Howl

This semester I’ve been able to be a part of a couple really exciting things, and being involved with them has been a kind of respite when architecture gets to be too frustrating or annoying. Yes, architecture can absolutely be annoying. One of the things I’ve worked on is the Sweet Tea House that I’ve talked about in a few previous posts; we got it finished on time (and definitely not under budget) and installed in Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte. The opening was a couple weeks ago and the response we overwhelmingly positive. There is an art collector in town that may be buying it, and if she does you can bet I’ll be adding “designer/builder of something for which was paid money” to the end of my name on business cards. If she doesn’t buy it, it’ll be installed back at school and probably be allowed to decompose outside, which we would all be happy with. Pictures of it will be forthcoming soon.

Another project that’s allowed me to be creative is Gallery 9700F, which I’ve also talked about in past posts. The second exhibit opening was last night, and dealt with sound in a really super-creative way. Video and/or text will hopefully be up on the gallery website soon, and I’ll let you all know when it’s there. Like with the first exhibit, I wrote something for it (which you can find one post below this one), and the piece seemed to go over well. A professor of mine asked me if I ever submit anything for publication, and when I told her that I don’t she seemed to think I should. She’s someone whom I respect, and her writing is the kind that shows great talent and cleverness, so if she says something like that to me I think I should listen. I’m going to try submitting things to places (things to places? How much more vague can I get?) and we’ll see if anyone likes what I try to say. Even if nothing gets published I’m really enjoying writing again. It’s awakened the kind of love I have for being able to manipulate words and ideas in just the way I want to and create something out of nothing. I’m very much liking the chance to see something get perfectly translated from my head to paper, because nothing I do in my architectural work ever comes out exactly how I have it in my head. But writing can come out just like I imagine it, and I think that’s what makes it so special to me.

Thanks for reading this blog.

I’ll have another post up in a day or two updating you all on what’s been going on (Tea House success, studio, thesis, etc.) but for now you’ll have to make do with this. This is the written piece for the second 9700F exhibit (www.9700f.com), this time based on the sense of sound. It’s going to be a really cool exhibit, so if you’re in Charlotte come by and see it. This piece is titled “Come Now David, Where’s Everybody Going?”

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One night a few weeks ago I spent the night with my grandmother in her nursing home room because we weren’t sure how long she was going to live. Everyone else had stayed with her in the nights before, so it was my turn and they were home sleeping. I sat right next to the TV so I could hear it but keep it low enough that my grandma could sleep, and I needed some noise besides the mechanical breathing and bubbling of her oxygen machine. Her breathing was shallow enough it was silent, and the TV was drowning out the sound of my own breath, so the only sounds in the room were inhuman ones. After I turned the TV off I sat there with her for a while before I fell asleep; it’s a strange and totally helpless feeling to be with a dying person when you’re not a doctor.

Three days later she died, and when I got to the nursing home the rest of my family was already there. My grandmother’s body was lying in her bed, and the oxygen machine had been turned off. The five of us, my parents, my grandpa, my grandmother’s body, and I sat in the room and didn’t say anything for long periods at a time. During one of the long minutes of silence, my grandpa said, “It’s so quiet in here that I can hear the clock ticking,” and I noticed he was right. I’d never heard the wall clock ticking in that room before because there was always some other kind of noise overpowering it. Most recently, the oxygen machine and Saturday night college football. Before that, my family talking as we sat with my grandma. Still before that, my grandma talking and watching the Food Channel. I didn’t even know the clock made a sound when it ticked off the seconds. But sitting in the silence of a family death, the clock was the only sound in the room unless the nurses came in to see us.

I know it’s kind of a tired comparison between life and the passage of time, but I wonder if we surround ourselves with sound so that we don’t hear the clock ticking. Do we scramble to make conversation because the silence is so unnerving and it reminds us of our own aging and frailty? Do we have the television on in the background because we don’t want to hear ghosts breathing down our necks? Do we fill our ears with music because without it we can hear our own breathing, each time counting one off our lessening allotted number? Do we forego silence and contemplation because we don’t want to be faced with our greatest fears?

