30 Objects in 30 Essays
From the objects that I have made, objects other people have made, objects that I live with, and what they have to say. The products of hands and brains. The obvious differences between things and words. The tangible and intangible rewards of effort. Use and beauty as the two primary qualities of objects, words, hands and brains. For through objects we make the stories of our lives: a life made, a life bought, a life well-used, a life beautiful and useful.
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You must be exhausted by The Coronavirus by now. It has brought us all both tedium and inconvenience, probably worry and fear as well, if not financial ruin, loss and tragedy.
The only value of despair is that it disengages from life for a short time, forces us to step back, look at what we do and ask who we are, with a doubting heart. As from a conscious sleep, we should wake from despair with new vigor towards better uses for our lives, or a renewed understanding that our path has always been right. We don't get to choose the age we live in, but we do get to choose what we do in it. This may sound like a pretentious call to heroics from a Peter Jackson movie, but I appropriate it more humbly as a simplistic reminder to use bad times to reassess what we value, and why.
So here we are.
We have all instinctively turned to friends and family, to ensure their well being, and to seek help with ours. They have greater value than our work, our belongings, or anything else. It's a value, I believe, that informs the rest.
All objects have relationships at their core.
A cartoon shows an irate wife standing in an empty apartment telling her husband "You're the one who got rid of everything that didn't spark joy, so don't blame me that you get to spend the rest of the quarantine folding the same 7 t-shirts!"
How many marriages will be destroyed by sheltering in place? How many strengthened? Truths come out in close quarters, when there is no where to hide.
We can hide in our things, but for only so long. Getting rid of old ones and buying new ones can work for a while, as a simple distraction. But pause a moment and look at your things -- the ones that have persisted, through moves, donation purges, and received repairs rather than being tossed -- what they have to say back at you, about why you keep them. Take a single object from your belongings. What value do you find in it? Something practical? Something sentimental? A memory? What have you invested in it? If it is something you made, is its value different in kind from the things you buy?
For me, one of those objects is the Castle Bed. It is not someone I love. However, it is an object that speaks directly to those relationships, how I have negotiated them, and especially how I have failed them. This is the the main reason I keep it.
My joy in objects, primarily, it to design and make them by hand. From there, I am most happy when they find new homes, giving me room to make more for other people. My other great joy is not in objects, but in writing: specifically in ways that challenge, require effort, and thereby (in theory) lead readers to rewards not easily obtainable otherwise. (Who has the time to read long, complex shit? I know, I know. You've got Shit To Do Places To Go People to Love! My work would be more accessible if I delivered in cheeky succinct tweets, but here it is, in a long, sinewy meander).
If The Coronavirus reminds us that our loved ones matter most, is the value of any one thing mostly an illusion, an imposed and transient worth, or just a lesser degree of attachment? Are all our close belongings memory palaces of the people we have known? The bed below reminds me of who I was 25 years ago. I find it useful to be reminded of that person on occasion.
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Here is the story of this bed through layers of digressions, questions, and apparent irrelevancies, such that you can ask your own, better questions about the objects in your lives, perhaps your own bed two, if you are close to it.
All you fans of Rene Magritte will note, correctly, Ceci n'est pas un lit.
This is a photograph of a bed, and not the actual bed (cue soundtrack, tish, boom).
As I want to talk about my bed, I ask you to use this picture to put yourself in mind of it (but not actually in it). Before we put the point to bed, I wish to note that this intangible representation of the tangible bed that resides in Chicago, Illinois, in my third floor bedroom, makes an intangible discussion of the tangible possible.
Setting aside the anomalies in quantum mechanical observations that deny reality is independent of mind, please believe me when I say that this bed exists.
I know, because I made it. My memory tells me so --not just putting the sheets back straight, you wag, but the bed frame itself--
This bed started as an idea, in my head, then became a reality, you see. The intangible became the tangible. Like every creator, I had a rich future planned for my creation-- all it would mean, all it would do.
