shavings and dust

so I have been thinking about stories. And about how we tell them. And about how we hear them. Sometimes the telling is the important thing, regardless of content. Sometimes the content supercedes the manner of the telling. Sometimes it is just the raw communication that is important, the "I-will-listen-as-you-talk" attitude that is meaningful.

Your writing is similar to my making, in that we are telling stories and they are being used by others in a way that we can't know or control. You put words together and send them out there. I put steel and wood together and do the same. And maybe someone sits on a table or spills syrup on a chair. And maybe someone reads your words and thinks things that are not what you are thinking. And that is fine. But I have been thinking about what the words really are, at their core.

What matters? The words? The telling? The hearing? When I make a piece, I want it to be used. I want it to be in someone's life and to become inextricably woven into the fabric of their life, in a way that it HAS to be kept and used. Not so precious that it is put on a shelf and gathers dust for a decade and is then sold at a yard sale. No, my work must be used, if it is going mean a damn. So maybe it is the hearing that is important.

But then, someone looks at something I made, and says "look, it is like those chairs on the deck at that hotel" and I realise that the hearing is so subjective. And that if that piece is resonating for them, then it does not matter what my intent was, they are hearing their own story, and weaving the object into their experience in a way that is maybe more valid than the way it would have happened in my mind.

Maybe that is what is the most magical about objects.

My studiomate had this terrible little secretary which she moved into the studio until we could make her a desk. Falling apart, painted about fifty-eleven times, you know, and department-store furniture to start with. Terrible and ugly and in tatters. Says she: "I need to throw this thing out."

You ain't lying.

"But it was one of the first things we bought as a couple ten years ago, and somehow I keep saving it."

Huh.

And that is the thing, isn't it? In the same way that we can not choose our loved ones and friends, we sometimes can not choose the objects that resonate with us. Which is what I think I am trying to get at, here: I make things that resonate with me. Then I put them out into the world, and I hope they resonate with others. But when they do, I as a maker have to step back and let them get incorporated into the lives of the users. Which is a strange thought, really.

So we make these stories. And we spend a lot of time thinking about what is the important through-line, and what are the over-arching concepts, and how we are going to orchestrate this moment and bring out this shining detail. And of course we should. Everything that leaves my hands should be something I am proud of, something that reflects what I think is meaningful.

That is, after all, our job, maybe. To be creative. In the sense of creating. Making stuff. Making stuff and telling stories. Not a bad job.