonstrates the universal appeal and accessibility of the writing, but having the opportunity to re-read it nearly 20 years later I found still more delight and depth in the telling of the tale although it was very much shorter than I remember it being. For a book that looms so large in my memory and imagination, I was surprised to re-read it in a single evening.

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Review: The Right to Write by Julia Cameron

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Seymour

The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing LifeThe Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life by Julia Cameron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is well on its way to being a classic and an essential rite of passage for anyone who wants to write for pleasure or professionally.

Julia Cameron has set herself the mission of debunking the myth of “writers” being some special class of human being who must starve in a garret for the sake of their craft and uses her words to gently liberate and nurture the essential writer that she believes lies in every person.

The accumulated wisdom of her years as a working writer and a creative writing teacher is presented in a series of short essays (each just a few pages long) that finish with a practical “initiation tool” to bring the reader to the page with pen in hand.

This book can be approached either as a “writing course” to be worked through over a couple of months, but I suspect it will be of more value as something to dip into as an “unblocking tool” or when inspiration is flagging. If read from cover to cover, like a normal book, the author’s tendency to repeat the same themes tends to lessen their impact and there is no detectable unfolding of a journey that links the chapters; they stand alone. So, it is best considered a collection of essays that meditate upon Julia’s core convictions that the act of writing is for everyone to enjoy and it doesn’t need to be a chore.

Some of the essays really clicked with me, others didn’t seem to meet a felt need directly but may well do for another season. On this reading, I particularly enjoyed Julia’s affirmation of the writer as an observer of things that seem to enter the imagination from another source: the Divine, the Universe, something beyond ourselves. This certainly describes a dimension of my own experience.

Julia’s style is richly evocative of the senses. She always describes where she is as she is writing. She then seems to weave her message from her current experience or whatever is turning over in her mind at the time. Some of her lines have the potential to become proverbs and I found myself copying out numerous quotes into my journal. I did not attempt all of her initiation tools in any sort of disciplined way but used several over the last year and will return to them repeatedly.

The Right to Write has been a good companion over the last year and will bear returning to again, especially on those days when I feel that perhaps I should give up and get a proper job.

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Creative Patronage: how a bit of encouragement changed my life.

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Seymour

Inner TroubadourI was infected with a musical bug around the age of 12, having shown no precocious aptitude for making music. In fact, I recall being sent out of a recorder group for blowing the instrument through my nose when I was about 7 and, although I took violin lessons for a few weeks, nothing really hooked me. However, I have never looked back since a friend of my parents introduced me to the Ukulele and a whole world opened up to me. In small ways, this person’s generosity and encouragement had a disproportionately powerful influence on how I have spent the rest of my life (particularly the hours I have racked up in musical endeavour). It makes me wonder how I might be able to creatively and quietly mentor others.

Some of the things I note about this friend:

  • He treated me as an adult, in spite of my tender age. As far as I can remember, he gave me my first ukulele but as soon as I outgrew it we made an adult arrangement by which I was to pay for a better instrument. The deal was not done through my parents but was contracted between us. He referred to it as doing business, and we even shook hands on it.
  • He took a wider interest in my life. It wasn’t just all about the ukulele, but also about flying kites and climbing trees.
  • He let me teach him. Quite early on I tried finger-picking on the uke. When I showed this to him he showed enthusiasm and let me teach him what I had figured out. He let me know when things I was into (like Jelly Roll Morton’s music) had fired his interest, too. He didn’t have to be the expert on things, just a fellow explorer.
  • He let me initiate. He had an openness that made me feel comfortable about initiating. We corresponded; I didn’t get letters asking “how’s the playing coming on”, but when I wrote asking for more chords or advice, he took the trouble to write back. I had to ask. Often in a teacher-pupil or mentoring relationship, the teacher is expected to be proactive and dictate what the student needs. In this relationship, I had to want the learning enough to ask for it.
  • He made music fun. When I saw him playing the recorder, for instance, I started to change my mind about the bad impression I had of the instrument from an earlier age.

Without being the recipient of this kind of openhanded willingness to encourage a young person, I doubt that music would have taken up such an important place in my life.

I progressed from the ukulele to the Tenor Banjo, I became obsessed with Jazz, I took clarinet lessons when I went to senior school and spent most of my break-times teaching myself the piano. At this stage, I was very much alone, trying to work stuff out by ear and reading all the books I could. However, I am quite convinced that if someone else had come into my life at that point, to act as a mentor in the same way and take me forward as a Jazz musician, life would have been very different once again. I can’t indulge in regrets, but I do often wonder what would have happened with a little more relational encouragement at this point.

Is there someone you know who needs a little bit of your unobtrusive and generous encouragement at a key moment in their creative growth?

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The Wisdom of Things Found 2: Root Man

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Seymour

July 2011, in My Garden

A root that looks like a person

"try to see beyond my ugliness"

Root Man was found in the bottom of a flowerpot that I was emptying into the compost. To be honest, he gave me a bit of a fright when I first saw his grotesque figure. He put me in mind of the legendary mandrake root that is supposed to look too human for comfort and is alleged to scream when you pull it out of the ground. But, Root Man is a miracle of natural anthropomorphism and also reminds me of our tendency to see ourselves reflected in nature, and our constant search for our own likeness in others.

Well, when I let Root Man speak for himself he told me some crazy stuff. He said that our time on this earth is like his life in the soil but that that is not the whole story.

He told me that, as far as moles or earthworms are concerned, a dandelion looks like its roots, they don’t see the flower. We recognise a plant by its leaves, fruit and flowers but the subterranean world distinguishes between the mysterious characteristics of roots.

If you showed an earthworm a daffodil, it would be blinded by the magnificent colour and shape but it would say to you, “that’s not a daffodil, a daffodil is brown and bulbous with stringy tendrils coming off it”. Likewise, we have no idea how angels (for instance) see us on the other side, because all we see of ourselves and others is the root part.

“So…” concluded Root Man, “when you look at people around you, try to see beyond the muddiness and twistyness. This is not what I am. I am actually a red geranium!”

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A Poem: As Long as Life Beats

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Seymour

As I have been delving recently into a tattered folder of over 50 poems I wrote between 1994 and 2003, I have had a strange sense of reading my own soul’s history. Most of these poems, that I thought were almost perfect at the time, now make me wince and cringe with their sentiments; but they document my own growth during a time when I returned to the page again and again to process the stuff of life. This one is based on parts of The Song of Solomon:

As Long as Life Beats

My arms clutch emptiness
If I wake without the guardians
Of friendship and daylight so I see
I am alone and you have gone

And I take to the streets
To look for you in the places
I'd be comfortable to find you
Speaking vainly to those who should know you 

You may tell me another enigma
You have hidden in your heart
Then walk away into the night
But I'll follow you for an answer

And when you turn your face away
I'll choose the better part
Leaving my place in the firelight
So I can be under your gaze

Eyes without expectation
Eyes that are not disappointed
Those are the eyes I will die for
As many times as leaves have fallen 

Arms that rest in completion
Hands that tell me it has all been done
Those are the arms and the hands I will die in
As many times as day has run

(March 2001)

If you are in the mood for more poetry then I recommend you check out Barbara Lane’s Blog, “this | liminality”, where she is posting some of her dad’s poetry.

… and there’s more of my stuff here.

Other flowers:

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