Celebrating the Mundane

On (2) separate flights on the same day last week I sat next to (2) apparently famous people whose names I didn’t know and only one of whom I recognized as even vaguely familiar.  I assume they were famous based only upon the annoying observation that multiple sheep asked for their autographs.  I asked the one I didn’t recognize to turn his deafening, hideous music down as it was disrupting my anonymity.  I hate fame, me.

Today is my father’s birthday – Pop, I would listen to your music in celebration but the only song I ever consciously remember you declaring that you liked was that strange Willie Nelson / Ray Charles duet from way back and that's not my bag. (I suppose the music thing comes from my moms.)  I did stumble on to that reel-to-reel of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds of yours when I was I kid, but I wasn’t feeling especially Brian Wilson today.  I get the whole maybe I should build a giant sand box out of my living room thing, but that’s probably a weekend project, no?  Either way, Happy Birthday Pops.  I enjoyed our conversation tonight.  One of these days if I keep working at it and I'm lucky on top of, I will be half the man that you are.  

Monday was Paul McCartney’s birthday.  I’m not sure exactly what the opposite of Paul McCartney is but when I realized it was his birthday, I did my best to listen to the opposite in celebration.  As far as I can tell, the opposite is Jim Carroll – a true poet rock star who chose not to marry an heiress with horrific vocal ability but who stayed true to his craft until his untimely passing.  If you're not familiar, Jim was the deal.  Sir Paul was by far the least interesting Beatle.  At least Ringo knew he had no discernible musical skill and was content being the comic relief. Pete Best was a drummer – Ringo is at best a Muppet.  Stuart Sutcliffe was a superior bassist to Paul and if not for a hot German photographer named Astrid, the world might have known a different band.  It all revolved around and originated with John anyway.  He was the artistic force that created and completed the Beatles, followed closely behind by George.  I love what they did, but in my opinion, I’d rather they’d never written a single without the original lineup intact.  The primary positive that came out of that cluster is that we were graciously allowed to hear and see John Lennon’s voice and vision for those short (40) years.    So in your native tongue, piss off Paul!  Just because you are the last one with any talent alive doesn’t mean I should care that it’s your birthday.

Wow, that was the mother of all digressions.  I’ve just realized that I’m writing this with no specific purpose for writing it so I’ll just go with the train of thought thing.

Things that I gain the most joy from are simple things most often.  Things like cleaning out the air-conditioner vent, bathing the dogs, pulling weeds from the flower beds as I walk to the mailbox in socks make me smile like a mental patient.  I love my garden even though I clearly, at this point, have zero gardening skills.  When I say, I’m tending my garden, that’s code for me sitting on the top step throwing Belle’s ball while enjoying a refreshing beverage wondering aloud why my garden won’t grow.  I planted it.  I assumed it would do the rest.  I water it when I remember to, occasionally – WTF?  Slow cooking spaghetti sauce really turns my gear.  I know, right?  I’ve spent a lot of Sunday morning’s this early summer watching my grass grow and that is exactly what I wanted to do right then. I’ve counted the grains in the woods I chose for those uncomfortably over-sized chairs I made several years back more times than I care to remember.  Every time I do, it makes me real. 

My work is what it is, and I love it. But when you are occasionally required to sit politely in a room full of people (who have absolutely no idea what architecture is) discussing and critiquing your architecture, it wears on a body.  No other game I would rather play for sure, but the game makes me long for those Saturday twilight nothing nights.  As skilled and incredible as I am (sarcasm intended), one can only be expected to internalize and abide so much.  Everybody has their breaking point and when I reach mine, I’m in the back yard searching for (4) leaf clovers in clean tall grass, sitting in the fresh cut with my pups imagining what it would be like if the Jackson Five floated across the breeze the same way they do my memory. 

I need my solitary ridiculousness more than ever.  That statement illuminates me as mad perhaps, but I think I'm simply aware.  It is almost physically necessary that I compose a grocery list Friday night and traverse the minefield of my local Saturday morning Publix in order to summon the wherewithal to accost the inevitable client derivative of a poorly researched, unfounded exclamation point come Monday morning.  I need to wash my baseball caps early on Tuesdays and sit them carefully upon mixing bowls so that I ensure that they will be dry by Wednesday morning.  I need to clean last week’s receipts out of my wallet and balance my check book every Monday afternoon even though I can't remember the last time I wrote a check.  If I didn’t have to go to Target tonight to get razors, there is no way that I would be able to get out of bed tomorrow and do this all over again.  The commonplace propels me. 

Some say they tolerate the mundane bullshit that they have to endure in order to get to the punch line, the weekend-warrior type.  I celebrate the routine in order to get to the bullshit. I exalt its banality.  I couldn’t be even as intermittently visible as I am,  without the option to disappear inside of myself every night. Trying to be perfect is exhausting. 

Someone who has my ear more than most, recently suggested that I shouldn’t put so much of myself into my career.  I asked her where I should put it instead.  She didn’t have an answer.  I told her that I’d be here with a High Life and a Camel Blue, relishing Thin Lizzy’s Cowboy Song counting thin green blades of grass when she figured it out…celebrating the mundane.

Visible

Given the bravado of my last post, I’m only slightly shocked that the canvas is still blank.  That’s not meant as a metaphor – the canvas is quite literally still blank.  I may have sabotaged my own intent by making such a bold and truthfully, somewhat unfounded public proclamation.  I’m acutely aware of the fact that sometimes saying a thing out loud destroys the thing all together.  If that’s the case, I’ll more than likely barrel down some other dimly lit path – no harm, no foul.  I doubt that occurrence is in play, but reserve no apprehension that it might be thus.  Even if said is so, it will hit me again.  When it does, it will be unprecedented and I’ll do a year’s work in a weekend (again deceivingly confident, no?) 

Blah, blah, blah... So, I recently finished Klosterman’s The Visible Man. Outstanding work and a definite upgrade from his previous novel – put it on your list.  The premise is so simple that it pisses me off that I didn’t think of it first but as all good story-tellers do, he makes the obvious fascinating.  What are people really like when they are alone?  The question in of itself is a commentary on the voyeuristic nature of modern American society and our fascination with all things “real”.  I won’t bore you again with my feelings on reality television and the like (it’s buried somewhere in one of last year’s rants) but I do think that Chuck and I share a similar playful contempt for this not-so-recent cultural phenomenon.  He acknowledges without ever acknowledging that we all seem to be consumed with and even obsessed with what the other is doing and thinking and feeling at all times, at least in a digital sense.  The primary assertion he makes is that what or who a person is in public or online is not who or what they really are and that the only way to ascertain the true nature of a human being is to observe them in their natural, private state.  All manner of shenanigans ensue along his quest to obtain this knowledge and affirm his thesis.  This isn’t a book review, but if it were I would give it (2) enthusiastic thumbs up; even if one must suspend their disbelief that humans have the technology to render themselves un-seeable.

As is often the case after reading a good book, I reread the book mentally for several days after I was finished.  Dissecting the items of interest or skepticism or whatever I hold until I am satisfied that no matter how outlandish the tale being told might be that it could possibly be true.  (I think I’ve mentioned my predilection toward documentary film – I have an odd need to make all things documentarian in spirit.)  It is an interesting concept though, to ponder the idea that no person one knows or has ever known for that matter is truly who one thinks and absolutely, unequivocally might believe them to be.  That statement at first blush seems ridiculous, but are you truly visible to the world?

I think that it’s human nature to create a construct that we present to the world, our closest friends even.  It starts at an early age I would imagine, having only a rudimentary understanding of sociology.  And it is probably founded in all manner of environmental stimuli; family and your perceived station in that family, your family’s perceived position in society, how you are treated when you do something stupid or exceptional or unimaginable or completely ordinary etc. etc. etc.  No (2) public human displays are the same and they are all formed for specific (if unknown) reasons or reactions or insecurities or idiosyncrasies or a million other words that are hard to spell.  How close are you to the construct that you present to humanity?  How close should you be?  How would I know the answer?  How does anybody?  I'm not saying that people are fake or that who a person publicly is isn't truthful.  But it is a variation of the truth – it's only what you are willing to share of your true self.

Throughout the book, this guy sits silently in a corner and observes solitary human behavior without the human being observed ever knowing that he is there or that they are being observed.  Think about that for a minute:  what if when you are alone, you were not really alone.  Had the protagonist been in my house with me this weekend I wonder what his assessment of me would have been.  He would have seen a grown man occasionally curse the Sunday rain and lament his indifference toward his Saturday lawn activities.  I sat for hours this weekend staring blindly into the eternal blackness of an empty white canvas with the usual artistic triggers hidden away, unlockable.  Here is the typical, everyday part of my life that he would have observed – me talking to my dogs.  Not just talking to but carrying on full conversations, epic discussions presented in full character for each player, me included.  When I converse with the pups I do so in a voice that can only be described as a mix between a mildly-retarded Elmer Fudd and a Southern, drunken, elderly African-American women.  Maynard responds in his cynical, cigar and cognac soaked, unimpressed Jimmy Durante / Frank Sinatra.  Belle dances around the fray in high-pitched excitement repeating the same thing again and again and again.  But, but, but, but what about the ball, the ball, the ball…? Did you say ball?  Where is my ball?  I haven’t peed all weekend!  Have you seen my ball?  (She was born in Dahlonega, so there is a latent, almost imperceptible Southern accent in her diction.) Regardless the topic, nobody breaks character and this goes on for hours sometimes. 

Having said all of that, his assessment and yours are most likely similar – this guy’s lost his mind, right?  Because I’ve allowed you that glimpse, does that mean you know who or what I am?  Would you know the difference?  Is that part of who I want you to think I am or who I am really?  Does it matter?  Does sharing a simple piece of a thread allow you to see the quilt?  Of course not.  I’m still not visible.  If you are 100% honest with yourself, you are not either.  Which begs the question: should we be 100% visible?  The answer is a resounding no and that is exactly as it should be.  That’s how God or whatever you believe in made us to be.  The gold is in the not knowing.  The mystery makes the whole fantastic, that’s what keeps it interesting.

No one is fully transparent – therefore no one can be visible.  

(it doesn't suck as bad as it sounds)

Filling the Voids

I’ve had a notion recently to get back into a game that I turned my back on years ago.  Having never been one to come to things early, I don’t feel bad that the arc of this endeavor is so flat with a random spike here and there.  I will use the term art and its derivatives loosely throughout so be mindful of that.  As an artist, I’ve gone through various periods of excitement and disappointment, celebration and defeat, I suck at this – Holy shit I really am as good as I think I am.  It is probably as simple as traversing the stages of life but it is also possibly and more likely the nature of a periphery intellectual seed abandoned, seeking purchase in a barren, inhospitable soil.  I suppose most artists experience this phenomenon in varying degrees as the clocks tick, tick, tick. I imagine successful (rock star) artists navigate this roller coaster quickly and come to a realization or at least a position of satisfactory internal understanding before they declare themselves in public an artist and take the big first / final step – the sell.  For me, this roller coaster is coasting into the gate (25) years after the fact and that’s fine.  I mentioned the late to the party thing, right? 

Selling one’s art has always been a bit troubling for me.  I’ve sold art before.  I’ve collected modest sums of sweaty cash from clueless tourists selling art, bad art most often.  The trouble with selling is that you give away a piece of your soul.  It’s giving in the most profound metaphysical sense even if you do pocket a handful of bones.

I’ve given away the best work I’ve ever done because I was convinced that was the purpose of art.  For 99.99% of my life phase I thought art was only something that I did for myself or others, personally in both cases.  For the last ½ of 1% of my life I have discovered (finally, like a mental patient, I know) that I make art because I freaking love art – end of list.  That's enough for me.  That alone makes me an artist.  The last few weeks have been the most satisfying of my life artistically and I haven’t even made a stroke or a line or even given so much as a flirtatious glance to the smoking hot piece of art I might create if I could pry my elephantine intellect from its own luxurious logical sedentary couch.  I’ve been soaking up my own judgment and belief for maybe the first time in my life, dissecting and accepting and celebrating the clamor, eavesdropping on the nonsense that reverberates inside the gymnasium of my cavernous empty / crowded skull…listening to, internalizing my own internal, validating my own validity. Teaching myself to learn the long-learned / forgotten lessons I have taught myself and forgotten over the last (25) years about what art is – about who and what I am.  Remembering why I ever resolved to pick up a brush and push cheap paint across the bottom of an empty Budweiser case box when I was (15).  Remembering to be a human being, to let myself feel, to express, to inhale and exhale publicly, to speak with a purpose, to be solid in every manner the man that I am and to accept it – as fantastical and full of shit as it might be. 

If it's who I am then I should be exactly that.  Odd that it took (40) years for me to become comfortable in my own artistic skin but that's how it is, so there's that. 

Obvious questions persist.  Will I paint my heart or make a quick buck?  Can I do both?  How far am I willing to take this?  What if I really do suck?  Does it matter?  Do I want to be good or sellable? Is there a difference?   I want to be both, of course.  So I won’t allow myself to choose.  The choice is only will I keep it inside for (20+) more years or will I go public again.  I’ve been tangled in the web for so long that I have never truly allowed myself to give it much thought until now – I have a helluva lot of ideas in my head and I have only so much space on my walls.  It could be that simple.  I’m not foolish enough to allow myself to imagine myself as a working artist, but what I do is good and that’s freedom personified.

So in the spirit of giving, here is the first piece of this new-found personal freedom (enjoy – it will cost you mad $s next time):

I’m not sure that it is either sellable or good and frankly tonight I don’t really care because it’s mine.  It’s an obvious nod to a Brit band that you’ve never heard of (or forgot) called The Godfathers circa 1987-88 or thereabouts.  You didn’t think it was all metal for me did you?  Actually, it was exactly that until my brother turned me on to these guys and a few others around about the time I said. The song is about whatever it is about (you don’t have to be a genius): my piece is about the in betweens though, the voids between the demarks.  I’ve devoted a lot more mental energy to #3 than I have the others in this list and certainly more than I ever did the in betweens.  In so doing, I’ve ensured nothing more than an empty, forgettable #4.  But I can change that – the past is prologue, right? It is the in betweens that matter and what I've too often neglected.  What occurs between peaks is the gravy, man.  That’s where life really gets there, where you can truly feel a pulse.  Living is how you choose it sure, but life happens on random Thursdays at 3:47 in the afternoon when you think nobody is watching and you are envisioning what Friday evening might become. 

Filling the voids defines the solid.

Good time sunshine.  Fantastic.  Me.  
    

Handcuffed (A Beautiful Thing)

A recent commission in the office has me scratching my head.  How does one satisfy a client that employs catch phrases?  Cutting edge.  Sleek.  Smart.  Really?  I can design almost anything that would meet these criteria.  That’s not direction.  It’s the opposite of what I’m used to and herein lies the problem.  Without a defined set of parameters, I’m apparently dead in the water.  I’ve sketched (100) + ideas – I’ve contemplated about (1,000) more.  When there is nothing to measure success against how do I know when I’ve solved the problem: especially a design problem?  I can’t infiltrate the client’s head and comprehend what they are thinking.  Moreover, I can’t crack open their boss’s head (figuratively of course) – whose aspirations and expectations they (and by extension, we) are attempting to bring to fruition.  I can’t see his wheels spin.  I’m more convinced daily that I should have taken additional courses on interpersonal psychology at Dear Ole State.  Add that to the list of possessions you won’t attain from higher education.

Effectively this deal has no parameters.  On the surface it seems like the dream gig, right?  Whatever you’ve done in the past, we want more than that.  Push the limits.  What?  That’s nonsense to me.  I hear what they are saying but I’ve been programmed not to listen to a single word.  I’ve been in this business long enough to know that even if I do achieve this design nirvana we all envision they will value engineer my balls off and kill my intent.  We want something new. You can’t be serious...sometimes being an architect is like dating a stripper – there is nothing you can do that hasn’t been done before – you’re not going to impress her.  There is nothing NEW!  It’s all been done.  Who am I to think I can create new, whatever the hell that even means?  Has my cynicism regarding this profession finally smacked its apex?  Have I at last caught up with my own incomprehensible design arrogance?  It’s hard for me to believe that I have allowed myself to be oppressed by the absence of rule, but I have.  I’ve questioned and doubted authority since Jesus was a child, it’s one of my core values.  And without authority, I feel blind?  Have I really forgotten how to be amazing on my own terms?  Maybe I have, but maybe not.  Either way this deal has me handcuffed and it sucks. 

It’s not going to disappear, so I have to figure it out.  After all, I would like to take a good nights’ sleep at some point in the not too distant future. 

My “aha” moment came to me while resting peacefully mindless in bumper-to-bumper on the connector this evening.  Just do something beautiful.  It really is that simple.  It’s primary in why I chose this path.  It’s what I tell anyone who will listen, that’s what they should be doing.  How many times have I asked someone showing me their work in studio “is it beautiful and amazing?”  That’s what I do.  That’s what we are supposed to do.  We strip away all of the bullshit and make something that possibly shouldn't be beautiful, beautiful.  I didn’t become an architect to protect the health, safety and welfare of the populous; I became an architect to create a more beautiful thing.  I’m not sure how many are conscious of the fact that everything in the built world is designed.  Wherever you are right now, you are surrounded by someone’s architectural idea.  Chances are better than average that you are not surrounded by good architecture.  We are it seems encircled by shit design, but I can change that – one line at a time.

If I am an architect and I do not daily endeavor to create a more beautiful thing then I have failed my profession and more importantly, I’ve failed myself.  If you are not an architect and you do not endeavor daily to create a more beautiful thing, no matter what that thing is for you – your yard, your kids, your life, whatever – then you have failed yourself too.  If we don’t all believe that we each individually can have the utmost profound and lasting effect on this world and that we are possibly the only ones who can change it then it will never change, no matter what it is.  If we don’t believe that and we expect or assume someone else will do it, “I’m not that creative”…”Those aren’t the kinds of buildings I do”…”I’m not sure what I should say…”  IF we collectively feel that way, we will eventually truly be surrounded by shit more so than we are today in more ways than one.   

