Restraining Chaos

Do and Dont are strong words. DoDont is built upon their strength.  They force you to make a decision.  They compel you to think.  Do and Dont are constraints.

Frank Loyd Wright built Falling Water on top of a rock.  He was commissioned to build a country house for summer getaways.  The client had hundreds of acres of land outside of Pittsburgh.  Wright walked around the expansive property with his client.  The client spoke of swimming with his family and then relaxing and sunning themselves on a boulder.  After seeing the rock, Wright said he would build the country house on top of it.  Any other architect would have chosen a nice safe parcel of land, maybe something on top of a hill with endless views of the rolling countryside.  They wouldn’t have chosen a rock.  Wright was ahead of his time.  He practiced organic architecture, believing a structure should coexist with its surroundings.  He built buildings that integrated with nature.  He did not believe in track housing.  He didn’t sketch a house and wait for a client, then force that sketch upon them. Wright allowed the terrain to dictate what kind of building he would build.  He listened to his clients’ needs.  He didn’t see any of these factors as being constraints.  Quite the opposite.  They were endless supplies of inspiration.

Do is action.  It is no wonder the athletic company Nike incorporated it into their slogan.  It is a command.  It has the feeling of truth.  It is how we progress as a culture.  Without Do we we are nothing.  Things will not get fixed.  Products will not be improved.  Books wouldn’t be written. Websites wouldn’t be updated.  Do tells us where to eat, what to wear and who to vote for.  It gives us an excuse to be positive.  It fires our soul.  Do is action.

There are three types of short stories: flash fiction, which is usually under 1000 words, the short story, which is a standard five to twenty pages (ish), and the long short story, popularized by writers such as Alice Munro, which can be thirty to fifty plus pages.  Within the short story framework a reader’s trust must be won.  That is the first step.  Once there is trust, a writer must then move the reader.  Woo the reader. Challenge them.  Impress and ingratiate.  If the writer does not, then s/he has failed.   Great short stories are masterpieces of constraint. Reading a great short story transforms a snippet of time into movement, pushing your soul into new directions.  The short story thrives on the tension between brevity and complexity, revealing a life truth; so much can come from so little and so little can say so much.

Dont is intense.  It is no wonder Google incorporated it into their  slogan. It is a command.  It is how we warn our culture.  Without Dont we are a mess. Things will continue to break.  Inferior products will be bought.  All books would be published.   Websites would be feature heavy quagmires. Dont tells us what not to eat, what to never wear and who to vote against.  It gives us an excuse to be blunt.  It fires our soul.  Dont is intense.

Examples of creative constraints are endless.  A canvas.  The length of an album.  A 140 character tweet.  A meal.  Do not confuse constraint with adaptation.  Anyone can adapt.  It is a survival skill.  It takes talent to embrace the difficult and different.  Forcing yourself to move outside of a comfort zone, in order to create, is where art is born.  She was looking for the new.  He was upset with the standard.  We are moved by the bold.  There is Do and there is Dont.  We are always confronting theses two extremes.  We share ideas and spread opinions.  Within these limitations we still remain nimble, as we travel through time, gravity and our minds.  We Do.  We Dont.  And we do it again.