The Take Away

As I have grown older, particularly in the past couple of years, I’ve become more curious about craftsmanship, not just in the things I purchase or browse, but the nature of craftsmanship in my own works and those for whom I am close.  It wasn’t until I began working with photography, and eventually video and audio, that I began to have a sense of my own level of craftsmanship, which I see now as a complex conversation between myself, ideas, the materials I have to work with, and the way and manner they interact with life.

I have observed how easy it is to be seduced into activities that diminish my thinking, that pull me into the undertow of distraction and a kind of meandering uselessness. The drone of nonstop texting, information overload, gadget masturbation and a nearly myopic hedonism (read alcohol) can sever the creative mind from the delicate nature of quiet craftsmanship and creative reflection. 

To pursue an expression of an idea into some form, whether it be writing, photography, music or performance, requires presence and practice. It’s requires our best thinking, quiet, and the application of discipline and experimentation. Experimentation is useless without reflection and thoughtfulness.

I could go on.

I wish our institutional school system could be re-invented.  In it’s place I’d build neighborhood studios, lofts, labs, theaters, learning playgrounds full of the best technology old and new. I’d also return to some form of apprenticeships. Learning is organic, and the more we approach learning and education as a dynamic choice, rather than a linear necessity, a demand and command structure, the more likely it seems to me, we will turn out enlightened, curious, engaged and delighted human beings who want to build beautiful things, including a new world.