Sense of Place
NNJ Dispatch from 12:51
I'm 17 pages in, and I already need to post from Robert Boynton's The New New Journalism, in an interview with Ted Conover: Do you have any reporting routines you follow when you arrive in a new town?
Conover: I pay a lot of attention to place in my writing, so when I arrive in a new town I try to do what Lawrence Durrell recommended in his essay "Spirit of Place," which is to get still as a needle, as he puts it.
["It is a pit indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values. You do not need a sixth sense for it. It is there if you just close your eyes and breathe softly through your nose; you will hear the whispered message, for all landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper. 'I am watching you--are you watching yourself through me?' Most travelers hurry too much ... the great thing is to try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not too much factual information. To tune in, without reverence, idly--but with real inward attention. It is to be had for the feeling ... you can extract the essence of a place once you know how. If you just get as still as a needle you'll be there."]
Think about what you hear, what you see, what you smell, what you feel. I try to remember that.