Some Ebert Frisson

I knew my love of obscure quotes from an almost-forgotten 17th Century French mathematician would eventually pay off with some love from Roger Ebert:

Background: Roger Ebert wrote a blog post a few weeks back about frisson, a french word that means a brief intense reaction, usually a feeling of excitement, recognition, or terror. The article was about the internet, our increasingly short attention spans, the rewiring of our brains, and twitter's enablement of our collective and questionable daily search for frissons. In other words, another entry in a great series of blog posts Roger has been cranking out.

This particular post very much resonates with me, as I try to make progress on a book-length project while parenting three kids and constantly getting sidetracked by the daily frissons of the internet. It made me remember one of my favorite quotes by Blaise Pascal, so I included it in a comment to his article. The comment itself got some love by Roger, who made a comment to my comment that sitting quietly has never come easy to him.

He apparently liked the quote enough that he tweeted it.  This was a couple weeks ago.  Just two days ago, I set up a twitter account.  I didn't set it up to enter the world of tweeting, but to verify that, yes indeed, all the things that I told my 15 year-old daughter that she should not say on Facebook, she has instead been saying on Twitter. She calls it "spying on her."  I call it "parenting."  She's a great kid (like all my kids), but we sometimes have generational issues.

Anyway, I was catching up with my friend Pat Gabridge yesterday, and he congratulated me on being "quoted" by Roger Ebert. I had no idea what he was talking about until I searched my shiny, brand new twitter account, and found the quote above. Talk about a frisson.  I knew that being a good parent would eventually pay off. My twitter feed now consists of three people: Roger Ebert, Barack Obama, and my daughter. They are all quite prolific.

Believe me, I understand the multiple layers of irony of this blog post.  I am quoting someone who quoted me in quoting someone else on the topic of spending too much time noticing what everyone else is noticing. On the other hand, it is nice to get a small sliver of notice from someone I admire so much and who is well-known and respected by so many others.  On the other, other hand, this just underscores how addicted I am to the frissonedness of the internet. And why my long, book-length project is going sooooo slowly. After all, it takes time to write about yourself being noticed by someone quoting you quoting someone else.