- Blessed also be the Carpenters and the Painters.When i was a boy my father dispensed the following taciturn advice:
"M my boy ! you gotta get a trade son'
Uttered more i suspect at that time, with economic security in mind, than with any creative utilitarian aspiration for his wayward teen. His thinking which seems to be true today, is that tradesmen would always be in demand, always seemed to be busy and seemed by and large a contented lot. Baring Joe the Plumber.
I never did get me a trade, instead i became a Change Agent M.
But over the years the one trade like work detail that i have been enlisted for more than any other, is painting. Houses; inside and out, fences, studios, furniture and now a gym.
I have been pumping iron in this little gymnasium ever since i have been coming to Nassau, its under the house of my old friend Victor, and now thanks to him i have been assigned my latest painting detail.
When you are painting walls you get to acquire Attention Surplus Disorder. ( so its probably good therapy for any one with Attention Deficit Disorder ADD )You slow down your world to the speed of a brush stroke. After a while its a trance inducing experience. You are in da ZONE. You can park your speedy mind between thoughts, and in the words of 15 Century Kyoto Zen Haiku Painter, Nohdrips Tensakis:
"When Painting - Just Paint"
And that is what you do. Just paint, or lay bricks or carve wood.In a way you are both totally engaged with the world and totally disengaged from it.
You get a chance to be focussed on something else other than the constant stream of beckoning distractions that bombard you.
Well, I unparked my mind yesterday between brush strokes, and entered into a train of thought around this activity we do called 'Work'
A growing % of the the world's work assignments for people living in developed countries is centred around managing information & technology. How best to understand, dispense & use (more often distort) information, and how that process can be done at the speed of light with technology.
The recent nano revolutions we have all seen in the shifting information age economy has opened up many new vocations for people that dosen't involve making anything with your hands. The work is done in your head and more often or not your head is inside a computer screen. At the end of the day you don't get to step back and look at what you have made. Least not in the physical universe where tradesmen and women work.
There is no discernable ARTIFACT to admire or critique.
Tradesmen, tradespersons ? know different.
At the end of the day there is something that you have created with your hands. You have added a wall, a floor , a cabinet or in my line of dilettanti a new vibration in the color spectrum to an artifact already in existence.
I know everything is inter related in this complex world and this can't exist with out dat, as my favourite Shakespearean work metaphor states "ALL THE WORLDS A STAGE" and we all play our parts.....be it Air Traffic Controllers, Financial High Rollers or Brick Layers.
All important in their own ways. Though over the years the working tradesman has often been looked down on. Till you need um that is. Who has not valued the expertise of a plumber who knows how to unblock your swelling pipes.
Blessed be the Plumbers too.
So with my mind unblocked yesterday whilst in da Zone i began ruminating on my fathers vocational guidance, and i had to admit there is something different about The ARTIFACT MAKERS.
Something intrinsically good.
What i mean by that is something perennial, timeless and therefore aligned to your transcendent integrated self.
For making things demands ALL OF YOU to take part.
If you love what you do, HAND aligns with HEAD aligns with HEART.
Emotionally: I find making things or in my case painting things transforms a bad mood (it probably dissolves in the paint)
Physically: The act of co-ordinating hand and brush with paint and object is a pleasant easy exercise to perform. Most other trades are far more physical demanding especially bricklaying for eg
Mentally: Having ZEN'd my work space, lined up my brushes i feel de- cluttered of rampant thoughts and can enter a small portal of order and peas inside the chaos of a turbulent loud world.
Then there is the discipline of completion. That in and of itself is a great virtue to acquire. It tends to get lost in other professions as you probably didn't initiate the project to begin with, and therefore have no sense of ownership.
"Always finish what you start."
was another piece of tradesman like wisdom my father imparted. With my mother extending the work injunction by demanding that I:
"Clean up after you are done !"
So many other projects in life particularly ones begun with a mad flurry of mental synapses firing off like fireworks on the 4th of July remain 'Works in Progress' which is often a cop out for laziness, not finishing what you started.
Too many of these WIP's encourage future incompletions.
There is often a bad taste to this in your gut, and these unfinished symphonies tend to haunt you and keep you awake at night like a bad lullaby sung out of key.
A trademan's life is full of the joys of minor and major completions.
Many jobs that are simply 'Well Done'
Through a hards days GETTIN IT DONE ;ie constructing it,jigging it , banging it , tweaking it, picking it up putting it down, laying it on laying it out, measuring it cussin it, sweating it, making a mess and sometimes busting your ass so's it fits tightly ( unfortunate word smithing perhaps, but no pun intended...) will absolutely guarantee after a well earned ceveza or 2, an honest sound nights sleep.
Well i better finish this dam blog ( there's the cussin) which i see rhymes with slog ( and often artifact making is just that ) so i can finish my painting of that there gym.
So, if you are all over everywhere , trying to manage your information lost in nano space behind a screen and with nothing to show for your toil, make something with your hands for a change.
Get into that garage and get the tool box out, make something, no matter what it is, you only risk hitting your thumb with a hammer. Haven't got a garage or a tool box? no walls to lay bricks?
Paint something. Something always needs a new coat of paint.
Thing is to use your digits, your opposable thumb and forefinger for something else other than dancing on your Blackberry and Ipod.
Make a dam artifact.
Then you can say 'I did dat'
If nothing else you will feel a terrific sense of accomplishment, and you will sleep oh so well.
Blessed are the Bricklayers, Carpenters & Painters.
and the Plumbers
Hallelujah !
footnote: TV is always an illuminating litmus to what society and culture deems important, and what is of importance has entertainment value. I see that now there are many reality documentary like shows that deal with the Artifact Makers World on tv such as Dirty Jobs /MegaStructures/ How Things are Made. Most of these shows appear on Discovery & National Geographic Channels. This is great as people get to see this kind of work is done by somebody and is important in the bigger pic.
ps If you do decide to paint something be sure to:
'Line up your Brushes First'
something i learnt from old Zen Master Tensakis.
pps It was also Tensakis who admonished his thirsty Haiku painting students in the tavern:
'When Drinking Saki - Just Drink Saki'
Ahh... the wisdom of the sages, down through the ages.
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