Usually, I try not to post something unless I have at least a few words to say about it. My fear is that otherwise the blog would turn into a Facebook-like string of disconnected ‘funny’ links to ‘funny’ things.
However, today is my birthday. So, I can post whatever I damn well please, no matter how inane or out-of-context it may be:
There’s a chapter of Charles Bukowski’s Women that opens with this:
I began receiving letters from a girl in New York City. Her name was Mindy. She had run across a couple of my books, but the best thing about her letters was that she seldom mentioned writing except to say that she was not a writer.
[…]
Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.
Maybe this is especially true nowadays with email. Email is closer to the exact mid-point between conversation and writing than traditional letter-writing in my experience (writing a letter by hand always seemed to morph into a labored literary exercise for me, despite my efforts to keep it light and conversational). At its best moments, email can produce a kind of resonance that’s rarely present in conversation and entirely absent from the labored writing of those of us who are not good writers.
I find that with any creative undertaking – be it writing, design, or something else entirely – the key is in finding a context that removes this weighty sense of trying, the self-consciousness that makes the process labored and ultimately un-fun. I had a drawing teacher who, for the first five weeks or so of the course, would only allow you to draw for 10 or 20 seconds at a time before stopping you. His intent was to isolate the initial sense of possibility and fun that exists in the first few moments of drawing before the labored feeling of “Oh no, I’m creating a drawing… what should I do next?” quickly kicks in. His idea was that once you’re able to isolate this first sensation from the second, hopefully you’re gradually able to carry it further into the process and delay the onset of the second. I think he was definitely onto something, although his manner of teaching it was admittedly frustrating at first.
I found this vintage promotional Holiday Inn postcard in my step-mother’s house and it instantly became one of my prized images, earning the strongest magnet on my refrigerator door and loosely inspiring – with its garish, ghoulish Stepford-leisure-suit vibe – the whole ‘Enjoy Mock Duck’ concept.
As with the White Album or Carl Lewis’ disastrous rendition of the National Anthem, it’s hard to pick just one favorite part. But one minor detail I enjoy is where the father’s hand is lying on his daughter’s shoulder in the Swimming Pool Scene: note the strange turquoise shape that’s hovering over her shoulder. Is it a snorkel? A discolored candy cane? A sea horse? No, it’s a ribbon in her hair that’s somehow as perfectly stiff and lifeless as everything else in this little set. Marvelous.
This blog is two weeks old today, which suggests the following info-graphic:
DAYS ON EARTH
Blog: 14
Son: 10
For better or for worse, this blog seems to be lacking two types of content that are staples of the blogosphere:
1. Embedded youtube videos
2. Sex
Maybe the lack of such gives this blog a refreshing, distinctive personality. Or maybe it gives it a stick-in-the-mud, stuck-at-home-on-the-Sabbath feeling, as I suppose neither multimedia nor promiscuity has any role in a properly-observed Sabbath either. We’re beginning to stray into the territory of Pennsylvania!: my imagined comedic musical about a community of Amish manning a power plant outside of Philadelphia.
Lastly, since the blog is 14 days old, I can link to this Grizzly Bear performance of ‘Two Weeks’ on Letterman in good conscience without feeling like it’s a complete non sequitur.
Last week, I had a talented fellow named Ryan Cole do a guest lecture for my Ideas Generation class at Prague College. He talked about the difference between vertical thinking (hierarchical, problem-solving, precludes creative thinking) versus horizontal thinking (associative, lateral, creative but unable to accomplish anything on its own). This is basically something that designers like to talk about a lot, just phrased in nice concise terms.
Two days earlier, I was reading a New Yorker article about the neuro-enhancer revolution- i.e. the fact that lots of people take drugs like Ritalin simply to make themselves function at a higher cognitive level, not because they need it for any corrective reason. One of the concerns about this ‘revolution’ in the medical community (in addition to more obvious worries about health and so on) is the question about what part of people exactly is being made smarter by neuro-enhancers. Is there only one kind of intelligence, or are there some that are made smarter at the expense of others? Studies have shown that concentration (which is enhanced by drugs like Ritalin) actually works to the detriment of creative thinking. One researcher expressed the idea that we might be raising a generation of super-skilled accountants through over-prescription of neuro-enhancers.
Armed with these ideas, it occurred to me that perhaps the primary skill that graphic designers seek to cultivate cant best be described as selective focus: learning to expand and contract the locus of attention, rather than aiming for any kind of ‘genius thinking’ per se. I think this term can also be used to explain the intent of the writing on this blog and its peculiar idiom.
One thing I like about the web is encountering people who have the same name as you. Every now and then, another Dan Mayer will contact me about the danmayer.com site asking to purchase it. One wrote, “I’m Dan Mayer, too… let’s chat!’ and left an AIM handle, but I didn’t think we’d have that much to talk about beyond than whether we like/dislike our mutual name, so I demurred.
Even my just-born son, Felix Mayer, already has a young virtual nemesis.
Mock duck is a gluten-based vegetarian food. It is generally made from wheat gluten and is thus high in protein. Its distinctive flavor and artificial “plucked duck” texture distinguish it from other forms of commercially available gluten products.