the choker's alphabet

The CHOKER’S Alphabet
A pulp dictionary for chokers, procrastinators, perfectionists, precedent studiers, disbelievers, and all worriers and stressed students in general


So I have no peroration or clarion note on which to close, Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion: prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others anymore than you would expect others to live for you.

Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian (p.140)



aims - make daily aims, weekly aims, monthly aims, life aims but realise
each day, week, month alters the life aims…

agonise - don’t deny it but don’t even agonise about it, learn how to shift
the agony to the assignment (see problematize)

assignment - begin thinking of an assignment as a task framed by forces outside - then turn it into an enquiry that only you can answer (not someone else, not a professor, not a famous or not-so-famous architect).

astonishment – be open to it always, not only as a challenge but as a way
to move on somewhere else, think something else and think of the ‘other’





boredom - face it, and re-frame it – it’s one of the most important signifiers of
changes about to happen to you.


bloody mindedness - use it until it proves too bloody minded, then
move on and use it again - “So it went on until one year there was no race space on the form. I’d like to claim credit for this, though I probably can’t. I offer you the story, also, as part of my recommendation that one acts bloody-minded as often as the odds are favourable and even sometimes when they are not: it’s good exercise.” Christopher Hitchens.


choke – all people do it, prime ministers, presidents, deans, tennis players, students and graduates - some have more aides and time to cover it up, others have to struggle through it. Get into it early, like a good film sequence, and get out of it early, like a good film cut. And then you’re on your way. Always hang on in there, but not when you are ‘choking’.


cognitive delusion – stubbornly believing so much in your initial position that you make sure you do everything to confirm the position you started at - start as if you can go somewhere else in your mind, without knowing always where this might be, and what it might bring.


career - forget it! “Have a lived life instead of a career: Put yourself in the safekeeping of good taste. Lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses…if you don’t like the style of others, cultivate your own. Get to know the tricks of reproduction, be a self-publisher even in conversation, and then the joy of working can fill your days.” (George Konrad 1987)




compromise - take them whenever you can and use them to sharpen your own position and thinking…they are never quite what you think they are…”it is equally seldom that in a properly conducted argument either antagonist will end up holding exactly the same position as that which he began. Concession, refinements and adjustments will occur, and each initial position will have undergone modification even if it remains ostensibly the ‘same’.” (Hitchens, p.29)
Remember your ‘initial’ positions are not always unmovable either.


Consensus terrorism – see ‘precedent’ until we upgrade this and return to Marcuse and the devastatingly ‘repressive tolerance’ all around us.


cynicism – often passes via gossip and whispering corridors. Don’t ignore complaints about this or that failure, teacher, professor, direction, assignment, studio but analyse these for the power they attempt to fix, and the discourse that wishes not to change. Also “resist the conservative lowball – the cynicism that relishes prophecies such as ”the Poor shall ye always have with ye” as reasons to turn your back on the impoverished here and now…” (Todd Gitlin, p.8) Don’t leave decisions to the cynical, the blind or mean-spirited for they take these decisions just that fraction too readily.


cut and paste – make notes anywhere and everywhere and then ‘import’
anywhere and everywhere as long as it is organised. Make a desktop in your mind, indelible, flexible but strong.


creativity - challenge the notion of creativity today as you see it – if your own idea of creativity is challenged analyse why. Is collaboration an affront to your idea of originality? Are teams non-creative? How much do you still want to own your ideas; and do you ever really own them? ‘Be, be careful’, as my daughter used to say, not just be careful!






cutting edge – remember this is always the stage someone else has reached
and the rest of the world play catch up – suspect but don’t ignore entirely!


desktop – the new metaphor for organising life beyond the screen, life beyond the implant.


deep reading - this doesn’t mean reading underwater but choosing just those texts that you are not speed reading or scanning. When you ‘deep read’ make it count: make notes, try to understand why you are reading, and what is worth knowing from what you are reading.


detachment – necessary for almost everything you do in architecture school. Remember “outsiders set agendas and insiders roll up their sleeves and get to work, possibly better funded, possibly more urgent than before.” (Gitlin) That’s how change takes place. Watch for it but don’t say ‘I told you so!’


deferral – linked with procrastination – if you are prone to procrastinate try and understand why. Then if you insist, turn it into an art. If you are uncertain, turn this too into the project. If you are a perfectionist, then turn this into perfect uncertainty (like many contemporary architects today) which just might be a ‘perfect project’!


de-schooling – perhaps due for a revival, read Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich.
Don’t forget Summerhill and Anti-psychiatry.



difference – recognise the differences in ‘different’ parts of your work and self


difficulties - recognise the scales of difficulty – prioritize work, aims, tasks etc.


discourse - the general domain of statements that often become an individualised group that then operate as a regulative practice (eg. New urbanism, sustainability, post-modernism…) Be aware when this become a default stage of thinking. Dislodging this demands more cunning than you ever imagined.

dissatisfaction - use it rather than remain paralysed by it, come back to it and it always changes.


