Reflections on Space | Read Write Collect

I was reading about Aaron Dessner’s work with Taylor Swift and how he kept the news from his daughter. This made me think about Tom Waits and putting songs in the shed to grow and mature, and Carly Rae Jepsen’s album buried in the backyard. I wonder what other albums have been produced, but for a range of reasons, have not made the light of day?

I feel that we are all made up of different fragments of self often existing in different spaces. One easily overlooked is the private space. A plot of land often left fallow. For example, the personal diary. As Austin Kleon suggests, such a medium offers a good place to have bad ideas:

I find that my diary is a good place to have bad ideas. I tell my diary everything I shouldn’t tell anybody else, especially everyone on social media. We are in a shitty time in which you can’t really go out on any intellectual limbs publicly, or people — even your so-called friends! — will throw rocks at you or try to saw off the branch. Harsh, but true.

Personally speaking, I find the challenge is that such spaces are the last to get tended to, yet often the most important in regards to mental health.

i recently started reading Space by James A. Michener. After searching for books about ‘space’, I found it (who would have thought.) Whilst reading today I came across the following quote:

In the Mott rooms at the motel she established a place for everything and rigorously discarded any object that was not essential; as a consequence, the Motts lived in constructive order, whereas most of the other young couples, many from places like Vassar and Harvard, lived in chaos.

This follows on from an earlier quote on order and creativity.

It establishes who’s boss, that’s why. Because when the space is ordered, you’re free to live creatively.

It left me thinking about the idea of space as a non-human actor. I was also left thinking about the power of constraints. Something that Tom Barrett and Austin Kleon have touched upon.

I was left feeling slightly envious of Doug Belshaw’s office setup wondering how I could make my own working space at home better. Some of the problems I have is that in part I share my space with my wife and daughter. I am also still working solely from my laptop. It then occurred to me that the difference between Doug and I was not necessarily our setup, but rather the uncertainty moving forward. If I was told that this situation was more permanent, then I would investigate getting a screen and better headset. However, until I am provided some clarity I hesitant in investing too much and will persist with my good-enough setup.

One of the interesting changes to music has been the space where it is created and recorded. On hold is Nils Frahm travelling to Spain to record in a well or Taylor Swift flying to New York because she woke up with an idea, instead most artists have been restricted to those resources they have at hand, something of a DIY approach. For some, this is fine, because this is the way it has always been. Take Jacob Collier for example, who seemingly has all he needs in his room, while for those artists he collaborates with, he connects remotely using Source Connect and captures their part that way. For some the focus is about developing a space to flourish.

In discussing Melbourne’s lockdown, there is a lot of references to ‘ring-fencing‘. What I don’t get is how you ring-fence something that does not necessarily have clear boundaries. Initially, the attempt was to shut-down particular suburbs. Now, this has been increased too all of ‘Melbourne’. The problem with this is Melbourne is not a castle with a wall around it. Although police are patrolling the suburbs, it feels as if such restrictions are in the mind as they are physical. In the end, getting on top of this is about people and choices made, not about imaginary spaces.

I have been spending a lot of time lately documenting questions in regards to the reporting and attendance program I help support. The hope is that this will help with support. The problem as I see it is that simply knowing the steps does not automatically build capacity. You also need access to a space to play and time to do so.

Early on in the crisis, our daughter cared a lot about learning online. However, as time has passed, this interest has dwindled. Although this has been difficult, it has has also highlighted the importance of a space to fail in order to learn.

It is interesting to reflect upon different social media spaces and think about the features and the limitations. For example, Twitter annoys me the inability to edit posts, while Micro.Blog frustrates me because of the way it responds to headings (I know, real blogging does not have headings). In the end, I think that is why I have taken to posting on my own site and working from there. Maybe that does not always have the same reach and interaction, but we have to compromise somewhere.