I read a story once about a city that became completely silent one day before regaining sound, then becoming silent again, then sound, then silence, then sound, and so on, each period becoming shorter or longer in a seemingly random order. The people of the city quickly grew impatient with the silence because it was so strange and deeply frightening. The short story, though, goes to talk about how the city also grew impatient with the noisy times because they learned in the silence to slow down, to spend time with their families, and to let themselves be overcome by peacefulness.

I wonder about silence: I wonder if we understand what it means and how it can give us the chance to breathe deeply, to hear unexpected sounds, and to spend time with loved ones and become a kind of caretaker as we smooth their hair and tell them they don’t have to fight anymore and if they want to go home to Jesus it’s okay. I wonder if we unwisely surround ourselves with sound so that we don’t hear the seconds slip away, each one carrying us closer to our own turn to die in a nursing home bed, when our families will gather and in the silence and grief make remarks of wonder that they can hear the clock ticking.

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Thanks for reading this blog.

This is my eulogy from my grandma’s funeral yesterday. My dad said I should put it up here.

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When all of us grandchildren were growing up my sister and I lived in Cincinnati, which meant that we only got to see grandma and grandpa at Christmas and during the summer. This made for an easy connection between seeing grandma and certain traditions. Every Christmas holiday would include grandma’s homemade fudge and having the whole extended family over for pizza on New Year’s Eve. Every summer vacation, Jennie and I would run through the sprinkler in her backyard.

When my family moved here fourteen years ago, both sets of grandparents moved here soon after. This meant that Jennie and I weren’t the grandchildren who saw them twice a year anymore; we were the ones who were lucky enough to have them live across town. As we were able to spend more time with grandma, I began to understand her as more than just a person who provided candy, pizza, and a sprinkler. I got to eat lunch with her, see her at my sports games, lose to her every single time we played cards, and have conversations with her about her life now and her life as first a young girl in Iowa and then a young bride and mother. One conversation I remember in particular: She and I were at her house by ourselves and we were looking at one of her old high school yearbooks, and I knew that she had played high school basketball in Iowa. This was back when girls basketball was six-on-six and you had three players on each team who were allowed to shoot the ball. Grandma was one of those three, and her team’s page in the yearbook included player stats. As I was reading them I noticed that she had averaged more than 20 points a game. “Grandma!,” I said. “You scored 20 points a game in high school?” “Is that good?,” she asked with her usual smile and shrug. I think Jennie and I might have gotten our basketball ability from her more than from our dad.

The most special part about being able to see her whenever I wanted to was that I got to watch her interact with other people. It didn’t matter if grandma knew a person or not, she was always quick with her little wink and shrug and a kind word. She cared about people so deeply, and she set that example for all of her grandkids. She was incredibly loving and was always concerned about a person’s relationship with Jesus and about their romantic status. For the past couple years, every single time she saw me she told me very seriously that she had a girl picked out for me from the staff at her nursing home, and always asked if I had a girlfriend yet. When the hospice chaplain came to meet her a few weeks ago, one of the first things she asked him was if he was married. And she always asked Jennie if she was dating anyone; when Jennie was here a couple weeks ago and she told her she was dating someone, grandma’s face lit up and she said “REALLY? OH, THAT’S WONDERFUL!” And she told Jennie to have a good marriage.

She was a caring woman who dealt with her husband away at war, raised three daughters, painted beautiful china, played basketball very well, taught me to play marbles on her living room rug, never lost a card game or board game, kept a dish full of candy for visitors, saw her grandchildren as completely perfect people who never did anything wrong, was incredibly proud of her full name, Wilma Winifred Lazear Parkis, was overjoyed by life and the people she came into contact with every day, and was deeply in love with Jesus. Jennie and I will miss her so much. And grandma, I talked to Jennie two days ago and she said to tell you she’ll have a good marriage.

Last night I drove to Chapel Hill to see David Bazan play some songs. I’ve been a big fan of his for years and when the chance comes to see him in a city near me, I try to take it.

