Timelessness: the value of spirit in creating
Inlaid in the tataki (三和土) - an earthen floor at a home entrance - is the Ishi-usu (石臼), stone mortar, excavated from the grounds of Wakamiya village in Hyogo prefecture, Japan.
Below, an excerpt from Disavowels by Claude Cahun, translated by Susan de Muth:
(about forgetting)
Certain pleasures too fresh
to produce all their flavour
need to ferment
like grape juice
and grow old
in the cellars of our memory.
From now on one will ponder
whether morose delight,
passed through the sieve of time
isn't preferable to pleasure.
It is the juice of it,
the corrupted liquid
concentrated, purified,
stronger and more lasting.
If you prefer late wine
made from sunburned grapes,
each season you will make
the vintage of your memories.
And you will drink them at your leisure. [1]
Memory is a necessary agent of comparison that helps us recognise who we are today from yesterday, and who we want to become. Japanese philosopher, Kiyokazu Washida, discusses the idea that humans are all essentially storytellers - we find the content and style of narrative which are most agreeable to us in the present, and tell them to others and ourselves: I am here, I am, I am not...[2] The process of creating is storytelling - that is at the centre of design. Whether it is making a tool which aids the user's storytelling, or providing a coat of our own stories for others to wear.
Stories of a certain magnitude have a lively spirit that pulls us through and against the gravity of logic. For humans, part of defining spirit can be 'attitude', the receptor mask which we wear to react with a stylistic direction to different situations. Living with attitude is a process of character-building and adapting to our environment: we wear it because it helps us define the position we take, in relation to the world around us. The process is a combination of individual choices and interactions with society, and over time, are kneaded like dough until they sync with our physical bodies. Thus, we tell stories through our spirit and our body, in dialogue with our past and the surrounding environment.
Assuming we are in some level of dialogue with society, collaged with our own individual truths, makes the spirit of the story tangible. What's interesting, however, are the other qualities of 'spirit', defined in the Oxford Dictionaries as follows:
1.1 The non-physical part of a person regarded as their true self and as capable of surviving physical death or separation.
1.2 The non-physical part of a person manifested as an apparition after their death; a ghost. [3]
With these words in mind, we can connect the dots from our everyday practice of the above ideas (storytelling, attitude, dialogue) to our spirit (which I recognise as something which encompasses intention, and the flexibility of the non-physical) and finally beyond this world, parallel worlds and dimensions etc. The point is not about embracing the grandiose the enlightenment; the point is that our storytelling is an everyday journey that is essentially time-travelling from our memories past, our attitudes present - and that is our spirit.
Perhaps having Buddhist monk relatives are part of the influence, but the thought of spirits have always been potent in my mind. Being Japanese also meant that inanimate objects housing spirits felt natural as a concept and therefore, handling with care and tending said objects were a requisite not to upset its occupants (then, it also becomes easy to feel, or at least act humble, towards a pebble...) Religions aside, if you consider these different dimensions of 'spirit', the human spirit seems to have an extended presence from living to dead, and beyond. The masks we form while we stand breathing help us recognise our presence and is felt by others through the things we create. Of course, it can also be the energy we exert, a mere glance, or a habitual hand gesture but speaking in terms of creation I'll stick to objects: it could be a written entry such as this, a tea cup, your painting, or a whole building. They are marks in time, as well as customised tools to help us cope with life's hardships - wherever it lies on the spectrum of denial, acceptance, or change. As powerful as it can be, the tactility of the spirit comes down to this: it is never the object, and the object never the spirit. Still, as humans we are mortal and our bodies will disintegrate into the earth; so, to give a new vessel for our spirit to journey beyond the physical us, we make things. Now, suddenly, it makes sense to put an effort to consider what we produce -- the vessel travels through time carrying our spirit, and in turn, the spirit transforms the vessel into something beyond time. This is what I consider as one of the essential core values of creation, and where timeless design exists.
These are some of my thoughts on what added value the idea of spirits give to a human-made object, an interpretation of the phrase "timeless design" - an adjective many designers strive to achieve. Perhaps much of my daily writing is overthinking or romanticism backed up with analysis. I have a feeling it lacks in structure and a decisive voice. I am sure, though, about one thing: it's prime time to renew fashion design's purpose and meaning - and writing seems to make sense in a field that promotes mindlessness.
This post was edited September 30, 2017 for clarification.
[1] Cahun, Claude. Disavowals. Translated by Susan de Muth. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008.
[2] Washida, Kiyokazu 鷲田 清一. Wakariyasui wa Wakarinikui? わかりやすいはわかりにくい？臨床哲学講座 [Easy to Understand is Not Easy to Understand? A Clinical Philosophy Course]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobou, 2010.
[3] Oxford English Dictionary, 'spirit', accessed September 29, 2017, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spirit.