Most everyday life rituals are improved if you simply slow yourself down.
Arriving home after the demanding pace of a day at work, stuffing dinner hurriedly into your face, sitting down for whatever your chosen evenings activity is. In that mentally hyped up state you find yourself still trying to multi task even in your home life. Its great on the quantity of what you achieve at the expense of the quality. So watch a frenetically paced action movie or TV programme, whilst constantly monitoring your social media feed, talking to your kids or partner with music playing intrusively in the background. Which of these are you giving your attention to? All of them? Does this sensory overload ever stop? And we wonder why we don't sleep well, remain tired and stressed out in the morning. The multi tasking rituals of both our days and nights are all being carried out at the same driven pace. With no time off.
You would think reading a book was the one thing that could provide that time off. Yet the moment you pick up a book to read, some unresolved issue pops into your mind. So once you sit down to read acknowledge there will always be things left on your 'to do' task list. Few of them need urgently addressing right now. The more attention you give them the more the restlessness will breed, mostly to the violin accompaniment of anxiety and stress.
Turn everything else off - do one thing
The ritualised power of literature, music and drama is that, given the right conditions, they take your mind, emotions and sense for your soul, imaginatively somewhere else. To do this effectively they need to have your complete and undivided attention. It takes a concerted willed level of effort these days to put ones tablet to one side, turn off any TV, radio or background music and read. To create the conditions in which to do just the one thing. By keeping our senses in a flurry of spinning plates, at all times, are we unconsciously creating distractions that keep us at a distance from deepening our experience of engagement?
What do you read from?
I do possess a kindle and a tablet. Their capacity, lightness and portability is convenient, particularly when travelling. But lets stop for a moment to consider what the consequences are of everything happening through one device. There is no separation or demarcation of one activity from another. It's a bit like living and interacting all the time within the same room. As though the way you perceive the world has only a single window through which it can be viewed. Zoom or screen fatigue seem to be examples of what happens to us when we see everything constantly through the same restricted sensory viewpoint. We become wired and alienated from ourselves.
This type of tech inherently cultivates a shorter attention span. It makes it far too easy to flip from the novel you are reading, to just check your emails, Instagram, or who has posted on social media recently. It allows you to respond immediately to associative connections that pop up in our mind anyway. Its a medium with built in algorithms for distraction. Before you know it you've spent two hours scrolling through quite inconsequential dross on the internet. The plot of the novel you were reading is long forgotten. Your devotion to just reading a book, as any repeatedly interrupted ritual would, loses its power to hold your interest.
Over time I found kindle/tablet use emotionally disconnected me from the act of enjoying reading. Instances of my reading or even finishing a book noticeably diminished. A book on kindle/tablet can feel very transient, you can even switch it off like a light. One click and its as if you never read it, its no longer there. The book and the author become a bit anonymous. It vanishes from your conscious awareness far too easily.
Hold a physical book
A kindle or tablet has the weight of a wallet, the cold sensory anonymity of plastic sitting in your hand. There is an important physical ritual in the experience of holding and opening an actual book. It has a distinct cover that illustrates something about what lies within. It opens up to reveal a whole world contained within it. Hardback or paperback books have a weight and solidity to them, they feel substantial. A physical book sits on a bedside table or a shelf, reminding you of the experience of reading it.
Reading is as much a tactile experience, as an imaginative one. The warmth of a book in your hands, as you turn actual paper pages, you understand on a physical level where you are within the book. There is a bookmark, page numbers, to visibly mark your progress. You possess it. You connect with it as an object of love, desire and appreciation. You underline favourite passages, make marginal notes.
That there has recently been a boom in people buying hardback books. maybe in part as a reaction to the bland non descript nature of reading on electronic devices. I've returned to buying physical books, from a local bookshop. All the browsing, the choosing, the purchasing, is a great preliminary ritual adventure that precedes and adds to the eventual pleasure of reading the book.
A bookshop can order you anything they don't have in store. I know its a bit counter to the instant gratification zeitgeist of our age, but having to wait for something to arrive builds through anticipation the pleasure for when it does. Bookshops are also socially enjoyable, getting to know the shop owners a little as people. To develop a relationship with them and their bookshop as a place to visit.
This is contingent on having the surplus cash to buy new books, which I do at present. But there are still libraries and second hand stores should you wish to be more economical or ecologically minded over where you source your reading matter.
When & how you read
All books require the arising of the apposite moment for them to be read. Don't force it, never think you ought to read anything. I've had many a dispiriting experiences of persisting in reading a book I'm just not enjoying, or in the mood for. This can turn the act of reading into a dogged experience of stoically sticking with it through to the bitter end. It makes reading a ritual emptied of all its magical properties. So be aware of when reading a book is becoming an act of endurance, and not pleasure. You are not a failure as a person if a book fails to float your boat.
