Q: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?
A: A drummer.

We like to put people into boxes–roles that are defined by simple rules. Like: a musician is someone who makes “complete” music: melody and harmony and rhythm. If a person doesn’t make melody or harmony, how can he be a musician?

Designers? We like to say that we are problem solvers, but the larger culture thinks that we make things beautiful. Fashion designers make beautiful clothes, and interior designers make beautiful rooms and graphic designers make beautiful printed materials. And even when we know that it’s more complicated than that, we still tend to buy into the broader cultural definition.

I’ve thinking about this recently as I read and considered the responses to my previous post. People–even other interaction designers–seem to want interaction designers to fit into some pre-conceived box, some well-sanctioned model. I certainly understand this impulse: the more I am exposed to traditional wisdom–especially traditions of craft–the more I see that they contain wisdom that is not immediately apparent. But I also believe that as the world changes, models that were once apt can become less so. New people work in new ways in new conditions. These people bring new combinations of skills to the table. They are of a new shape. Can we honor the shape of the individuals who do this new work while at the same time working within and learning from the tradition?

***

I’ve been thinking about the parallels between my work and music, especially in terms of the creative collaboration typical of most music-making. Listen to this Billie Holiday recording of  ”All of Me.” This song has been recorded literally thousands of times, mostly by people who choose to treat the song as an exaggeration, a pop trifle built on a slim lyrical conceit. Listen to Sinatra’s recording, or Louis Armstrong–both capable of very sensitive interpretation–and you can almost hear the songwriters’ glib Tin Pan Alley studio banter: “you took the part that once was my heart, so why not take all of me?” It’s pure schmaltz!

But Holiday’s vocals do something simple and amazing with the song. The force us to take the lyric seriously. The result is raw, the cry of of a lover who cannot bear the burden of her broken heart.

All of me
Why not take all of me
Can’t you see
I’m no good without you
Take my lips
I want to lose them
Take my arms
I’ll never use them
Your goodbye left me with eyes that cry
How can I go on dear without you
You took the part that once was my heart
So why not take all of me?

Listen to the sax playing (Lester Young, I think) that follows the first chorus, how sensitive it is to the mood Holiday sets. Listen to the band behind Lester, how it drops out to nearly nothing, just drums, bass and guitar as if it too can’t bear the burden of its body. This beautiful collaboration transforms the songwriters’ framing work–whatever their intention–into a devastating piece of art.

So here’s my question: who is responsible for the success of this collaboration? Are some of the musicians here more “real” than others? What can we learn about the way we think of our roles from this model?

I’ve also been collecting my thoughts on the iPad, and was struck by a comment by Columbo in this morning’s promotional email:

I do not have an iPad yet, but will surely get one. I have drawn on one already, and loved a larger screen. (I’m tired of mixing phone calls in with my art supplies). One day we’ll be able to draw on touch screens the size of a door. Compare the early iPods—2001: heavy, grey screen, no pictures, etc.—with current ones. Doesn’t it make you feel like this one iPad is ONLY the beginning? The basic thing for me remains: no visible tool. Finger creates art, period… The other key point is portability: a regular digital studio is now in your pocket. It’s not so much a toppling of status quo, more like a broadening of alternatives—shooting a movie in black-and-white film now doesn’t mean the same it meant a century ago—back then it was the single option; now it’s a choice among many.

In another blog post I read this morning, David Sheilds wrote:

Art, like science, progresses. Forms evolve. Form are there to serve the culture…

Sheilds doesn’t make the technological argument (that new forms are made possible by new technologies) but he doesn’t have to. The forces of change are multivariate.

And I’m buying Brushes.

Blog » India Calling | Mad Decent.

The Crocus

The flower doesn’t know
that I don’t know anything
about the flower.

Except
that last fall the PTA at Middle School 447
sold bulbs to raise money.
That the purple crocus that came up yesterday
was part of an assortment of lots of bulbs
to grow flowers with names I do not know
because I’ve never put bulbs in a garden before.
I saw the pictures in the fundraising catalog:
the bland little yellow one and
the thrilling little blue one that looks like tiny clusters of grapes
that I recognized: I had seen it before
somewhere in the neighborhood.
They all came in a box that held little bags
on which were printed inscrutable instructions.

Plant three inches deep
and two inches apart
with the point facing…
I don’t remember.

The instructions filled me with doubt.
I told myself these
are not things I know,
are not like a subway map
are not like a computer
are not like bike repair.

These were vague and colloquial, like
an old man chewing something that grew in the earth and holding something to work the earth and wearing the clothes that you wear to work the earth and saying to me
yep.

When I was three,
I ran without clothes
in my grandmother’s summer garden.
She told me
that the purple vine climbing the archway was wisteria,
and the delicate tree with spindly red leaves like old lady hands was a Japanese Maple
and the rhododendrons were the ones lining the walk with their extravagant old-fashioned blooms and smooth sensible oval leaves.
There were some things that my grandmother loved purely, and I knew that as she walked
me through her garden.

Under three inches of scrap-filled New York yard dirt,
the blue cluster of grapes and the purple crocus and the little yellow one
and some big pink ones I think are coming up later in the spring,
did they tell themselves stories of not knowing what was above the dirt? Of struggle
to get there, to push aside gum wrappers and dirty snow piled on top of the
mulch the Parks Department makes from abandoned Christmas trees?
Did they tell each other Grow!? Grow up!

No. They just know
where up is,
and grow the way
they are pointed,
the only way they can
to see the guy
that doesn’t think
he knows
anything.

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