When he first started making music as Pedro the Lion, his music was simple and full of songs about Jesus and his faith. I loved that kind of thing then (and I still do sometimes), and some of his songs like “The Bells” and “Secret of the Easy Yoke” are at the top of my list of my favorite Christian songs. His version of “Be Thou My Vision” is one of my favorite songs of all time, and for me his early EPs and albums are kind of a shorthand for what my early college years were like.

His last three albums as Pedro the Lion were different things entirely. Moving away from the Jesus-centric stuff, he made two concept albums back-to-back. With no songs that were explicitly about his faith, it was apparent in interviews he’d begun to move away from that. These two concept albums, and the normal album that came after them, were brilliant and full of a fuller rock sound than had been on his previous records. With this music, especially the concept albums, Christian kids who liked the faith obvious in his old stuff could write his change off as “he’s writing as a character, not what he really thinks.” During this time he also made a record as Headphones that was more of a keyboard-driven sound; this one also didn’t contain specifically spiritual songs, but was still really good (in fact, one of the songs from that album is another of my all-time favorites).

He then decided to hang up the Pedro the Lion moniker and make music under his own name. I saw him at one show a few years ago where he was trying out new music that would be on his first “David Bazan” EP, and the songs had become more about politics, society, and what was going on in the world. Still just as brilliant as his Pedro the Lion stuff, but about different topics. Not so much spiritual as just very creative and affecting. His first EP had five songs done both as full band songs and acoustic versions, for a total of ten, and was a more personal record than anything he’d done to this point. It was apparent that whenever he came out with a full CD, it was going to be an intensely personal one.

That full CD came out about a month ago and from the first time listening it was obvious something was different. The music had gotten more mature and fuller, he was playing with a whole band again, and you could tell he believed very much in this record. The themes have been brought back to the spiritual/faith side, but at first glance on almost the total opposite side of his early stuff. Make no mistake, this is a record about doubt and disbelief. Not disbelief in God necessarily, because a couple of the songs show him as still being aware of God’s voice, but more disbelief in the kind of God he’d grown up with. The kind of shallow God a lot of Christians try to portray. This record is one big “What the fuck, God? Seriously?” It is the extremely personal record it looked like he would make, and deals with his previous drinking problems, his wife and daughter, and his relationship with his faith. It is the most individually personal record I’ve ever heard.

But the thing is, it’s just as spiritual as his early Pedro the Lion stuff. While I may not be in a consistent state of doubt, there are times when I am in exactly the same place as he is on this album. There are times when I doubt and times when I am in a kind of shrugging disbelief at God when all I can do is turn my palms up and say “Is this seriously how it is? Are you really like this?” And I think that kind of doubt is important and necessary to the kind of life I am called by my faith to live. This new album only strengthened my feeling that he has been and is still my absolute favorite songwriter (well, maybe tied with Aaron Weiss from mewithoutYou, but…).

After the show I thanked him for making such an honest record and not being afraid of what people might have to say about it (some of the more evangelical Christians who have been his fans since the beginning seem to be pretty split on this record). He said “Well, what’re you gonna do, you know? There were already people who were saying things before this.”

Honesty. That’s the best thing about this record and about seeing him play live. His voice is as clear and emotional live as it is on the albums, and he and his band aren’t up there to be rock stars. They’re up there to play songs and connect with the audience. At every show, he takes questions in between songs and will answer them honestly no matter what they are; I think this builds a personal connection between him and his fans that not many artists have, and he’s always willing to hang around afterward and talk to people. I don’t know him personally, but from what I’ve heard on his records, what I’ve read in interviews, what I’ve heard him say, and what we’ve said to each other the couple times we’ve talked at shows, he’s one of the most honest and genuine people you’ll ever meet.

That’s so important these days, both in music and in spirituality.