If this little ramble has taken on the tones of a taut Sunday sermon, I apologize.  It’s intended for my own ears as much if not more than it is yours.  I’m casting dispersions on no one.  I get caught up in the business of this business sometimes and forget why I jumped in in the first place.  The truth is that this small struggle of mine over the last few days is part of the game.  It is the game actually; it’s the struggle that makes us better.  It's the struggle that makes me want to play at all.  Being handcuffed in this sense is an exceptionally beautiful thing.  I don’t know what I would be without it really.  This rare thing makes my heart beat faster, you know?  No problem I can’t solve, no task I can’t master, no client I can’t satisfy.  Maybe it’s only rare insomuch as I rarely see it, but today I feel more alive because of it.

I boil all of the nonsense I’ve said tonight down to this:  A beautiful thing is a beautiful thing.   A beautiful thing only knows that it is beautiful.  It exists on its own terms.  It doesn’t have to be a part of a whole, in fact the category or family or genome to which a beautiful thing belongs has, should have no bearing on its possession of beauty.  Tomorrow, I will create a beautiful thing for my client, but more importantly for myself.  Knowing that makes this day and the next a hell yes day and that is a beautiful thing unto itself.

That said tonight I’d rather throw some paint at a canvas or a wall than think about anything other.  Hey, maybe I will make that canvas or wall beautiful, maybe I won’t. 

Either way, I won’t be handcuffed and it will be a beautiful thing.

Johnny America

A hundred or more years ago when I was a different person I wrote poetry as a means to the end of becoming a rock star.  Alas, I’m neither poet nor rock star but I still remember a bit of the chorus to this one song – can even still play it [just did quite loudly]…two major and one minor chords (and I wonder why I’m not a rock star?) 

       “My name is Johnny America,

                   I got my face shot off for you…”

That’s all I can remember tonight.  I’ve turned my house inside out looking for that little piece of nonsense scrawled on the back of something else that was less important for the last hour or so.  It’s just as well probably.  I’m confident that it wasn’t as outstanding as I remember and I’m okay with that. 

I do remember recording it [one cannot hope to be a rock star without a demo tape after all] with a rather sophomoric preamble about hot dogs and mustard and cold beer and misaligned priorities or something – wrote it and recorded it on a long ago Memorial Day. 

I was just a kid at the time, but I got it you know?  For all the piss and vinegar I have in my heart for what this country has become, I’ve never forgotten the countless thousands of dirt naps taken for me to voice that opinion.  And when I say that I disagree with this thing or that or I’m pissed off about this and I don’t believe in the other it doesn’t mean that I don’t value the sacrifices that have been made. 

As I’ve said before, I’ve got bros in the shit for the last (15) + it seems.  Most of them know I don’t believe in the war they are fighting but they all know that I believe in them.  They all know what’s in my heart.  And as many times as they are willing to go back into harm’s way it is a million more times than it would even cross my mind to do the same.  One doesn’t have to fight or die to be a patriot, but a patriot of even the most radical ilk could not exist without those who are willing to fight and die.  I wouldn’t be able to have any opinion without them. 

I consider myself a patriot of the highest order, but I hate what America is.  I love the guys that have made it possible for me to say that.

My personal experience with war is limited to what the History Channel and Hollywood has shown me.  I’m prolific at quoting the catch phrases – “the horror”, “I am in a world of shit” – but I don’t have a clue what it’s really like in a hot zone.  I don’t know what it’s like to jump in front of something that might kill my best friend or not jump and watch my best friend die.  I can’t even kick my over-active imagination into a place where I can imagine what that hell must be.

These words aren’t meant to be political, but if there is one thing that all of us no matter our political leanings can agree on I think it is this – bring our boys home.  If we can “win” then by all means keep them there, but as of this Memorial Day no one has publicly stated a measurable and / or an achievable objective, so bring ‘em home.    

I have made no secret of my opposition to this or the last (or any other) war we’ve waged.  I’ve made no secret of how dissatisfied I am with the direction this country is going.  I’ve even admitted that I might have made the wrong choice last time (I’m just kidding about that - will def vote O again).  BUT, if we let it, politics will rip this country limb from limb. We don't need that.  We don't need politics – we need Main Street.  Not the Main Street of sad flag-draped-coffin parades, Main Street with parades about nothing more troubling than junior high baseball teams and 4-H or cub scout troops, right? 

Regardless of what I feel at a philosophical level I have always been and will always be in constant and unshakeable awe of the Johnny Americas who came and went before and for those who continue to fight and die among us.

You don’t have to be a poet and you sure as hell don’t have to agree with me to get that.  We all want the same thing.