But really, this bed is a complex object: a complex set of ideas, reactions, connections and uses, both in the tangible world and the intangible world. The older I get, the less I believe there's a sharp distinction between the two.
Fathom the concept.
And yes, I am seriously making fun of myself with serious thoughts, if the tone doesn't come through in internet prose.
Ahem:
I do not boggle my own mind, like some teenage stoner, realizing that I made something, any more. That happened the first time I made something, which was probably a clay ashtray for my mother in 1974, for Miss Chris's Second grade art class. She pretended she was a child like us, and in an exaggerated soprano, told us that day we were "Mmmmmmagical" and could make Anything We Wanted in the Whoooooole, Wiiiiiiide Wooooorld, out of clay, for the next hour. If we cleaned up after ourselves. So I made an ashtray for my mother. I used my finger to make indents on the side of the bowl, where the cigarettes could rest while my mother talked loudly during parties waving her hands around. I had seen that feature on other ashtrays, and copied it. By making it, I realized where all those other indents came from. The makers' fingers. The world lost some of its mystery that day.
The ashtray sat on my desk until the final bell while I practiced my multiplication tables. I made that, my little brain reeled. Without me, it would not exist.
I did Fathom the Concept that day, as best as my Second grade brain could.
On the bus home, it broke in half in my jacket pocket. I might have sat on it. The clay seemed to crumble the more it dried out. Raw materials have such unexpected and annoying qualities! So I hid it from my mother by throwing it under a bush in the yard. I picked the bits of clay out of my pocket as best I could. I didn't want her to note my failure and make a scene.
I thought about telling her that I made an ashtray for her. But decided against it. There was nothing to show. Why would she believe me?
I didn't even have a photograph of it.
That day I learned a second secret. Nobody knows you made something unless they can See it. Touch it. Feel it. Use it. (Jump on it and make love in it, if it's a bed). That's the only way people really believe it exists in a way they can't Will Away into an intangible lie. Doubting Thomases are we all.
Without the actual ashtray, I had no connection to my mom. In that way, at least. The idea wasn't enough to make the connection. The way to hell is paved with good intentions.
The made object is a relationship, at heart, between the maker and the user.
Fathom that concept.
No wait.
Not yet. I haven't begun to make my point yet (this is exhausting reading, isn't it?)
Ahem:
First, bring to mind something you've made. Who did you make it for? And why did you make it for them? Maybe it's a pie for your family. Maybe it's a gokart for your kids. Maybe it's a birthday card for your best friend. Or maybe it's a bookshelf for your office. In each instance, the person you made the object for colors your understanding of the object. A meal you cook for yourself is not the same as a meal you cook for your boss, or for friends or for your family. Each depends so much on who you make it for.
Obvious, right?
I largely forgot that early lesson, though, learning instead to make things for a wide variety of reasons other than the people who would receive or use them.
This bed is a case in that point.
In 1996, I was recently married and trying to get a solo furniture business off the ground. I had worked in an architectural cabinet shop, but it had gone bust. Firstly, I needed a bed, recently married and all. My wife and I were sleeping on milk crates and plywood at the time. Sitting up against the wall would often cause the mattress and plywood to suddenly slide forward. Secondly, I had to prove to potential customers that I wasn't all hot air about being able to make things well. I needed a spec piece that showed off my skills, or so I thought. So I sat down to design a bed.
What it is, and what it isn't....what we make and what we don't
Is this bed a triumph? A disaster? Functional? Something that no one would ever buy?
Unlike a skull, this bed was made by human hands. The questions it raises are far more down to earth than the eternities of life and death. It really just presents the question of human work, and why we do it.
By now you've already had twenty reactions to it. It looks good. It looks odd. It looks fancy. It looks impressive. It looks like nothing I'd ever want in my home. It looks...
But! But! But!
To paraphrase Dr. Frank N. Furter, I didn't make him for YOU.
The problem is that I didn't make this bed for anybody. As an aesthetic design, I think the bed is a disaster. It speaks to no one.