Any book needs the time and the space in which to work its magic upon you. The aftermath of reading on a kindle meant I got used to reading as a cheap, but effective, soporific before sleep. Five, maybe ten minutes max and then the head would hit the pillow. Reading as a nightcap is OK, though it doesn't suit every book. Complex plots or unusually densely structured novels don't work as bedtime reading. Ones with short episodic chapters are better. Its generally best to recognise from the outset what a book will require of you attention wise. Some books need ample amounts of time, the space in which to absorb your attention. To become slowly drawn into the world it is describing, and begin to live in it imaginatively.
Be aware if you find yourself clock watching, or counting the number of pages you've read. How much more till you reach the end?. Reading a book is not a mission, a time and motion survey, or on a tick list of daily life achievements. When truly in the world of a novel, or when writing, listening or watching anything, you can be transported to a space where time does not figure in quite the same way anymore. Time will fly by largely unnoticed. This relieves any pressure you may feel you are under. You do have to surrender yourself to reading. If you in anyway turn reading into a stressful activity, its ablility to relax or take you out of yourself will be diminished. Impatience will rob you of the benefit of time off.
What you read
What you read has to be something you are interested in reading. I prefer to read a book whilst my interest in a subject is peaked. Like my music choices, I enjoy following up on lines of inquiry and pursuing these interests whilst they are still alive for me. Philosophical, Poetic, Pulp, Classic or spiritual. Be aware of how much you are up for. A thumping great 600 page Hilary Mantel is quite a commitment, the chapters long and detailed, this type of book can feel herculean. Perhaps a Louis de Berniere, Armistead Maupin or Matt Haig might be more suitable, shorter chapters, narratives that move on quickly at a pace, where you can easily adjust the amount you read. A light literary stroll can sometimes just be more manageable, and hence enjoyable, than strenuous intellectual mountain climbing.
What you read may not be a novel. It might be poetry, history, psychology or an art book. I love a good autobiography or biography, but not all the time. A factual informative book occasionally. If I get a bit imaginatively dry an art or poetry book can set my creative synapses sparking again. Through past experience I've developed more of an intuitive sense for what it is I want or need to read at any one time.
Where you read
Where you are when you read is important. In bed may work, but as I've said it has its dangers of reading only being this brief ritual nightcap before slumber. But then we don't know what effect this may have upon the richness of your dreams. Where you read can vary according to the season. In the autumn and winter snuggled up in a cosy armchair in front of a real fire can be exactly the right surroundings. In the spring and summer, perhaps an outdoor seat in your garden. Or you take a walk to your favourite park, wood or bit of the coast, sit down there and read. I've found even being alone in a bustling but convivial cafe can aid concentration and absorption. Sometimes with a very good book you can become so completely absorbed in it despite the supposedly unfavourable circumstances.
Reading out loud
In the early days when humankind was moving from an oral to a written story culture, the written, carved or printed words were considered inanimate until they were spoken. Speaking brought words to life. If the texts were sacred spiritual ones, chanting or reciting them in a temple or church was a ritual central to engaging with their meaning and purpose. Speaking words aloud invoked an immediate alive connection with the sacred.
I find with poetry in particular, that the words and their meaning become so much more tangibly alive once I hear them out loud, vibrating in my larynx, vocalised sounds reverberating in a room. Sotto voce or silently to oneself doesn't quite give you enough of a physical sense for their real power. You can read a Shakespeare play, but its only when you read it out loud or see someone else perform it, does it reveal more of its depths. To vocalise poetic words throws a pebble into a pond that 'touches the depths before it breaks the surface,' as Gaston Bachlard expressed it. It plucks on the harp of unconscious feeling.
Reading silently to oneself is a relatively recent phenomena. Silent reading to a largely illiterate society was considered rude or selfish. You were fortunate if you were educated and able to read. Books were rare, so you were encouraged to share them by reading them out loud to others. This rekindled the memory of an older communal oral storytelling tradition. When Dickens toured doing public readings, these became a central part of how he connected with his readership. It didn't matter whether you were able to read or not, you could hear the stories being dramatically read onstage by their author.
The way words and conjunctions of words resonate in a space and within us, can touch and move us in unexpected ways. I know it feels to us now an odd thing to do, but it is worth giving reading aloud a try, to yourself indoors or outdoors, or to others if you feel brave enough.
Reading as shamanism
Reading has always possessed this ritual incantation aspect, to summon up mercurial spirits of wonder and inspiration. Reading touches on our roots and ancestry, the demons and angels, the mythic elements that have guided the human spirit of adventure. As we read we reach out to inhabit and shift through the past, present and future. Passing through this world, old and new, other worldly realms, of fantastic alien places. We become one with the muse of an author, their vision becomes our vision, their images become ours, what was once another's imaginative world becomes ours. The ritual of reading can hold us in a trance, right up to the moment we turn the last page, close the book and put it aside.