(This is an article about his new album, well worth reading: http://burnsidewriters.com/2009/09/16/bless-this-mess/

Last Friday after school I drove up to Nashville, arriving just as the rehearsal dinner for my friends William and Hanna’s wedding was ending. All of us guys went out to a bar for a while, and even though a couple of us have moved out of Nashville by this point, the stories and jokes kept on like none of us had ever left. Saturday afternoon was the beautiful, small wedding with close friends; when I’m at these events attended by a lot of my old friends, I always have to look around and wonder how I’m so lucky to know these people. I think the relationship we have with each other is something authentic and special, and it always reminds me how everything in this world is connected and a good life is based on developing and valuing those connections.

Sunday I met a fairly new but especially valuable friend for lunch at a place in Nashville neither of us had been to yet. This friendship is one of those fortunate coincidences; she went to another university in Nashville while I lived there, but I’d never met her until I went to Boston last fall to visit a friend of mine from school. This new friend is now back in Nashville, which seems to be very much her home right now. As I get to know her more as time goes on, I realize that she’s one of my favorite people. I feel like she sees things differently from anyone else I know, and she might have more to teach me than anyone else. She’s interesting. While she’s in graduate school her job is to work with Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee, trying to get better bus service to healthy food options in impoverished areas of Nashville. Food is one of those things that we probably don’t think about that much, but people living in poor areas usually have access to even basic grocery stores, and must make do with fast food and convenience stores. This in turn causes their health care costs to go up and their quality of life to go down. You can read about a grant they just received HERE even though this isn’t exactly what she’s working on. If you live in Nashville, please try to help this organization out if you can.

So my friends are growing up and doing great things. I wonder sometimes if I’m doing the same or not. I still believe that architecture is what I should be doing, but it gets frustrating sometimes. My thesis can be a little discouraging because I’m trying to quantify something that’s more about ideas than data, and I don’t really know how to go about that. Some of the other thesis topics deal with things that are able to be researched, counted, and tested, but mine seems to be about something that’s more about emotions, thoughts, and theory. If I were doing something like build a better wall or produce less waste on the job site, I feel like that would be easy because I could just test and experiment until I reached my goal. But how do I take something like film editing and montage and make it quantifiable? How do I even represent it? I know that doing all this film study is going to make me a better architect, I’ve already learned things about rhythm, movement, and juxtaposition, but “I know it’ll make me a better architect, but I don’t know how to show it” doesn’t look good on a pin-up board. I think sometimes that I’m barely treading water with this topic. I think I’ll figure it out eventually, at least I hope I will, but I feel like I’m behind on it.

Anyway. Tomorrow night I’m driving to see David Bazan play in Chapel Hill. Maybe that kind of experience will jar me out of my thesis funk.

Be good to people. Thanks for reading this blog.

If you’re someone who regularly reads this blog and looks forward to new updates, I’m sorry. For both the fact that you look forward to what I write and the fact that I’m not writing here much anymore. I’m busy with school, but I’ve been busier and still updated this, so it’s not that. I guess the main reason is because I’m being hesitant to write about the major issues I’ve been thinking about lately.

I’ve used this blog to push a particular political candidate before, and politics is something I’m very much interested in, but I don’t necessarily like talking about my views here. I’d so much rather discuss political issues with people face-to-face than do it here where all the nuance and context of a real conversation is missing. I’m also partly of the mind that I don’t want to give some of the more radical anti-Obama people the concentration and effort it would take to write intelligently about it. I don’t think they deserve it right now.

Another important thing to me right now is my grandmother’s health. My mom’s mom has been declining slowly for the past couple years, but now we’re to the point where she’s going to die soon. We’ve been called in a couple times in emergency situations to say goodbye to her, but she’s gotten past those moments and is still alive. My cousins who live away from here (she lives in the same town I do) have been flying in to see her while she’s still alive, and It’s been great to see them and spend time with family. But it’s hard for me to write about it all right now because I feel like the things I have to say would sound like a eulogy and I don’t want to write a eulogy while she’s still alive. I’d rather concentrate on her life right now than her death.

School is fine. Thesis is still interesting to me, and I’m enjoying doing research for it. Studio and the tea house elective are going well too. I’ve settled into the daily routine.

