A few posts earlier I wrote about how I deal with life and work by drawing. One of my survival techniques is reading poetry.
Some of my favorite poems by Rae Armantrout are The Runaround and Negotiations.
To be a blip in a circuit
Author Archives: soosixty
A dream deferred
The last few years has been a lot of late nights working, and in the lows of those hours between midnight and dawn I always end up questioning the larger purpose of my life. This is a poem for those times.
From Harlem by Langston Hughes
From the sketchbook Captivity (Feb 2017)
Another one from The Only Story
As I wrote the other day, The Only Story was thought-provoking, not least in the social mores that it strove to question, but also about the very banal nature of love.
I often draw in my sketchbook about the books I read, fodder for the drawing in a way. These pages were made while reading The Only Story.
Who can control how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn’t love. I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love.
The Only Story by Julian Barnes
[Finished The Only Story the new book by Julian Barnes. A tale of such unequal love, and so much pain.]
From The only story
Some time last year I read The only story by Julian Barnes. Like all other books by Julian Barnes, I found it thought-provoking and it stayed with me long after I was done. Here’s a drawing from while I was reading the book.
Empathy, a guide for myself
When I graduated from design school, I didn’t feel equipped to be a designer in the real world. I remember that I even googled for “core skills of a designer” and found that empathy was an important skill to have, so I started to teach myself to be a more empathetic designer.
[Empathy
The hardest skill that I tried to teach myself for a decade but finally this is the book that helped, Dare to Lead by author Brene Brown. She clearly breaks down empathy into skills.
For me though the number 1 skill is to Listen. I’m so uncomfortable with silence I keep talking and forget to listen. How to listen:
1 – Hear what is being said
2 – Absorb and try to understand
3 – Respond not react
Brene Brown says the top empathy skill is Perspective taking.
“Honour people’s perspectives as truth even when they’re different from us.
Brene Brown
Become the learner not the knower. I think this is the biggest breakthrough for me — the shift in mindset from “knowing” to “learning”.
And coming to why empathy is a core skill for designers: It starts with Curiosity, Learning, Empathy, which is used throughout the design process: To understand users better, to create inclusive product experiences, to stay problem-focused, not solution-focused, to grow and learn from feedback, and to be the best coworker and collaborator you can be.
And the true test of empathy is in practising it daily until it becomes second nature. So best foot forward towards being a more empathetic designer!]
Dedicated to Raj who gifted me this book.
One nice thing
It’s a milestone indeed when one of your friends says something nice about your work. Here’s Nityan, artist and erstwhile potter, who is an inspiration with his beautiful sketchbooks and his prolific expression.
“The only difference between your sketchbooks and mine are that you draw so much better…”
A weekend with Lekha
A couple of years ago I had a free weekend on a work trip and I flew up to Seattle to spend it with my friend Lekha. She had planned the most marvellous time for us.
First we had brunch at Pike Place Market and then we walked to the Olympic Sculpture Park. I saw most of the sculptures for the first time so you can imagine what an experience it was. Here’s the biggest Calder I have ever seen, the Eagle.
Here’s me in front of yet another inspiration from my past, Ellsworth Kelley. He had used weathering steel, knowing that a patina of rust would gather over time, and the piece would continue to change visibly over time.
My first Louise Bourgeois “Father and Son” was an experience to behold. Later I got more interested in her work and found she had a complex and troubled relationship with her own parent with a lot of dark metaphors running through her work.
“When you draw, you suddenly see what you’re afraid of.”
Louise Bourgeois
It was such an experience with Lekha – we were meeting after years and there was so much to catch up on. Amidst Richard Serra’s grand and majestic Wake we talked about our deepest feelings.
Later on, I read Frank Gehry talking about Serra:
“Serra went to the shipyard, saw the way the ships were being built, and became entranced with it. It became a power thing for him, to make powerful gutsy statements that fit his personality. “
The sculpture park was so beautiful and perfect it filled the art-shaped hole in my heart.
The next day we had a fabulous brunch at Toulouse Petit and saw some of Lekha’s favorite pieces of “hidden” art at SAM.
In the afternoon we lay on the grass in the park and watched the boats on the waterfront. On the flight back I quickly drew everything before I forgot – it was such a lovely holiday!
Let’s be enemies!
Over the past few years, we’ve moved cities, homes, neighborhoods quite frequently. Every new house needs a new social life, but before we’ve been able to settle down to do that, we’ve moved again. Here are some drawings from a couple of years ago when we had just moved to yet another new house.
[It’s been so long since I made any friends that I’ve forgotten what one does with them…until I read this book with Orin yesterday: Let’s be enemies by Maurice Sendak. Friends do things together – like playing and birthday cakes and making sand castles.]
[I wonder what activities a solitary person like me will do with a friend? Work? Draw? Eat. Talk. Cook. Watch a movie? I need to do more things. I need to make new friends.]
“She always believes the solution lies outside herself. Tsk.”
Anteater
Dates with the brown boy
As you know the brown boy is an animation filmmaker, and while he makes really lovely animated characters, I think in real life he is quite entertaining as well. Here’s a coffee date drawing where he was talking about sound and voiceover in films.
But Orin probably doesn’t think we are as entertaining! His parents’ all time favourite thing to do is drawing!
Men and women
I’m lucky that some of my best friends are empathetic, inclusive, generous and kind human beings. They usually take a lot of pains to show that they are not, by the way, but sometimes their views on women are so illuminating to me simply because of their gender.
“Women and babies: They take all the opportunities (given to them) and squeeze everything they can out of them.”
“Probably they don’t feel as entitled as men,” qualified the brown boy.
But they are always, always, more intellectual, says Pacificleo, having tried to become one himself just for dates during his social butterfly youth.
Ladies, do you agree? Do you squeeze everything you can out of opportunities? Maybe we do it sub-consciously, I never feel like I do anything with opportunities! But I am clearly intellectual, at least!
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