do - as you are told : and consider when does this give way to being treated responsibly by parent and authority? Then do exactly as you like.


erasure – if you erase things, remove them; ask yourself if this is an attempt to deny what is not good enough, or a natural step towards finding a route, seeking a solution – consider this as an essential part of editing which goes on every moment inside and outside your own skull.


emotion – suspect the emotion that confirms you need not move or change, suspect complacency; be open to the meaningful and learn how to recognise it.


empiricism – remember it’s the reason why you are open and not an ideologue


ethics - of a team vis a vis the individual


fear – there is a logic to fear which everyone must work out for themselves. No one can do it for you. But remember, those who fear rarely have anything to teach you. Those who fidget in front of you even less.


feeling – try and understand your own ‘structure of feeling’ – come back to it and make a library from it before moving on. Then feel free.


filofax - the most wonderful invention of the 20th century (or one of them!)
google it!


global - genuinely global or not, you must develop new sensibilities outside this fear of terror and the inescapable clichés that guide our daily media lives. In other words, don’t take ‘saturation’ to mean just that. You’ve already edited what doesn’t fit.

garage – the place where dreams meet adolescence and either remain there, or grow up. Turn you garage into an apartment as your first job and you are on your way to becoming a real architect! Wait for the dream job, and you will melt.


hallelujah – take Jeff Buckley’s version and surprise someone. Then embrace.


hope – consider things inevitable, there’s no hope! consider things not inevitable and there’s a chance. Think of Mandelstam, Boenhoffer, Mandela, Havel. Then think of your own frustrations, the bullying and bigotry, any abuse of authority. “If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments: try behaving ‘as if’ they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable.” (Hitchens,p.39)


ignorance - learn how to recognise ignorance, not how your learning then ‘supplements’ for this ignorance but opens up to another ignorance - “ignorance of the past may be excuse for people with lesser ambitions than changing the world, but it’s no excuse for you.” (Gitlin p.42)


infancy – remain at all times in an infant stage with a knowledge that will guide you to the exit


intuition - what role does it play?


ideas – keep them coming, don’t choke thinking you cannot move until the idea is found; instead, shift to another problem, re-frame, come back and spiral on your own self.


import all ideas, everything matters! Love works this way too.


immediacy – right now, not later!


jury – don’t ever get pulled into the trap of trashing someone else; it’s insulting.


keywords – a fragment, an impulse, an idea, a thought – that delicious moment just before you take these further and they start becoming notions; use these as a running system realising they change without always being aware of these changes until later (just as clichés – Go figure!) This is how received opinions, received knowledge, are turned into your own and become part of your own special vocabulary. Crucial: allows you to operate outside that of the official ‘discourse’ of received ideas.


list – make aims, list them; use a small flip-over children’s notebook, use a palm pilot, it doesn’t matter - lists plan time for you to change, not to be paralysed. They are imaginary scenarios, scripts for your own day, work, life, love; they are as important and as trivial as laundry lists or lateral forces checks. It depends on you to fire the lists into ecstasy


morrison – remember the immortal words of ‘Van the Man’ – no guru no teacher no method. Confirm this by reading Krishnamurti and Thomas Merton.
Don’t whatever you do go back!


navigate – don’t just think this happens in front of the screen when you resist cad-monkeying; every moment you navigate, only some actions appear more obvious than others. All students navigate their route through architectural school; just some are more aware of the knowledge gained and the knowledge lost by opting for the easy, smooth solutions. Think it over: re-navigate.


notions - see ideas, keywords etc. work them out for yourself.


novelty - how do you come across any new names, new knowledge – what does novelty mean to you – it should be an endless search and a way to test your own thinking so far (static or in movement).


openness - consider your thoughts are always leading somewhere (which can of course remain open) – when you arrive at your solution consider what other thoughts might be there that you don’t know about? Then remain open to these too.


organise – ordning och reda in Sweden is where you can buy notebooks, paper and files. It means ‘order’ and ‘rules’: find and develop your own. But don’t be paralysed by them, and don’t think others need your order, your rules.


paradigm – a set of dominant ideas, always about to pass over to the next set of dominant idea - take the chance to sniff out the new paradigm whether it is new-urbanism, eco-sustainability, digital space, liminal, virtual or born-again modernism, whether it is the 3rd, 4th or 5th paradigm. If the teacher or professor lags behind all these, take the space that this offers.


problematize – to problematize is essential if you are to decide what you are doing is worth doing, and what you are learning is worth learning – also essential to know when to stop problematizing and move on. For as one issue is solved, the next is re-problematized.


precedent - believing the study of disciplines that include architecture are best done by learning from and studying precedent. Remember: if Le Corbusier had but followed the precedent model of education there would not be those buildings that now form the precedent in Modern Architecture (thankfully he did not go to architecture school) - connected also with the idea of ‘received opinions’ - be careful with the notion of setting a precedent or setting an example, the latter generally a tactic offered by schoolmasters and churchmen. “In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, which I hope and trust you have read at least once, there is the following exchange between the anti-hero and the military authority:
Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile,
“But, Yossarian, what if everyone felt that way?”
“Then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?”
(C.Hitchens.p.95)



perfectionism – make the difference between wanting to do things so well that you are paralysed and the necessary individual and professional process which is also part of being a perfectionist – in other words perfectionism is not about the end result, it is also the means to that end…


question – all received ideas; turn questioning into a delight not a burden.


