----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. White" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2000 8:04 AM
Subject: intuition


re. choices and intuition.

Donald,
After years of study and practice (isn't it curious how differently many
professionals speak of their "practice" compared to how beginning violinists
use the same term), it seemed evident that intuition was the whole point of
all that training.   At the best, one seeks to become good at it (intuition)
and to celebrate it as a working tool for getting things right.

Looking back, it seemed strange that so little attention was ever given
consciously by our teachers to developing the skills of intuition, and how
taken for granted it is.   However, there seem to be two streams of mind
about all this and each has a hard time recognizing the value and practice
of the other, sort of like the difference between Occultists and Magi..
Most of my teachers were the academic controller (non-intuitive) types, but
the memorable ones, like Neil Mitchell who had a brief stint at Cornell
before going to Harvard, promoted expansive empathetic thought, getting you
to identify in a physical way with the engineering nature of the materials
and forms you were using..

The most developed architect I know who practices what might be called an
intuitive method wouldn't even like the term, but check out his web site
www.henryyorkemann.com/index2/htm and you will see what I mean as he speaks
about the God Dance.   The results do seem to have their effect on people
(public) too.   A typical project of his, the Clark house, is absolutely
right for the owners, the site, the materials and everyone involved.   Built
in West Vancouver, BC in 1969, it has already received Heritage Designation
and can not be altered without approval of the City Council.   Most people
have to be dead first to get that kind of recognition out here.

Don, your academic path mirrored my own, and yet I now find myself a College
Instructor with only a high school diploma and a life of street learning to
back it up.   Life is strange, but perhaps these kinds of things happen to
those of us who breathed the ceremonial fresh Sunday afternoon air at the
dusty Dryden Speedway or who went to see the colourful tight sounding
super-modifieds
under eye-sparkling floodlights at the Chenango Forks Track on frosty
Saturday nights (while parents wondered where they had gone wrong).

cp in bc