When Obsession Speaks

Artisans and craftspeople may describe their work but we know when their work speaks to us.  The things in life that win our attentions will define us whether or not we admit how that also plays into our larger self equation.  Just what the artisan's work is saying depends on us--- as observers, users, critics, consumers, dare I say, freaks, buffs, connoisseurs?

Our desires project in the ways we express ourselves and that invariably includes how we choose to look, all that what we say and do.  Our distrust of appearances is not unfounded---books, covers, judging, you know---but how we invest in appearance is too often consigned to vice,  as if vanity were the only message.  It's important to offer others a view of how we construct our values, though we cannot control their reactions.  There are good reasons to dress well enough to make your point.

We also now that the good stuff will cost ya'.  Those costs are as emotional as they are material.  We're always grappling with desires and despite the Buddha's noble claims---I hesitate to call them truths---there's really no alternative or respite from human want.  The day you stop wanting is the day you live for nothing.  Plant tongue firmly in cheek then that 'nothing' of desirelessness is the Buddha's point, voilá, problem solved.

I prefer to understand my conflicted feelings about desire as less dangerous than indifference.  Just how we add up the costs is another task that will never get finished.  "These boots are expensive. Are they really worth it?"  I have little doubt that those anxiety related doubts will never fully resolve.  Try not to let those things ruin you.

Some folks care most about financial equations like cost/benefit and lean hard into price as a determinant of value.  Putting ourselves in debt, be it emotional or material, is best avoided.  Who would pay $300 plus for a pair of jeans?  Or more than twice that for boots?  For most of us it's dishonest to say that money is no object.  But since when has the price of anything necessarily reflected its quality?  We know rarely is a bargain the best thing we could do if only we knew better.

A life of desires invariably entails a life of mistakes but that doesn't mean they weren't worth making or that we won't make them again, perhaps looking for different outcomes.  All you need is a desire for good boots and Brannock device to figure out that your best intentions and efforts may still leave you with bad fits.  I try not to feel (too) stupid even when I suspect I might be doing something regretful.  How do you live well without taking those risks?  Keep the reckless impulses to a minimum and never hit 'Enter' after 9pm.  Rules aren't made to be broken so much as they serve to remind us why we make them at all---for better and worse.

The relationship between cost and quality in the case of certain crafts---like boots or leather or bikes---has always struck me as a bargain.  You mean to tell me that I can get a pair of beautiful boots that will look better with age and almost certainly out live me, all for the price I would pay over the same lifetime purchasing something inferior in quality and not wholly to my tastes?

The stuff I like is niche and most men wouldn't care or pay the price.  I'm not in the business of advising or persuading anyone though I admire those who try.

When Pirsig wrote Motorcycle Maintenance he was trying to help us understand the value of quality.  This is another matter worthy of digression but I mean to get to what started as a different inner tirade.  The quality of things may be what you can afford but that too may have nothing to do with the quality available.  You can obsess over quality and even enjoy things you can't afford.  What are all of those "Ferrari Stores" for anyway?  Resenting what you can't afford is a childish off ramp from caring about what quality means.  And there's no quality identification that doesn't involve degrees of obsession.

To fly your freak flag high(er) you're going to have to learn how to obsess more professionally.  

There is a grammar to obsession, like there is to most things that appear when virtuosity is the outcome.  There's something more going on that meets they eye, much that is hidden or implied, and no end to how an expression might be deconstructed into more bits of information.  Think about Goodyear Welting for a moment.  Just a moment.  You'll be so far down the rabbit hole that Alice isn't even in your rear view mirror.  

Let's think about obsessions and why they have a grammar.

I love little color box codes because they tell us something about the picture we're seeing that is not the same as that picture.  They are of course telling us which colors form the palette and every palette implies a grammar: there is order, implicit rules, possibilities that involve organizing choices.  But let's keep going.

I love Japanese baseball and the way Japanese play baseball.  Ichiro.  Think of the etiquette, the meticulous preparations, the ways in which norms and provenance inform the game that is actually going to be played.  

Everyday I admire fine boot making, denim design and sewing, the cut of a leather jacket, Sanskrit, steel bicycle and frame building.  I love nothing more than Bach counterpoints and Brian Wilson harmonies.  Need we explain why?  I love jazz for its obsession with grammar and its willingness to break every rule in search of new grammars.  Thank you, Miles.  And of course I love rock n' roll of the old school because there has never been a better grammar than what happens when you are 18 seconds short of three minutes on both the A and B sides.  The Beatles were the first band regularly to have two A-sides.

Maybe not everything worth doing has a detectable grammar---love and grief come to mind though where they reside inside the heart or in the unconscious will manifest their own deeper truths. 

