Leland de la Durantaye on David Foster Wallace’s senior honors thesis and later 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, newly published in Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will:
Much of his address is thus advice on how not to get totally hosed, which is to say on how to be happy, which is to say, ethics. From Aristotle onward ethics has been about how not to get totally hosed — on the highest level. Learning this is the most desirable thing of all. It is what another great essayist of the twentieth century, Guy Davenport, called “the inviolable privacy” of the mind.
With this in mind:
[O]ur aim should be to see the world, to attend to everything that is the case around us. We should imagine our way into the lives those around us lead, to reflect on what wild contingencies led to our state and to theirs, to reason our way into their beliefs and imagine our way into their fears. To not get totally hosed is to see that the cashier in the consumer-hell-type situation has this soul-crushing job not because it is in the cashier’s character to have a crappy job, in the same way that Leibniz thought it was in Alexander’s character to conquer Darius and die by poison. It is not divine ordinance that has put things in these places. That this person has a dreadfully boring job while you might have an interesting one is not because that is the right and true order of things in this, the best of all possible worlds, but because of contingent, crooked reasons that no logic — formal, modal, or other — will straighten.
At dinner this evening, our server brought me pepper for my gnocchi and swiveled away before grinding some for my partner. Pfft, she said, pouting into the pasta. “What if she fell in love last night?” I looked across the table. “What if she just received a text, a call from her mother, her son, before she came to the table regarding some terrible thing?” I pointed out. Pepper was not the point. The point is to choose to be human.
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E.B. White on the miracle that is New York:
It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible. Every time the residents brush their teeth, millions of gallons of water must be drawn from the Catskills and the hills of Westchester. When a young man in Manhattan writes a letter to his girl in Brooklyn, the love message gets blown to her through a pneumatic tube — pfft — just like that. The subterranean system of telephone cables, power lines, steam pipes, gas mains and sewer pipes is reason enough to abandon the island to the gods and the weevils. Every time an incision is made in the pavement, the noisy surgeons expose ganglia that are tangled beyond belief. By rights New York should have destroyed itself long ago, from panic or fire or rioting or failure of some vital supply line in its circulatory system or from some deep labyrinthine short circuit. Long ago the city should have experienced an insolible traffic snarl at some impossible bottleneck. It should have perished of hunger when food lines failed for a few days. It should have been wiped out by a plague starting in its slums or carried in by ships’ rats. It should have been overhelmed by the sea that licks at it on every side. The workers in its myriad Cells should have succumbed to nerves, from the fearful pall of smoke — fog that drifts over every days from Jersey, blotting out all light at noon and leaving the high offices suspended, men groping and depressed, and the sense of world’s end. It should have been touched in the head by the August heat and gone off its rocker.
With all due respect to E.B. White and his three New Yorks, and my aforementioned four New Yorks, an addition. His:
1) The New York of the man or woman who was born here
2) The New York of the commuter
3) The New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something
And mine:
4) The New York of the man or woman who was born somewhere else and came to New York never intending to stay
I’ll add a fifth:
Fifth, there is the New York of the man or woman who looks at the city each day as a miracle. Looks at it each day as a thing we’re getting for free, something that shouldn’t be, something that might not. But is. It’s here. And we get to be in it. Get in it. Be down in it, blotting out the mess, the light, the heat, the delays, and get the surprises. Sweeping up the past, running with strangers, ducking the fairs, in silence together. Fifth, is she who sees the magic that is the city, knowing that it never should work, really. But then it does. And she chooses it as her home.
Only two short days left to help support The Manual, a sparkling, new journal that examines design on the web — in print.
Why?
A wave of energy is quietly moving through the community of those who take interactive design seriously: popping up at conferences, in tweets and blog posts and in adrenalized chats over beer when we gather. As one of these people, you are The Manual’s perfect reader — or one of its future contributors. The Manual chronicles our growing movement, archiving the insights of our best thinkers and writers, as we define a more mature understanding of this serious new discipline and more effectively tell the story of our work. Putting ink to paper crystallizes reasoning.
And importantly:
The physicality of The Manual has a purpose. Where do we find our true inspiration? Not in the distracting devices we stare at or peck at with our thumbs. It comes when we step away from technology and, instead, reflect. Walk away, The Manual in hand; read it at the park, by the river, in a pub, over coffee.
Frank furthers the why:
It’s no longer only about making things for a network of computers: it’s about making things for the fabric that connects all of us. It’s not bits and bytes, it’s people and places. It’s not eyeballs, it’s faces. This is serious, and this is inspiring. Never before at any point in history has the potential impact of an individual following a desire path been so … incredible. The web is growing and maturing. The edges are moving further out. We are in the prime of the network, and as a mature practice, we need a home for mature discourse. The Manual strives to be that.
The first issue this summer will launch with six substantial, beautifully illustrated features from Simon Collison, Frank Chimero, Dan Rubin, Jon Tan, the Web Standardistas, and me (!).
Mirroring our own desire paths, The Manual is a beautiful start. Might you help?
The pencil is intuitive. Its form so familiar, it’s invisible in our everyday experience. We’re taught the proper way to hold a pencil, but its directions for use are otherwise unspoken. There are no user manuals, no instructions for care, no troubleshooting guides. The pencil, with its potential to visualize our most intimate creative thoughts, has no barrier to use, directly linking thought to medium to audience.
