Ivan Hernandez Quintela
At some point, I convinced myself that I had enough interesting phrases marked in one, two, three, a dozen, two dozen books to make a book of books, a notation book where I would write all the phrases I had underlined during my readings. It takes about a year of reading to fill one out. The first page of the notation book I reserve to list the books notated. I use my date stamp to mark when I begin not to read the book, but when I begin to take notes from the particular book. Then I write down the author and then the title. When I begin to write down the underlined parts of a particular book, I find particular patterns about that book I had not realised while just reading it, whether they are short phrases, isolated words, or long and entire paragraphs. While reading the book for the first time, the lines feel isolated, almost an interruption to the flow of reading. But by making note of them, they begin to build a new thread, often finding particular words that repeat from one phrase to another. When that happens, I underline my own text to make evident that repetition. So words like body , space , drawing , chance , play , territory , field , landscape , tools , machines seem to occur over and over in what I find interesting in my readings. At times, I find that re-writing the phrase I found interesting is not enough to remember it. Sometimes, not nearly enough, I try to draw out the idea within the phrase. Sometimes, I sketch the sculpture, building or frame of the film I could not underline in the book.
In Spanish, to take notes is anotar . I like the verb because it contains notar , which means to notice something or put attention to something. I think, therefore, that in the act of notation there is implicitly an extra effort to pay attention to it – to the act of reading and to the reading itself. ( a ) notar – to take notes, is to notice or pay attention to the readings themselves. I mark, underline, and notate my books to try to understand them better and through it I feel myself marked by them.
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator