The Hands of He and Him

One is an artist who spent yesterday seaming together fabric that he designed with the software called Maya (a virtual process, keyboard and screen, undertaken in a workshop that seems far away during winter rain).

The other is an advertising major who sat with me on a couch on that rainy Christmas day looking at a book of iconic ads and explaining the theories behind them, the jokes at play, the double or triple entendres. "You're incredibly good at this," I said, after listening to him talk...