DAY 055 – DESIGNING DANGEROUSLY

Naming Before Knowing

We are so quick to label and categorize. I won’t rail against our information-saturated world (which is about as useful as Lear screaming into the storm); there’s a need for this immediate processing of information in our work-a-day reality. We need to move quickly, to be nimble.

However, we need to keep our hand on the switch, flipping this skill off when it’s unnecessary. I think of it in the same way I’ve heard Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love) address her anxiety: “Thank you for your help. You are incredibly useful at times, but I don’t need you in this moment. You are dismissed.” We need to have that kind of control over our sorting/labeling brains. It is essential for us to have that part of our brain stand down if we’re to reach toward a painting, a film, a piece of music. Rilke wrote:

“Things are not all so comprehensible and expressible as one would mostly have us believe; most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.”

We need to approach a work deliberately, as if it’s a wild animal. Look it in the eye, hand outstretched, hunker down, and sit with it. The alternative is positively clinical: capture it, name it, pin it to a board, and categorize it. With that course of action, while we can hold it, something has been lost as well, the ineffable, the life stuff.