][<man,
Thank you for this entry. As for the golf, try this observation
by Robin Williams: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFmsigcdZmM
Best,
Leland
From: plz practice conservation of histo
presto eye blinks [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Gabriel Orgrease
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 6:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BP] wonder at wood bearings & hurdy gurdys
Cuyler,
You are not alone in your sense of wonder.
For example: Rudy Christian a while back mentioned here on BP he has a
monograph on the different ways of measure used by timber framers. Unfortunate
he sent it to me for review and I went through it like a bohunk stonemason
writer and marked it all up to show how many ways his words went confusing and
would not be understood by the audience of young architect-surveyors that it
was intended for. I told him he should write a book. He should. [You can all
help the cause by telling him that he needs to write a book.] But the gist of
what he attempted was to put together an explanation of how to 'see' a timber
frame from standing/imagining oneself within the mind of the original builder,
and to get into that mind by looking at the built structure and looking for the
small traces of details left behind. Supplemented, of course, by a whole host
of other information gleaned over a lifetime of looking and wonder.
For Rudy this is a very strong and compulsive phenomena and when you get him
standing in a structure he will just as easily tell everyone, including those
whom he may be bidding against for the work, how the barn was built, and why.
Once he gets started he can't really be stopped and if one has any sense they
go along for the ride. When he was in Bay St. Louis, not long after Katrina,
and found the exposed pieces of an 18th century timber frame he went on long
enough to those gathered in the wreckage that eventually one of those present
came forward and asked of the original carpenter, 'But, Rudy, what was his
name?" His demonstration of story also compelled an action that brought
resources, time, money and people together to save the structure for the future
in an action of hope. As it is he brings forth a very strong evocation of the
people of the past.
If it be an accurate evocation of the past, or not, and to ask that of the
experience I think is to miss the most valuable element of his yawing off which
is that by building a detailed and compelling story of the past he gives us all
a hope for the future. It is not a Disney or a Mobil Oil future that he paints
but he has an equal stake in an imagination of the past, and a projection into
the future, as any human. That stake, for all of us in our grasp of the past or
the future begins at zero. For us as an audience it is a choice that we make
ourselves to imagine our past, to enjoy when Rudy imagines the past that he
imagines when we stand in a barn and climb around on the hay and thread our way
through bents to check on a particular joinery detail. And there is that
element of getting the desk through serendipity (one of Rudy's favored words)
into a place that suddenly reveals new imaginings and in the possibility of
teaching makes possible new theater. He started out wanting to be an actor.
I have seen him begin with investigation of a structure and through looking at
the notes and monographs of past researchers to begin shaking his head, usually
with an amount of mumbling that may or may not be curse words they are so
nearly inaudible in their condemnation, that the previous researchers had got
it all wrong. I know that there are theories on different forms of
intelligence. I am convinced that there is an intelligence of the body (that
within us which remembers how to ride a bicycle, or the remembrance of lost
arms in our prosthetics, or the remnants of our nervous extension into the
tools of trade, that for some of us we can think the swing of a hammer and feel
it real) and it is in this connection of our ability to see and sense within
ourselves that intelligence of the body that is the core of the recreation of
the imagination of the built past.
My son related to me how on attending a lab class that the more 'educated'
participants seemed inhibited to actually touch the materials on the lab table,
that they tended to talk about what they intended to do, but not to do it. He
jumped in and grabbed this and that and went ahead and soon he had, without
intent to do so, his fellow students follow him. I believe that there is a
sharp disconnect between the cultivation of abstract thought process, the
ability to thrive on an IQ test, and the intelligence of the body. I am not
sure if it is hard wired into our nervous system, though we do seem to have an
education system that cultivates the natural gifts of abstraction as opposed to
the gifts of tactile experience. It has been proven through other sorts of
tests that we do have hard wired basic world views that are either enhanced, or
dampened through experience of our environment.
In this sense of wonder and story I add one more element that I have been
trying to feel my way through for some time now to find the words to express. I
do not consider myself by any means the best mason. I am much better at other
tasks. I have always found it a cause of wonder when I do take up a trowel and
go at the work the very simple pleasure that at times I get the brick, or the
stone, to go exactly where I want them with a most optimal expenditure of
physical labor and energy. Not a line mason, I speak of complicated masonry
objects such as a traditional Rumford firebox. My son had an epiphany a year or
so ago when we were driving along on the road. He realized that every one of
the bricks in a tall building that we saw before us had been lifted by hand and
set in place. But it is that exact space in time, a space of a motion, as with
music, that will never be repeated, despite our repeated motions to obtain the
experience of the process, wherein the mason can take such a simple seeming
element as a brick and set it just right. It is the sort of wonder one gets as
a golfer if they ever are lucky to get a hole-in-one. There is that minuscule
point of exhilaration when suddenly after multiple attempts one gets it just
right.
Focus and flow help to obtain that experience. The seeking for focus and flow
and the 'just right' placement to return within us becomes a state of
meditation in motion, akin to dance, only for the mason there are bricks left
ordered behind in the wake of the motion. It is a place of harmony between our
being and our environment. It is this physical process, as with a musical piece
to begin and carry through and to end, that distinguishes the working trades
and it is this order and magnitude of perception of process that provides the
insight that traditional trades practitioners have towards recreation of the
past, in short, to mimic the physical motions of those who preceded in the
construction of the object.