reality check - find one of your own for each day, each moment - don’t just accept the sun comes out every day when you know it doesn’t but is still behind the clouds. If you feel cheated, then think of the annoyance to someone else too.


received opinion - always challenge them


relevant - surely your own work/architecture/solution for the church /museum /film centre is as relevant as mockbee's, libeskind’s, gehry’s, moneo’s, holl’s or hadid’s?


read - speed read or scan – learn how to use these for different purposes and different materials. Don’t scan everything, don’t speed read everything, don’t do everything at the same pace, and deep read whenever you can. Notice the differences.


repertoire – the collection that makes you ‘you’ but which is always on the move, changing, and which makes the ‘you’ in the future, or the ‘you’ you become! Take my daughter’s hint: always be ‘becoming’!


re-frame – whenever you feel ‘stuck’ re-frame, re-write the problem
re-script it, re-think it. If you cannot do that, do something else, clean windows, read Brautigan, listen to Snow in San Anselme, unplug the sink and return, re-look and re-frame.


repetition – don’t fear it, use it - recognise it for a confirmation of some patterns and a realisation of others less useful.


rilke – pronounced ril-keh - wrote letters to a young poet which you should read at least once in your life.


risk – learn how to take them by learning how to introduce something new and unknown into your own ‘repertoire’. Consider, at least once, asking someone out to dinner and staying for the rest of your life.


share – don’t even dream of competing unless you have to – take a lesson from share-ware - don’t be judgmental, beware the visiting critic or juror who doesn’t listen to your explanations and shoots off to design the project that is not there,
the project that is lost without listening – beware the un-listeners who go ballistic!


self-deception – this is the ability to accept unreasonable programmes and conditions and turn these round as if you have invented them yourself. Avoid. Things are imposed on you enough by authorities, society and others: don’t give them the pleasure of this mind game too.


sense – don’t think you have to move only when things make sense, when sense is found, or that everything you do has complete sense, order and totality. Mostly we move partially, fragmentally and begin to assemble ideas from this.
Learn to live in the middle of ideas.


scepticism balance scepticism with small improvements, if just by the day, by the minute, so gentle, so light. But never give up on suspecting what is right in front of your own nose. Back the hearse up and smell the flowers, but don’t decide to jump yet.


systematic - be it, and don’t be fooled into thinking the more systematic you are, the less spontaneous or original you can be. It just ain’t so!


surprise – be open to the places or things you are not sure about; open up to the ‘uncertain’, things you do not know – sense the potential of where unclear ideas might take you, and where they may not.


stress – only avoided if the mind finds its balance between activity and silence. Learn to live with the inner dialogue, the discussion with yourself that keeps you going and the continual mask you have to wear outside. Don’t think this is full enlightenment; live in the Bardo realm of the provisional – read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Pardon the language, but ‘shut the fuck up’ occasionally and cut out all the crap.


store – become an ‘I am architecture’ narrative – think of yourself like the container store – compartmentalise and then open up again like a Russian doll.
Keep on doing this, you’ll be surprised what lies underneath.


target – small everyday targets, for everything, become time management; when linked to aims, lists they become natural. Beware: produces agony if all time is going on lists and aims and you can never find your way out of the paper bag!


time - generally not used well but this is often hidden without realising it. Time cannot work on its own, without you. It can only be used well if other things are working, if chance and opportunity give you a chance and an opportunity. Only you are in charge of your own time. The child that keeps you awake at night, or the job that takes your night shift, is the chance and opportunity to do and be someone else.


technology – treat it as software for the brain games, learn from it – it has more to offer than we sometimes think


think – not what but how : “I repeat: what really matters about any individual is not what he thinks, but how he thinks. Our conversation has been about the constituents that might go to make up an independent and a questioning person: a dissenter and freethinker.” (Hitchens, p.63)




trends - trends in architecture follow the media rule – ‘if it bleeds it leads’ - in other words the spectacle comes first and the rest follows. Suspect the design of this blood and seek a way to defeat cliché. Some intelligence helps.


ultimately – remember there is no ultimately – no ultimate aim that is not shifted and altered every day..


vygotsky – inner speech: use it, keep it, improve it but never lose sight
of its invisibility. It is your secret life; very few ever touch it.


whatever – use this only with confidence, and not to hide the silence or the necessary pause for thinking out something else.


wisdom remember borrowed wisdom is still wisdom – the secret to studios, studying, even idleness is the following from Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”


zero – overused digit, always think of starting from.



Ref: Christopher Hitchens. Letters to a Young Contrarian, Perseus, Cambridge 2001 - Todd Gitlin Letters to a Young Activist.


roger connah last updated February 2005