Susan gave me a fully loaded iPod. WOW! (Our musical tastes coincide.) She loves her iPod. And her various Macs. Yet her “signature” (Brand!) is far more iconoclastic; she does home furnishings, and her theme is livability & love & energy, not showy & prissy.
I love … STEVE JOBS.
I love … DAVID KELLEY. (IDEO.)
Yet I also—AND MORE SO—love “Wabi-Sabi.” Have you read Leonard Koren’s Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers? Or Robyn Griggs Lawrence’s The Wabi-Sabi House? Or our Cool Friend Veronique Vienne’s The Art of Imperfection? Wabi-Sabi is the Great Japanese Art of Imperfection. (That’s an exact description.) I am a 100% fanatic. I most love (IN MY SECRET PHOTOGRAPHER’S LIFE) a photo of a single, discarded running shoe, caked with mud. Of a solo snow shoe in the front yard, abandoned. Of a single drop of rain on a leaf that fell months ago.
I’m frankly worried—as a Design Fanatic—about the perfection of iPods and CrossAction TBrushes; I worry that “design” is becoming sterilized or, worse, standardized-sterilized. I AM A WABI-SABI FAN. Truth be known: I was (instinctively) long before I’d heard of Wabi-Sabi. I LOVE THE PERFECTLY IMPURE … THE FULLY HUMAN. (Not the perfect, much as I love that iPod.)
I DEARLY HOPE WE CAN LAUNCH A LONG & MERITORIOUS DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS. I—FOR ONE—LOVE THAT “ART OF IMPERFECTION” IDEA. AND YOU?
(Help me …)