zfaust
Seemingly Nowhere
I’m deep within my second semester at VCFA and I still have no desire to break into my collection of design books. They lay dormant behind the glass doors on my bookcases, spines unbroken. The digital versions are hidden deep within a folder within a folder within a folder on my desktop. All downloaded while binging on deep-dives while creating my recommended reading lists in anticipation before the semester started.
It’s not that I don’t have the time or attention to savor any of them. Sometimes I take one out, dust it off, and place it on my nightstand with the hopes of at least flipping through a few pages before falling asleep. In the morning I take it with me as I meander through my apartment, moving it from one surface to the next. I sometimes glance over the cover while I’m doing something else, building up my desire to dive into it. But I feel this presence, this almost aura that keeps me from opening it.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s not because I don’t want to read. Actually it’s been the opposite. Over these last few weeks I’ve been unable to put down all the other types of books on my TBR. I’ve been particularly drawn to rereading my collection of Joan Didion novels, and my newly aquired stack written by Sam Shepard.
Growing up I could never predict I’d be interested in reading books by these authors. I always skipped them while browsing the shelves of the used bookstores I routinely visited. They always felt “too adult.” And by that I don’t mean too explicit. But more, too realistic. Who would want to escape into a book to then fantasize about the harsh realities some folks truly live in this county? How would I escape the banals of my reality by reading that of someone elses’?
Oh, how I was wrong. The answer to that would be me.
Over the last few weeks I’ve become infatuated with the seemingly nowhere novels with the morally grey characters who get into trouble in the middle of nowhere America.
Is it because I relate to these oddballs, or is it because I desire to be just like them?
The characters who live their lives in this nebulous morality. They desire to be alone, but then cling to every interaction they experience. The ones who desire a life doing something different to only then realize they were living the dream.
What a life!
As I think of these characters I can’t help but compare them against the moral superiority I’ve witnessed in some designers (as there are in every profession). The designers who share lots of resources, organize every community event, and volunteer all their time with nonprofits. The ones who answer every message with enthusiasm, are available to chat at all hours of the day, and find the ways to incorporate design into every fiber of their lives.
And I’ve been one of them.
Briefly.
I feel her anger. I feel her apathy towards the career that provided her success. I feel her inability to walk away from the toxic relationship she has with her industry, and I feel the toxicity that she puts back into it. I feel the push and pull that she displays in every facet of her life. And maybe I’m drawn to that because I feel toxic myself.
In How Modern Media Destroys Our Lives, the cause of this unhappiness is attributed to, “that there is so much about our lives that we fail to investigate and understand with honesty and courage.” On the surface I claim to know myself extremely well, but yet, I don’t do much to actually change anything. I sit in a constant cycle of “what if’s?” So what would a life look like where I actually prioritize the change? What if I tried out becoming the designer who loves to help again?
And I want to clarify: I want to be that morally superior designer. I want to naturally care about my community. I want to naturally foster those relationships. Maybe I do want every facet of my life to revolve around my passion that is design.
But do I really desire it? There’s only one true way to find out.
That’s all to say that I can also really see the future where design affords me the life that keeps us at arms-length with each other.
Similar to the protagonist in Shepard’s The One Inside, I empathize with the concept of living within some space between being alone and not alone. Working when I need to work, and doing whatever else in the meantime that fuels my soul. This constant, never-ending realm of setting roots and picking back up again when the space no longer serves me.
I’m sure there’s some sort of designer out there doing exactly this. But if I was like them, truly like them, then maybe I wouldn’t want others to know the secret to the sauce.