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.

Untitled, Haden Nicholl, 2007

DoDont starts the conversation.

In order to prove this thesis let me show you a few DoDont posts and see what happens.

Do: feed the pigeons in the street excessive amounts of fizz candy.  That way they will explode in the air, creating horrible beauty.

Dont: touch the electrical fence with the plug of a waffle maker in order to make breakfast.

Ok, so now we have a few different starting points for a conversation.  We can discuss these statements separately or together.  It depends how they enter your DoDont stream.  Let’s pretend that the statements were separate.

Is this true that enough of this fizz candy would produce such a spectacle?  And how would this spectacle look in action at a park or an urban monument?  After the exploding pigeon’s feathers were scattered, would the ground be a pillow fight battle field that squishes after each step?  Would we still hear the fizzing of the candy over the screams of the terrified onlookers?  When I was young I never really saw pigeons that much.  I didn’t mind them when I did see them.  Now I think they are the plague.  Am I mad at my former self, who didn’t mind pigeons; mad that I was such a fool, mad that I was so weak!?

The electrical fence is an interesting thing in and of itself.  We could talk about what an oddity this type of equipment is and how unpractical it would be by a bus stop.  It seems like it is from some spy movie, but you have to wonder, if you really wanted to hide something from people, wouldn’t it be easier not having an electric fence calling attention to yourself?  When you go through all the trouble of having an electrical fence, with a big fancy red sign and constant hum, that is precisely when the crazies come.  They are usually there in the morning with their waffle makers, pitchers of batter, and squeeze bottles full of artificial syrup.  Now if one could manage to make breakfast for eleven, one wonders if one could charge an electric car.

If  we see the aforementioned two posts together, in a pair, from the same DoDont user, we would have to assume the pigeons were on the fence eating the fizz candy, dancing through the pain of electrical currents zapping at their feet.  As the pigeons chomped away on the fizz candy, a band of crazies came by in an electric van loaded with fixings for their waffles, and just as the waffle plug made contact with the fence, the pigeons burst.  From a screaming onlooker’s perspective, the only discernible features were pockets of fizzy mayhem.  It was horribly beautiful.  And from then on out, the crazies never tried to make waffles again.  The End.

You see, DoDont starts the conversation.  Now go on and start your own at www.dodont.com.