There have been many things on my mind as of late, and I need to reflect my thoughts on this digital paper so that I can get a better look at them.
God is in the details, a common phrase referencing the transcendental qualities found within certain items/places/things that are lost in the gestalt of framing (I use gestalt in the artistic sense here, not the philosophical, referring to a number of elements creating one large composition). In photography, for example, I find that my eye is often lead to particular points in the image, and usually not what I feel the first author of that image intends. As my own author, I notice small items that bring other relevance/meaning into the context of the shot shifting the complete read of that image. In design, it is the same thing. Small items such as folios [edit: Folios are page numbers. Forgive me if you knew, and forgive me if you didn't. Just want to be clear.] can often lead to a bigger representation of a concept, at once creating stability in a spread and unifying the whole book. In life it is the same things. The small things that matter most.
When looking at life as a continuous item, spanding many years it is rather flat. Looking at small items in that life you see that there are key events that made pivotal changes in your life. Looking even closer on that timeline of life, there are the everyday things that make difference. It is these highlights that make life worthwhile. For the most part, people come and go. They run their path, some famous, some not, and that path eventually ends. In a very large sense, we are all the same, it makes no difference whether you are worth $10,000,000 or $10, it is the details that matter, and with those everyone has the ability to be impactful.
I was just out riding a bit in a beautifully clear, but rainy night here in San Francisco. I spent my time riding along Embarcadero, stopping off at a view points I like to check out every now and then to admire the city, and think about things that are going on in my life. Tonight I realized that my life is rather inconsequential, that I am merely one of an almost infinite number of people in the world. My moving around in the city leaves little impact. My current job gives little satisfaction to myself or those I aim to communicate with. My existence is non-existant. Which leads me back to my original point. In this existence where I am lost in the contemporary world, there is little I can do but find my bearings. I need to find Ariadne's thread. For me, I feel that this thread is learning as much about as many things as possible. It is not a question of learning a subject and becoming very skilled in it, but the process of learning that is key. Covering as many areas as possible helps fill the gaps of my identity, by filling them with knowledge of people, places, ideas, cultures... anything that is new and allows me items to create understanding.
In my professional career, I am just starting and I have a long ways to go. However, within this context, I am a designer. I communicate, and I can transcribe that communication through any medium I choose. I hope that those mediums broaden for me so that I may one day design a building, a collection of clothing, a scultpure, a chair, or just simply create pieces of art. This is my goal and I will not let anything stop that. Those are my little things that on a large scale are nothing, but to me the pivotal points of my life that will create a gestalt that I would be happy with knowing I did that.
Wow, sorry, that was a pile of crap entry. Re-reading this, I feel as if I am a bit off topic, and I don't want this blog to become some sort of personal diary. As I said before, there are much better things to be discussing than such self-masturbatory items like my issues and work. However, there are few things in this post that I do think are relevant and can be left in, which is why I am putting this live and not deleting it right now. After all, what does it matter since no one reads this anyway, and it's not like you can leave comments. So if you read this far, sorry, go ride your bike, dont be sitting on the internets.
God is in the details, a common phrase referencing the transcendental qualities found within certain items/places/things that are lost in the gestalt of framing (I use gestalt in the artistic sense here, not the philosophical, referring to a number of elements creating one large composition). In photography, for example, I find that my eye is often lead to particular points in the image, and usually not what I feel the first author of that image intends. As my own author, I notice small items that bring other relevance/meaning into the context of the shot shifting the complete read of that image. In design, it is the same thing. Small items such as folios [edit: Folios are page numbers. Forgive me if you knew, and forgive me if you didn't. Just want to be clear.] can often lead to a bigger representation of a concept, at once creating stability in a spread and unifying the whole book. In life it is the same things. The small things that matter most.
When looking at life as a continuous item, spanding many years it is rather flat. Looking at small items in that life you see that there are key events that made pivotal changes in your life. Looking even closer on that timeline of life, there are the everyday things that make difference. It is these highlights that make life worthwhile. For the most part, people come and go. They run their path, some famous, some not, and that path eventually ends. In a very large sense, we are all the same, it makes no difference whether you are worth $10,000,000 or $10, it is the details that matter, and with those everyone has the ability to be impactful.
I was just out riding a bit in a beautifully clear, but rainy night here in San Francisco. I spent my time riding along Embarcadero, stopping off at a view points I like to check out every now and then to admire the city, and think about things that are going on in my life. Tonight I realized that my life is rather inconsequential, that I am merely one of an almost infinite number of people in the world. My moving around in the city leaves little impact. My current job gives little satisfaction to myself or those I aim to communicate with. My existence is non-existant. Which leads me back to my original point. In this existence where I am lost in the contemporary world, there is little I can do but find my bearings. I need to find Ariadne's thread. For me, I feel that this thread is learning as much about as many things as possible. It is not a question of learning a subject and becoming very skilled in it, but the process of learning that is key. Covering as many areas as possible helps fill the gaps of my identity, by filling them with knowledge of people, places, ideas, cultures... anything that is new and allows me items to create understanding.
In my professional career, I am just starting and I have a long ways to go. However, within this context, I am a designer. I communicate, and I can transcribe that communication through any medium I choose. I hope that those mediums broaden for me so that I may one day design a building, a collection of clothing, a scultpure, a chair, or just simply create pieces of art. This is my goal and I will not let anything stop that. Those are my little things that on a large scale are nothing, but to me the pivotal points of my life that will create a gestalt that I would be happy with knowing I did that.
Wow, sorry, that was a pile of crap entry. Re-reading this, I feel as if I am a bit off topic, and I don't want this blog to become some sort of personal diary. As I said before, there are much better things to be discussing than such self-masturbatory items like my issues and work. However, there are few things in this post that I do think are relevant and can be left in, which is why I am putting this live and not deleting it right now. After all, what does it matter since no one reads this anyway, and it's not like you can leave comments. So if you read this far, sorry, go ride your bike, dont be sitting on the internets.
posted by Jonathan Burkett at
21:57