To be clear, "grammar" is the underlying structure, rules and norms formulated such that outcomes can be reverse engineered.  We can uncover much of a grammar if we deconstruct the outcome, like pulling apart a pair of boots to consider how they were made.  Grammar is also forward-looking because it can help you bring the thing, say a language or boots, into forms and expressions. The word for grammar in Sanskrit is helpful, it means literally "taking things apart" down to the finest detail, while the word "sanskrit" means to "put things together elegantly." 

We learn to put things together not only by taking them apart but by using the grammar to put them together.   There is no end, either to the obsessions and so the grammarian's pursuits.  I collect obsessions the way other people choose to breathe air.

If you dig boots, denim, or leather, you may not have thought about them having grammar before.  Grammar bores, scares, annoys, and fascinates but few.  But I tell you, grammar is as much artistry as it is methodical procedure.  That's what Wittgenstein thought though he like to compare grammar with games.  He said, "grammar. . . has somewhat the same relation to the language as . . . the rules of a game have to the game."  We'll leave this here but games are best when they are fun to play.  Make yours fun.

Grammar is getting your chops though you may not know you're doing it.  It's made not only in minds but also through hands.  In crafts that involve skill and artistry like bike building or boot or leather jacket making, the grammar may conceal itself, like it does when you are fluent in a language.  You do something long enough, practice a lot, and the next thing you know?  Fluency is not having to think about the grammar to use the language.  You can just do it. 

The seemingly effortless is watching the skilled hands of any craftsperson.  Of course we know it is anything but effortless much less easy.  Virtuosity is makes something difficult look easy. that's its definition.

My old pal Dario built bicycles for winners of the Tour de France but built literally thousands of frames over his career in small shops, sometimes for larger companies that put their own branding on the builds.  (Much like shoes?)  He used the Italian phrase "made by hands" (fatto con mani)  to describe his craft and he wore his genius with the same insouciant, untroubled confidence that we see in characters like Brian the Bootmaker, David Himel, or JB Gabbard.  In every case nearly incomparable and unrepeated sources of experience are matched with dedication, seriousness, and obsessive assiduity. There was no detail too small because as Dario told me many times "it's all details." I met Dario Pegoretti in my quest for the perfect steel bicycle.  But that leads us to another matter.

There is no perfect bike or boot or... unless imperfection is perfection.  There are many such (im)perfect examples because there are many gifted makers (not as many as we would think) and all have hard-won skills.   Each expresses their own ideas and tastes.  Most would prefer we use their craft, especially folks like boot makers confident that what is best about their work shows up after we have put our patina on their patina-worthy efforts. 
 
When you collect obsessions you'll scare your friends and occasionally impress your enemies. When you bring your fluency to others you don't do it  just for them even if what you make serves them.  None of these artisans will make you just what you want: that is not the nature of bespoke.  When you step into that bespoke world you are asking the artisan to offer their work for you.  Receptivity is part the underlying grammar.  To keep your obsession closer to healthy you have to relinquish the need to control and develop your ability to receive what is being offered.

When you're an artisan you do you thing because you have to, because it's what you do, because how you do these things tells you who you are.  Not everyone needs to be like this but it's a very good thing that the person who makes your boots, jeans, jackets, bikes, or Sanskrit obsesses like this.  There's no promise of flawless construction when you are hand-welting a boot or welding a frame.  There is no need for that if what you want is something a human can do and a machine might do more perfectly.  Why are you asking a human to do what a machine might do "better"?  Because that too is inside the grammar of every human artistry.  Perhaps it invites us to be more humane too but you can decide that for yourself.

Expressing your fluency will not be without partisanship.  You can't not have enemies when the level of your interest instigates deep inquiry and creates experiences that form into opinions.  It's often wise to have reasoned opinions in addition to whatever just emerges as passion and personal affection. But when the stakes are low---"I really love these boots because they suit my tastes..." or "This is my favourite denim..."---it's best to keep the volume down to listenable levels.  You can run silent, run deep if you like.  If you want to shout your joy from the rafters that's cool too of course.  Rage on, calmly.

I try to reserve my inner illiberalities for the differences that matter less so that more pointed judgments continue to have a point. The idea that we don't judge or shouldn't judge is simply dishonest. The way we choose to express our preferences is the soul's better tell.   And having an opinion doesn't mean you need to share it.  As I get (near the end) older I find myself having more opinions but feeling less opinionated. What I mean is that I like that you like things that I might have no preference or no opinion about.

Zen and the Art of Opinion wasn't really the point of this blog but this is what happens when your obsessions are your inner monologue.  All for now.