The design concept started with frames and panels, which I knew how to make. It was to be a homage to my previous work in the architectural millwork shop. I played with angles, because they're harder to do. I was afraid of curved work--too hard--but liked the idea of curves and wanted to suggest them. I liked sleigh beds. I wanted the bed to be sturdy. A stronghold for sleep. I made it imposing, loud, so people would take note. I used Honduran mahogany because it was fancy, and I had scored a bunch of it cheap. Following this design brief, the bed is a total success. It shows off difficult mortise-and-tenon joinery. It is a homage to my former work. It is fancy. It is sturdy.
The trouble is that it's visually offputting. Friends saw New England Anglican Church in it. I gave it a number of pretentious names, such as Lily Pond Bed. The name Castle Bed finally stuck when I set it up in a huge photo studio. For the first time I could see it from 20 ft. away, and it began to look right, not claustrophobic. If it has a home, it's in a futuristic Tudor castle in a bedroom at least 60 ft. by 60 ft.
I have yet to meet a Tudor Futurist, but if I do, I will show him or her this bed, in the hope of making a sale. Until then, I sleep in the bed I've made, literally and figuratively.
So it's not beautiful. It is also not as useful as it should be. While it's solid and will never collapse, it has several faults. The interior is 6 inches too big for a Queen size box spring and mattress. They slide around inside, so they need blocking. I did this with the ide to give space for big blankets to be tucked in, but I gave them too much space. The edges are high and the mattress I bought sits too low. When you sit down, the edges of the bed catch your thighs. And it is hard to vacuum under.
Objects, once made, live their own lives. The maker only has full rights to the memory of the making.
This bed not a representation of anything else than what you see. No matter what I intended, it is not a symbol, or a gesture, or a statement, at least that I have any control over. I see futuristic Tudor. You may not. So the bed cannot be a play on anything, or a poem to anything. It never was a vehicle for a relationship, because I made it for no one person. It could become one, under the right circumstances. It is not an agreement, or a promise, or a decision. It is not an accounting, or an asset, or money in any form. I used to think it was some of these things, but now I know better. This bed is an object, an undeniable, tangible reality. It exists independent of anyone's thoughts or opinions of it. If you were never to think of it again, it would still exist. Peeking through the curtain, it would still be there, same as before, apparently unchanged by whatever changing thoughts you've had about it. Certainly what thoughts I've put into it have drained out. It just is what it is to you, as it is to me.
That I didn't make this bed for anyone, was precisely the problem. It was a solution to no problem. An object with no opposition, a transitive verb in a sentence with only a subject, no object. There was no person at the other end of my efforts.
It continues to remind me, to this day, of a particular ability to get inside my head and stay there, and ignore the people around me. I play with ideas, in solitude. They make sense to me, but do not resonate with others. This bed is a kind of momento mori for design, a consistent reminder of a play without an audience.
The etymology of "object" points in two curious directions. The first is the end to which the effort of the made thing is directed. All "objects" are directed outside of themselves, to something external. They need something to push towards and against in opposition to earn their existence.
I object, your honor: speaking against a judgment to establish our independence in opposition to a law.
What thoughts do you pour into the objects you own? Who are you really talking to?
When you try to Marie Kondo your objects into the trash bin, do they push back? Does anyone call out? Does what they represent speak to why you keep them? Or are they mute.
If I left this bed in the alley next to the dumpster, it wouldn't speak back to me.
I keep my bed to firstly, give me a place to sleep. secondly to remember what works and what doesn't in design, and thirdly because I have a delirious desire to befriend a Futuristic Tudor. Henry the VIII stepping out of a plate-armored hovercraft wielding a dark walnut ray gun. In payment he would hand me a leather bag of gold coins minted on Neptune.
This photo of a bed and all these words has no presumed connection with you. Even if you read all of them, you can hold them at bay, not let them inside. They are meaningless until you use them to ask your own questions about your own things, especially those you made, and what little bit of you they speak to.
When you make, who do you talk to?
We know this bed is exists, because we slept ini it.
Posted by: Doug Stiffler | April 25, 2020 at 02:14 PM