Learning From Making

[image error]Recently, I was tinkering with the notion of encoded ellipses in the quanta associated with the water content of the brain. Using my brain to think about memory, forming memories as I thought about it. It was fun house mirror time. It all came together in the novel Deadbomb Bingo Ray, in an examination of the motivations of perfection and the complexity of altruism, but it also left me with an echo, a ghostly notion of something else that seems to be firming up into an actual idea. It all goes back, oddly enough, to music. At least that’s where the notion begins.

I was 14 or 15 the first time I heard a Jimi Hendrix song. It was at the time when I was being exposed to music in my social world. Lots of punk of course, because early on I knew they were my people, but I liked Jimi Hendrix. It was confusing. Juicy. Sound, riding a wave of energy type stuff. In fact I liked it so much that I managed to get a guitar. And over the course of that year, the damnedest thing happened. As I learned how to play it, the music I liked began to sound different. I still remember how those songs sounded before I knew anything about music. They sounded good! But after a certain point, they sounded… bigger. I wrote in Tattoo Machine that Hendrix could probably hear music in a different way than we do, that when he listened to a recording of Robert Johnson, he could probably hear when Johnson had his eyes closed. I still believe that. I never got there, but a door opened. Music, something I love, became something I could love even more when I understood something of how it was made.

Art came next. What has twenty plus years of being a professional artist taught me? You guessed it. I’ve learned to appreciate art in a more robust way than I did before. Sometimes I look at something and I can get a feel for the mind behind it. At least I think I can (see paragraph one, smile in the mirror with me).

Last up- the words. There are books that have positively haunted me. I Served The King Of England by Bohumil Hrabal is at the top of the list. Was Hrabal that man? The person I see between the lines? Am I seeing some part of him when I consider the architecture of this book? Maybe. Maybe not. BUT that I suspect I am makes the reading of it even more enjoyable.

The upshot is that making things has enabled me to enjoy the things I like most a little more than I already did. A perfectly gluttonous blog topic for the holiday season! So sally forth dear reader! If your favorite food is French, buy a Jacques Pépin cookbook for yourself, it might be the best gift you’ve ever given anyone.