“I’m just trying to understand how to get back to being patient.”

Lovely words and a beautiful video on Chris Burkard’s work in photography. Thanks to @kirstinbutler for sharing his site on Twitter today.

Chris Burkard

@johnmaeda drew my destiny in the sand at the @riflemaker_soho gallery this afternoon. Playing my part in Maeda’s four day consultancy performance piece was a brief, but rather unforgettable experience.

Knowing you are going to have a one to one audience with a creative guru can be an intimidating prospect. The set up at Riflemaker with gallerists in labcoats ushering you into Maeda’s presence, in hushed reverent tones, purposely served to exacerbate the anxiety.

“Are you ready? Are you sure you’re ready?”

The man is clearly a master of creating an atmosphere.

The reality of the experience was a surprising mixture of disconcerting, charming and enlightening. The sandpit arrangement, with him on the inside and me on the outside, created the necessary space between us. I am the outsider. The challenge? Can I break down the boundary with my presence and words?

There was very little eye contact from Maeda, as he stamped down the sand to create his newly blank canvas, but his quiet presence was authoritarian.

I told him the fortunate story of how an outing for a cookie brought me the opportunity to take part in his ‘fortune cookie’ performance - he liked the poetry of that. I explained that I write for TreeHugger and Cool Hunting, of which he muttered an approval. I told him briefly about my design work with climate scientists.

Then I layed it on the line… all the while Maeda drew my story in the sand, cookie and all.

My question: “From one interdisciplinary person to another, how do you find a harmonious balance between the long + deep and the wide + shallow?”

I struck a chord. Maeda said he also experienced the discomfort of being interdisciplinary, but that he had gotten over it because he was happy in himself.

He then recounted a visual reference he got from the Japanese designer Takashi Okazaki (if memory serves correctly) who contrasted the eastern view of building a wide sturdy base with a shallow elevation (Maeda draws Mount Fuji - Hokusai style - in the sand), with western narrow tall constructions that topple over (Maeda draws a vertical line that immediately resembles a skyscraper).

In summary John Maeda’s advice consisted of these salient points:

• Be confident enough to forge your own path
• Build a wide and sturdy base
• Be happy in yourself
• Don’t let other people take you down
• Move out in front of the pack
• Be a leader and a role model
• Enjoy your cookie

Thanks John - I will!

I left, as Maeda hurriedly erased my sandy story with his feet, clutching a signed print out of one of Maeda’s tweets (a poetic embodiment of making the digital physical). The tweet, for which I paid the princely sum of £2, says:

“The shortest communication path between two people is a straight talk.”

Precisely.

Maeda Studio

“I died from minerality and became vegetable;
And from vegetativeness I died and became animal,
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearance though death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;
After that, soaring higher than angels -
What you cannot imagine,
I shall be that.”

Rumi

As always Akram Khan’s incredible work transported and inspired this evening - more intensely than ever, in fact. Vertical Road is powerfully gripping. Full of explosive beats, astonishing spiritual references, gasp inducing athletic feats and visceral vibrating forms. But the overwhelming feeling I have when ever I walk out of an Akram Khan performance is that…

I just want to be better at what I do.

That kind of brilliance focuses the mind and sharpens the ambition. Time to work harder on narrowing that gap between my “killer taste” and the work that ‘falls short”.

Thanks to Akram for showing me what’s possible.

Good ol’ Charles Eames - would so dearly have loved the chance of hanging out with him and Ray for a day. They were such brilliant designers, with a beautifully direct creative ethos:

“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.”

On an evening when I am frustratedly ‘picking away’ at my corner, I’m bolstered by Charles’ words that my careful, intense picking might make a difference.

My current design storytelling task is to try and find an engaging way to illustrate interconnectivity. It’s all about the connections…

As Charles said: “The details are details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections. It will in the end be these details that give the product its life.”

Oh for some Eames-like divine inspiration… I’m trying to channel their playful, joyful and yet functional energy. I might have to sleep on it…