Last night I went to a party at an apartment across the street from the school. I’ve become comfortable in that kind of situation, and I like that. Growing up and in high school I wasn’t in the environment that allows for a lot of chances to go to parties, and in fact the circles I grew up in were so small that I wasn’t even around large groups of people my own age much, if ever. In college I began to understand what it meant to live a life of friendship and love for others, and how to relate to people socially. As I’ve matured and reached my mid-twenties I’ve gotten to the point where I can go to a party and be natural. I can talk to strangers and spend a few hours outside in perfect weather, in a backyard with a crowd and a keg. I can look around and wonder how I got here and what it is about me that makes these people want to be my friend, and see that nights like this are one of the most important things in the world.

Well, it’s a sneak preview if you read this Thursday night or Friday before 5:30 P.M. and then go to the opening show at Gallery 9700F (the art installation gallery some friends are running in their apartment and I’m writing for). If you’re not going to the gallery, or you read this after you’ve gone to the gallery and read it there, then it’s not a sneak preview. Some background: the gallery shows are going to be based around the five senses this semester. This first one is the sense of sight, and the installation is this amazing cube with boxes and strings and view cutouts. This piece I wrote is also about sight, and it’s the first serious thing I’ve written in a long, long time. Maybe years. I hope you like it. __________________________________________________________

It’s all in what you see, really. They had been riding the train today, back to the suburbs from their trip downtown, when he saw her.

He rode this train every day to and from work and the trip had become so routine he didn’t notice anything about it anymore. Never read the signs, never paid any attention to the colors, noise, or people around him. Just got on, sat down, got off. Twice a day, every weekday.

But her, well, he would have noticed her. And he did this time, long before she turned around. As his wife and children sat next to him he stared at her back and remembered what it used to look like. It might as well have been thirty years ago as he slid his fingers slowly along the plastic of his seat, tricking himself into thinking it was her back, her collarbone, her legs, her arms. He swore he could feel the electricity thrumming through the rails beneath him. He watched as with each stop they passed she dropped pounds and stood a little straighter. The skin on the backs of her knees and her elbows tightened and became taut, filled with youth. Her hair lost the few strands of gray it had, began to lighten, and settled in a shade of eighteen-year-old blonde. People he never noticed got on and off the train.

Their stop came and his family walked onto the platform and towards the stairs. He looked back and saw that she was following them. He’d been right, it was her. The face bore the same signs of youth he remembered. The same dark eyes, the same straight teeth, the same skin with just a hint of a flaw here and there. As he walked with his wife and children to their car she followed, and when he opened the door she slid into the middle front seat between he and his wife. She talked to him the whole way to his house.

It was late when they got back and the kids were already asleep. He watched as she followed them all inside and sat at the kitchen table in the dark. He and his wife put the kids to bed and he went back downstairs as his wife changed out of her clothes and went to sleep. She was still there in the kitchen, so he poured them both a glass of water and sat down across from her. She looked just like she used to. They talked for hours.

It’s all in what you see, really. They had been riding the train today, back to the suburbs from their trip downtown, and she saw everything.

She didn’t ride this train very often; she worked near their house. Her husband rode this route every day to work, though, and she wondered if he ever got bored with the same routine year after year.

She spent the half-hour trip looking around and trying to take it all in. The orange plastic of the seats, the cream of the painted metal walls, the dark brown of the carpet, stained from years of dirt, food, and children. She saw every single person who got on and off the train and noticed the colors in what they were wearing. She saw the woman standing with her back to them and noticed her faded blonde hair, her skin with its slight sag around the knees and elbows, and the waist which betrayed its age in the extra weight it carried on the hips. She thought about the train’s speed and sound. She kept an eye on their children. She saw everything.

When their stop came she and her family got off and walked to their car. The drive back was a long one, and watched the scenery outside the window as her husband never said anything to bridge the empty space between them. She turned the radio on and watched the rear view mirror as her kids fell asleep.

When they got to the house she and her husband put their sleeping children to bed, and her said he was going downstairs to the kitchen for some water as she brushed her teeth and went to bed. She fell asleep quickly and slept through the night. If she had gone downstairs to check on her husband, she would have found him sitting at the table and staring at the wall, in the dark and very much alone.

