Box

I’m trying to make myself care about genres of architecture.

I can’t do it. What I like or don’t like is always on more of a case by case basis. For example, one style of architecture that I like is Brutalist. I like the origin story of Brutalism, I like the aspect of Brutalist buildings, I like the creative daring that is only made possible by the use of concrete like the works of Zaha Hadid, or Felix Candela, many of which are not Brutalist, because loving Brutalist architecture-some of it-isn’t the hill I care to die on. I might wave the flag a bit, or nerd out some when I see a building that looks like it belongs in Star Wars as Darth Vader’s away office, but I’ll never call myself a Brutalist because it allows people to make certain assumptions about me, which they’re free to do, and might anyway, but I often don’t remember the names of the buildings that I like, and I very rarely know who designed them, and I attach very little value to this information because I just like looking at it, whatever it is, and I don’t really want to analyze with strangers.

This whole personal nature of what seems to be cultural apathy to some-and possibly is-isn’t serving me well in school, specifically in my history of architecture class. I like to write about experiences, and if I can’t write about mine, I try to put myself in another’s shoes and walk for a spell. This doesn’t translate well to power point presentations, and neither do I. I actually think that power point is a blight on the art of human communication, and gives those who need to sound like they know what they’re talking to other people who have so little desire to engage that they need someone to read them a picture book for no more than seven minutes about, a means to do just that. Just that. I don’t want to summarize everything. I don’t want to go to the internet and rip, cut, and paste everything that I present. I want to experience and express, in my own way, and using my own photos, and my own style of writing and punctuation. Writing for academia is an ordeal for me, and making power points is, quite frankly, torture.

I think I’m making it work though. You know when kids play in boxes, and the box just barely contains them because they don’t know that they’ve grown, and they wiggle around in it to get comfortable, and the box starts to flex and soften, and they’ll go get a book, and sit in the box and read for a bit, and maybe take a nap, and when they wake up, the box is on it’s side and their feet are sticking out the bottom, so they go get Dad’s camo duct tape, and the kitchen drawer sharpie, and the next time they’re looked in upon, the box is a fort, and a car, and a den, and a stage, and a chair, anything but a box? That’s me in school.

It’s not the box that’s bad or inimical in any way; if you suspend disbelief, or maybe expand imagination in the right direction, a fort is just a box, a car is just a box, a building is just a box. There are just fundamental rules that determine how all these boxes work, and exist in the first place, and you’ve gotta learn those somehow if you want the box to be any good to you.

It’s like etiquette, or maybe it is exactly etiquette. Bruce Lee said something about using no way as a way, and having no limitation as a limitation, and he also said “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.”, and he also said, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” Now I’m grasping at a rope of sand to try and make my way back to etiquette, which I guess is to say, professionally. Bruce Lee revolutionised martial arts and made a huge splash as a bona fide Asian actor in Hollywood, and he didn’t do it by reinventing martial arts or creating a new way to act; he did it by throwing 500 punches a day and taking acting lessons. There’s no other way to do things like that. You can’t change something for the better if you don’t understand what it is, and what it’s for. Take all those quotes, Bruce Lee didn’t say them first, not in essence. Like some other guy said, “Everything has been said, but since no one was listening, it all needs to be said again.”

Anyway, the etiquette of schooling is to do the work in such a manner that the person grading your work can recognize that it deserves a passing grade. It’s that simple.

I think I’m overthinking it. It’s so easy to do. I’m not in school to do whatever I want, I’m in school because I had a choice to do whatever I wanted(sort of), and I chose to go to school. This is the box I chose to play in, the school box.

This conversation has been going on in my head for far too long, rattling around like flies in a bottle. Now it’s nailed to this page, and resolved, and I don’t have to think about it anymore.

Isn’t that nice.

I need a nap.