For a while I lived near Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam. I used to visit a restaurant that did a slow-cooked goat curry that was pretty special. It’s in district 5, which you might also call the ‘Chinese quarter’. People in that area live in very close-built homes, on top of each other, overhanging and in between and behind. It’s interesting to wander through this kind of maze of homes, seeing how intertwined the people were. I took my camera with me there a few times.
Many times in my life I’ve wondered why people do the dumb things we do. Sometimes we seem to work against our own interests, or we want contradictory things. I want to have a restful weekend but I don’t want to miss out on what’s happening. I want to fit in but I also want to stand out. With many things that I do, I sense these conflicts.
A lot of people I know are getting tested for ADHD, but I turned away from practical solutions to philosophy. I had studied a bit about desire – Sartre, and Freud and Jung – but it didn’t click for me until I saw video called ‘You are Two’ (on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/wfYbgdo8e-8). Maybe there is an actual physiological basis for these internal conflicts – not necessarily hemispheres as the video suggests, but perhaps between higher and lower parts of the brain. I have zero evidence or authority to suggest this, but it makes a lot of sense to me and the way I operate.
Twist and Click 