Once school starts a lot fewer exciting things happen on a regular basis, which is why I’m writing in this blog much less than I did during the summer when it seemed like everywhere I turned there was something new and exciting and worthwhile. This semester has not been especially busy up to this point, there’s just not as much going on worth writing about. My daily life is: wake up, go to school, come home, go to sleep, repeat. I don’t mean for that to sound like a complaint, it’s not really since I like what I’m doing, but it’s just how things are right now.

My thesis work is getting more in-depth and more involved as the weeks go on. My thesis deals with film montage theories, most specifically intellectual montage as done by Eisenstein, Godard, and others, and how the consciousness and way of seeing things that comes from montage theory can affect architecture. So far it’s been really interesting to me, and I hope it is to my professors too. I’m learning more about architecture of course, but a large bonus is I’m learning more about film theory (which I already knew a bit about) and Marxist/Hegelian dialectics (which I didn’t know anything about). Right now I’m in one of the writing and reading phases; the design phase comes next semester.

My elective this fall is something to be excited about (funny how my electives are always my favorite classes each semester). A small group of us is working to design and build a temporary “tea house” in the Japanese/wabi-sabi tradition, which will be installed at an art gallery downtown at the end of October. We had our first meeting last Friday and quickly saw that since we are in the American South our design should be a “sweet tea house” and will deal with the front porch/hospitality tradition seen all over the southeast. Since the Japanese tea house is centered around hospitality and the tea service ritual, we feel like there are connections to be made between that and the ritual of serving guests sweet iced tea on a porch. Besides liking the localized irony and humor in making a sweet tea version of the Japanese tea house, I’m excited about being able to design and build something again since my experience in Vermont was such a special one.

The art gallery I’m writing for is nearing its first exhibit and I’ve written my piece for it. I’m fairly happy with it, although I may go back in and revise things/tighten it up before the exhibit opening. We’ll see how I feel about it as the date approaches. But it was really nice to write something again just for pleasure. Nice to be able to mold words to create the feeling I wanted to create, and nice to see that I can still call upon my memory, vocabulary, and emotions to create something with only words. Projects in school are either graphic representation or academic writing, and I enjoy getting the chance to just write for a change.

My grandmother has been in a nursing home for the past few years, and she is getting closer and closer to death as time goes on. When both of my dad’s parents died I was away in Nashville, so this is a new thing for me to watch someone who is so special to me slowly and relentlessly move towards a very different and unknown kind of life. There might be days where she is doing better than other days, but it’s apparent things are winding down. I think I can say my family is strong in its personal faith, and we are not afraid of what might happen to my grandmother after she dies, but I would guess it’s causing us all to think a little more about life and death, and this world and our relationship to it. I know it’s causing me to. As I think about my relationship to my grandmother over the years, and as I talk to friends about our lives, and as I listen to certain musical artists, I become more and more convinced that this life, for as long as we’re on earth and around other people, should be about nothing more than love. Simple, basic love for others. Wanting happiness for them and being happy when they find it, wherever and however and in whatever big or small amount. There is nothing else worth concentrating on for as long as we’re alive.

Thanks for reading this blog.

I’m sorry for not writing in a while, or at least longer than I like to. This summer it was so easy to find things to write about once every couple days or more, but now that I’m back in Charlotte and going to school, things have become pretty routine again and there’s not much to talk about.

So far it looks like this semester is going to be a good one. Studio, elective, thesis work… everything looks pretty good. Some of the studios have been moved around this year so I’m not in studio bays next to my classmates’ studios anymore. The room I’m in is a separate room away from all the other studios, so it’s going to be strange not being able to just pop over to a friend’s desk to see their work or just talk. Thankfully I see my classmates at other times outside of studio, so it’s not like that part of my life has just been cut out or anything.