The Eberhard Faber Mongol — the first pencil to boast the now ubiquitous yellow — represented a superior-quality writing instrument. In 1861, Eberhard opened the first lead-pencil factory in America in New York City, bringing German pencil-making techniques to the United States. After moving to Brooklyn, it became one of Brooklyn’s most important factories, employing hundreds of workers, who were mostly women.
A pencil’s role is to support without being noticed. Too ostentatious, and it’s gotten in the way of the very concepts one intends to sketch or write. Too weak, and it bends to will, forcing the user to turn to a pen for a stronger character and more determined line.
For most jobs of note, only a pencil will do. It exists to honor an idea. But clearly, the pencil itself has made a point.
Walnut and imperfect, waxy to the touch, it was where we ate. Get too close, and you could see (really) dinners past, hear conversations past. It was just a table. But it was The Dinnertable. More than that still, the dinnertable was a time for reporting in on tests. (How was the math test? Well…) It was a time for brothers and sisters to live up to tests. (I can finish mine faster that you. And other competitions.) But the dinnertable is also a place for prototyping. A place to test.
Sometimes when beaten down with a baffling decision — when long-term metrics and pros-and-cons-columns have failed — I think of the table. Not what my goals are 10 years out, not how this decision might work out with my long-term strategy. Those can seem too esoteric, not real. Instead, I think of a future table 10 years out with friends and family, and the story I’m telling. What do I care about then? What do I want my story be?
This is the dinner test.
Someone once said to me, and I paraphrase, that “everything can be solved over dinner.” Perhaps it can. Perhaps we can tell something (or everything) about a future scenario in a few seconds. Perhaps everything can be solved over the dinnertable, and if we know the stories we want to tell, I would only add, “solved, prototyped, and predicted.”
It was 9AM and too early to be walking there on a Sunday. Walking down Central Park West in a satisfied way, the way you do when you’ve finished something, when much of a city is still asleep, when it’s too early for blocking the box or street cleaners, and pigeons are still meandering, and sound and light rise like hot symphonies from the grates.
But that didn’t stop the looking. People, out to get a part of that morning — catching the best of it before the rest of us use it up. Looking. Some who passed gave an odd once-over. Unusual.
What makes one suddenly noticeable? What makes something suddenly stand out?
Grabbing the pole on the train home, regarding the stares of now others who joined, I looked down. Bronze medal and ribbon around my neck and still holding token wilty carnation, I was in running gear. Covered in awards that every runner gets decked out with when she finishes a mini race around the park.
The difference between other runners and me: I forgot to remove these before leaving.
Boundary matters
In the park, I was one of thousands. But on the street, I was one, and just anyone. And they looked! These medals were no Superman. Earned or not earned, they were a signifier of something recognizable, a meaningful point system walking around. The lift ticket on the previous winter’s 1983 puffy down jacket.
What are the signs we intend? Often careless, labels, tags, stickers, lanyards remain as indication of where we’ve been or how. How are they being interpreted then or later?
Perhaps being conscious of that is the difference between walking and running.
A recent forgotten label, discovered later on in the day, stuck to my coat.
Melissa Mongiat and Mouna Andraos provoke, “how to inspire people to give their heart-felt vision of a new public space?” The result:
The ‘Museum of Possibilities’ was created for one day during Montréal’s city-wide open day for Museums. Members of the public could pick up a piece of paper and write down what they would like to have happen in that space in the future. Visitors entered the field of balloons to add an ‘entry’ to the museum of possible things which might happen on site. People also received a set of stickers so they could wander through the Museum of Possibilities and add a vote of approval for possible future events. This voting helped to turn ‘possibilities’ into probabilities and gave the client concrete data on public interest.
Wow. Predesirepaths.
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Museum of Possibilities, photo credit: Varial.
I would stand eyes level with the yellow formica counter, and watch her make magic. The steps were always the same. Although I could barely see over the counter, I could make out the ceramic mug. Guiding boiling water in motion, she’d bring the kettle to the cup. And I’d watch water — see-through clear — pour out from kettle to cup.
That’s when the magic happened.
Padding behind her to the kitchen table, I’d follow her sitting down as if this were an ordinary moment. Knowing little of etiquette or ownership, I would stare directly into her cup. Bitter. Brown. Not water. Transformed.
Coffee.
Why? Why did water sometimes become coffee? Why is water magic only in the kitchen? Why does water need a change? Why did she keep it a secret? Why do people drink brown beverages?
I had a thousand questions. And for them, there was only one answer, seemingly simple today.
A question of why
Why is a six-year old so curious? Partly practical. Because she is not tall enough to know all the answers, she must ask good questions. To see over the edge of the cup would be to see the answer. As this isn’t possible, observation and questioning are her only tool.
Access less
Access can take away why. More practical is less practical sometimes, and being tall and connected and well-read and traveled can dull the edges of a good question. If questions aren’t coming easily, make yourself less so. Take something away. Give something away. Be less tall. Remove the excess, and you might find what remains is a good question.
And that is magic.
“SPECIAL, Oakland, California November 1980.” Photographer: Richard Nagler. “Nagler’s most recent exhibition, Unspoken Word, emphasized that nothing in these works has been contrived; each photograph documents as image he came across and was lucky, and patient, enough to photograph. He frequently finds the location and the word, with which he hopes to work, and then waits until an appropriate person comes along. He has minimal interaction with his subjects, preferring to remain anonymous and ideally having the person unaware that they are being photographed.”
“ A hotel room is the perfect place to write. You’re cut off from all the routine and is so convenient, the way they’ll send you anything you want.
—
E.B. White cf.
Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.
cf. New York City
snow days
