Bart Westgeest

Some people argue that there are too many easy distractions in our time. That we are seduced by an bombardment of entertainment on television, the internet and even in books and newspapers. Because of our acceptance of this mostly shallow entertainment we get less interested in more complicated issues, we don’t take the time to [...]

I think, honestly, that of all the things I wrote in the past, like diaries, short stories and poems, I only feel satisfied with about a handful of writings. At the moment that would be perhaps 3 poems and 3 short stories. The older works are not necessarily that bad, but I don’t want them any [...]

There are texts on the internet that are so stupid that they irritate. Maybe we have too many voices. Many are screaming and trying to sound wise and some, probably to attract readers, abandon good sense or judgement. I wish there was a method to exclude rubbish from good things. I suppose there is only one [...]

The article “Litterære manifester for et nyt årti” in the Danish newspaper Informationen gives 9 manifestos of contemporary Danish writers containing their thoughts about literature in the new decennia that we just entered. As always the thoughts are personal and thereby very different from each other. Some don’t believe in manifestos while others write a [...]

This thought was somewhere in between my notes. It is from not too long ago, but I actually can’t remember where I got the inspiration from. It must have been a blogpost somewhere. Life has to be a selvfølge (something obvious, literally: following its self), one does things because one has to. Because it is needed [...]

This post from 43folders.com contains a video with another interesting line of thoughts by Merlin Mann, who thinks about productivity, creativity and the caveats surrounding them. Merlin presents his ideas in a popular way, fast and often funny, but he is serious and dedicated in trying to find out the truth about his subjects. It is another [...]

Hope Gate, Québec ca. 1871, by Louis-Prudent Vallée There are many languages, many words. All spoken languages are prefect because they have been used for centuries. But sometimes there is a word in a language that seems to be unknown in other languages. I looked up the word prudent, as I didn’t know exactly how to define it. According [...]

Imagine a man or a woman who owns the best and most modern television money can buy. A fancy wide screen with surround system sounds.. whatever… Now think that this person watches only one channel, say the first channel that appeared when the television was turned on the first time. A life long, one channel…. We wouldn’t [...]

As you can see from this screenshot from today’s notes I have trouble on concentrating me on one language. When I read Dutch I spontaneously write in Dutch, and the same goes for English and Danish. I don’t really know what to do with this right now, it is not always practical but it happens. To write a [...]

Thomas Nydahl quotes regularly on his blog Occident from Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. Three days ago the quote was about monotony, stating that an existence should be monotonous in order not to be monotonous. When life is lived the same way every day, then every little thing becomes important, and every little change [...]