I’m also writing some this semester for an art gallery being run by some friends. It’s going to be more creative writing, fictional stuff, which makes me nervous. I don’t write a lot of that kind of thing anymore, and I’ve got all these questions in my head about my ability to do it, and what if people don’t like it or what if they see things in my writing that makes them feel strangely about me, etc. etc. It’s going to be a step in trusting myself and others enough to write something and put it out there to be criticized. For some reason I’m never nervous about putting my architectural work up for critique and judgment, but putting my writing out there scares me. I think I have writing ability, it’s just… it’s a little frightening for me to open myself up like that, because I feel like my writing, if I put some effort into it, shows what I’m like deep down more than my school work or what I say does.

A friend of mine, who I only met less than a year ago but am happily getting to know better as time goes on, started on a Master’s degree this week, and it’s obvious she really loves it. Everything she says, and even the pictures she is taking right now, sort of bubble over with enthusiasm for where her life is right now. That’s such a nice thing to see; it’s a great feeling to know that a friend is in a good place and doing things she has a passion for.

Thanks for reading this blog.

My last year of school starts in just over a week and I feel more ready for it than I have at the beginning of the last two years. This summer feels like it was a really important one for me, for a lot of reasons. The drive out to California and back, when I was largely alone for the whole trip, allowed me to have valuable time to think about the kind of person I am, the kind I’d like to be, and how my life is going right now. It allowed for a lot of time of self-reflection and meditation, and I feel like through those times of silence and the road I was able to mature and become more aware of myself.

Being out in California was a continuation on that theme. I was able to contrast my days, mostly consisting of being by myself and planning out my own life day-to-day, with my nights and weekends when I would be around other people, learning a lot about what it means to be around people socially. For most of my life I’ve never been someone who is entirely comfortable in very social situations; I was never able to feel like myself at clubs or large groups of people I didn’t know, and I didn’t spend a lot of time with people who forced me into those kinds of situations. But being with my sister, who is like me in every way except she’s a serious extrovert, caused me to have to learn to deal with those situations and become comfortable in them. I had to learn how to function better socially, which also allowed for a great number of times I had the opportunity to learn who I am and who I can and cannot be. I feel like as I’ve grown older and got out into the world outside of sheltered Christian circles, I’ve been learning these things along the way, but the time I spent in Los Angeles increased and solidified it all.

The two weeks in Vermont were a time of learning in a different way. My architecture in school so far has been, admittedly, pretty amateur. I’m generally fairly happy with what I come up with, but I know it’s lacking detail and depth. The thought I put into the projects, while deep and dealing with larger ideas than just the program we’re given, largely stays on the surface as far as architectural depth goes. What I try to have in conceptual and philosophical depth in my work I lack in design depth and detail, and I know that. I wrote about this a month or two ago, but I was never able to feel like I could reach that kind of depth with my studio projects; I never knew why, just that for some reason it seemed out of reach. I would see the work of some of my classmates and be jealous that their work was so mature, so real, and seemed so material. Mine always hovered at the level of “you’ve got good ideas but they don’t translate,” and while I was pleased with the thought I put into my work, and generally okay with the result, I always knew that something was lacking and it hurt me that I couldn’t reach what I knew was outside my grasp. In my life I’ve largely been able to identify a problem or something I was lacking, and figure out how to correct it. But with my school work I couldn’t. I knew what I needed to put into my work but couldn’t figure out how, or even why I couldn’t figure out how.

But after Vermont I feel like I’m ready to begin school and bring a new maturity and depth to my work. I feel like there is architectural complexity and beauty in my head waiting to be let out. The key is going to be finding out how to let it out, but I think I can. The work I did in Vermont taught me things I needed to learn about drawing and model-making, about construction, and about what the difference is between a school project and a real one. While all my work so far has been school projects, with all the shallowness and non-realism that comes with that, I feel like I am much closer to knowing how to do real architectural work, and how to make a school project feel like it could be a real one. The things I did and saw in Vermont taught me a great deal, I think.

Or maybe this is all a product of sitting out on my back porch on a pretty nice night. Maybe nothing is going to change once I actually get started on the semester. But I’m optimistic.

Thanks for reading this blog.