But what I want to get at is that this point of wonder that the physical world
complies with our innermost desire, our obtaining of harmony and our physical
motions as the cross hair of the sacred in the trades. There is a sense of
wonder in the process of the construction that transcends all that we can speak
of and that goes beyond all of our imaginings of a theology. And yet when this
process and wonder of building is separated out from the need of survival, as
in the need of a day job, such things occur to a degree of refinements into our
cultural heritage as cathedrals or synagogues or mosques or temples. Akin to
your desire for a conference on weird and wonderful moments during restoration
I desire a conference wherein the traditional trades seek out and express this
sacred place of wonder wherein there is this state of harmony and meditation in
motion.
Recently I looked, as a consultant to an architectural team, at a stone gate in
northern NJ built of glacial boulders. When I saw the structure it was like a
coming home in a way despite more than 30 years since I had worked these very
same random collections of boulders, gneiss, sandstone, granite, quartz. As I
stood and looked at the stonework I could feel through the cut of each stone.
It was a massive composition for which I could imagine each cut and swing of
the hammer. I felt for the corner stones and the labor that I could calculate
was expended in their cutting. I saw past all of the years of mortar repointing
campaigns as if they never existed and went to the heart of the matrix of this
mosaic. There was no question for me to compare one mortar to another, it was
plain to me that this one here is the original. It was an object that I could
feel through and imagine the motions of the original masons. I do not know any
of their names. I do not presume to know. I did not even know what year it was
built, though that seemed at first evident to others on the team... and when
they went to the library they found that their gut calculations were off by
something like 50 years. Having built such things myself I was able to stand
back and say to the architectural team, of which I was a member, "This is
what we have here and this is why." It was cold and we went home.
To quote from one of my recent stories, "When there is truly nothing in
front of a person is the time when there is nothing absolutely behind."
][<en
Ken,
Where
it made sense to me was when in the act of what an observer called
theatrical archaeology. I was trying to analyze the old grist mill
with all its machinery totally dismantled and in a shambled pile in another
building. After the rational steps of documenting old bolt holes
and grease spots and learning everything I could about the history and style of
mill possible in 1876, I found a few significant starting points but
then hit the wall of impossibility. The only other thing I could
think of was acting out the roles of both the miller and the
carpenter/millwright. I started miming tasks that should have been
performed and the most amazing observations emerged, little rub marks on
certain logs right exactly the spot they ought to be if that task was being
performed, a tiny little pencil mark by the builder (never seen before by
dozens of researchers who had scoured the mill looking for clues, but you had
to be standing just in the right spot to see it or make it) indicating the
piece of machinery for that spot, a shadow from long term UV exposure where the
miller's desk had been placed.
That last
one was sheer magic. The wall in that spot was a chaos of
water stains and nameless splotches. It was the right spot for the
miller's desk to stand but there was no desk. I had researched the
appropriate style and was prepared to create something to fill the need.
Then an artist came to visit, asking if I had any need for an old
desk. She had bought one years ago at a farm auction just down the
road, thinking to use it in her studio. It just collected dust and
never got used, so when she saw the grist mill and all its glorious ancient
lumber she thought it might fit in. I accepted the
thing because it was the right style for the stand-up desk I needed and
had all the indications of being the same age as the mill, whipsawn
1" x 12" lumber hand planed on the exposed surfaces but rough behind,
oodles of tiny square nails and no big ones, and a reinforcement detail for the
desktop lids that was exactly like the detail in a flour bin lid I had in the
mill. The family farm auction was at the death of the last
member of a family that went back to the 1870s, one of only six families
in the area with that long history. By an odd coincidence,
the original farm owner's name was written on the log wall in the
mill just above where the miller's desk had been imagined to stand, the only
name written on the wall although there were several tally lists that
looked like records of grain being delivered to the mill, lists of numbers
around 100 adding up to about the half ton weight I was told one might
expect for the (Democrat) wagon that was known to have existed in the
valley at that time.
When
I brought the desk into the mill, the colours of its wood just matched the
whole interior perfectly, but what happened when it was put in place was
stunning. The desk had a fancy shaped curvy board on top at the
back, a decorative trim board that stood upright. When the desk was
placed at the spot beside the wall where I felt the miller had worked, we
suddenly saw that the board's top edge matched exactly the shape of a
discolouration on the whipsawn log wall, highlighting the limits of the UV
marking that would otherwise have been simply taken for a bit of natural mess.
That
was a moment!
Of
course, we will probably never know if that desk really came from the mill, but
whenever I gave a tour and moved the desk to illustrate the story, there was
always a universal gasp from the audience because the effect was so
clearly evident and surprising. The gut says it belongs there
and found its way back.
There
were so many moments like that happening as a result of acting out the roles
and tasks, discovering marks that been overlooked by dozens of well qualified
researchers before I got there, marks that actually led to almost a 100%
replacement of the dozens of wooden parts and pieces still existing, nails and
nail holes all nicely matching up. I am sure that others working in
this field have the same experiences. It is just that I am so
solitary at the work out here I have no one to share and compare
with. I would love to have a Conference about weird and wonderful
moments during restoration and see if there are patterns of such or if it is
just a personal thing. The problem so far has been that whenever I
have brought up the topic for a museum conference session, the organizers have
always been the rational people, and couldn't see what it was all
about. If there was a ghost involved it would have tied in nicely
with a session about popular marketing.
cp
in bc