One thing I’ve noticed about me is that I don’t imagine abstract things that don’t exist.

I’ve noticed this in designing products.

Or working within product design.

I don’t think I’ve ever really consciously designed a product.

But I do make things that can be produced, and re-produced, and can fit within a contemporary framework for economic exchange.

I design in the sense that I buy things, and then I turn those things into visibly not those things.

And that transforms the things into a new thing that other people want to buy.

Running a business based on that exchange is the work of creating a system for distributing that exchange at a scale that allows me to one day stop making things for people to buy.

These are things and ideas that I think about.

I don’t ever think about making something that doesn’t exist.

The thoughts just don’t occur to me.

I was born into a body, into a time, space, an architecture - I don’t have access to that space beyond in a language or medium that I can share with anyone else.

There is so much that is already occurring to think about.

No doubt occurring shares the latin roots that formed our words for current - like a river.

I am in the river.

I am with the river.

I am occurring with the river.

The thoughts that do occur to me are in response to the current I am in.

Currently.

I am reacting or responding to some sort of feeling or sensation that I am having.

I am sensing the world, feeling it - we all are - and I’m trying to give language to the way I generate my switchboard of outputs, by identifying my filter of inputs as well.

I don’t draw drawings. On paper, or on the computer.

I don’t mess with “the void” in 2D.

I don’t paint paintings anymore, at least not in the traditional sense.

That was done 15 years ago.

I do combine things that already exist though. Physical things.

This series of thoughts reminded me of the forward to the book on the industrial design firm Industrial Facitlity.

The intro to the book is by Alain De Botton, one of my favorite writers.

Rereading it now, I could do a bunch of posts on this.

But for today, I want to highlight this passage:

“The ability to create a welcoming experience in design for another person is a skill that derives from an unusual source: remembering what it is like to be distressed around an object.”

I often start with what exists because I am interested in transforming what exists into something that works (for me).

Because I often find myself pretty dang distressed around objects too.

My work , my conscious labor, is how I respond to this distress; to these sensitivities.

We all have these sensitivities, we are bon with them - we just have to cultivate our (re)awareness of them - to tune in, as it were.

My output, in some ways, is a direct result of how I am filtering the material world, because my work starts with what exists, already, at the store, the lumber yard, the fabric store, the leather supplier, the leather supplies supplier, the salvage yard, the yard yard.

It is no different than the writing I am doing now.

I inherited this language. These words.

Inputs.

I switch, re-mix, edit, grow, cultivate, transform to outputs that I can jam with.

I am re-arranging what is already here to say what i want to say, in the way the way that I want to say it.

I am arranging myself within the arrangement.

Starting with what is already here