What difference does a place make? I used to think there was weight behind having an address in one of the world’s great cities. It meant something, as if one had earned the right to work and live at a pricier level with richer rewards. Then it became apparent that great work and expensive work too, was being produced in odd places, small places, insignificant places. So much for big city theory. But if one works outside the brightest lights on a night time map, how does the creator get to collaborate on a project? Usually because of a reputation earned in a big city. With a reputation, one can work anywhere. So the fable goes. A fable is an instructional tale unlike a fairy tale which is for amusement. It is interesting that designers who do live “anywhere” appear to spend a lot of time on planes and places far from where they live. Ask them when they get their work done and they’ll tell you they work in the air. Quiet time. Like reading my newspaper on a local train. Personal time but with a time constraint.
I have lived anywhere. The first anywhere place I lived after New York City was lonely but it took me five years to realize how lonely it was. I’d been hooked on the quiet and the beauty. I relished the silence of night. I began to hate it during the day. “Will somebody please make some bloody noise!” I would yell at the office window. In five years of twice a day dog walking I made two or three acquaintances. And I am quite gregarious, interested in people. The place was Bedford , New York. What made Bedford manageable was frequent trips into New York City to break up the beauty and mix with humans.
The next place I lived was chosen hurriedly in an effort to change to a design-supportive community. It was populated with aging hippies. This is fine if things like productivity, ambition, hard work, curiosity, living on the edge, are not high on your agenda. To be fair, we were told that hidden in the hills, were beings of some significant accomplishment, whom we could look forward to getting to know. We got out of there too fast perhaps, to meet them, ensconced as they were, apparently, behind the deep foliage. That was Woodstock, home to excellent dog walking trails. And the most delicious tap water.
We had not had time to do an assessment of the town before moving in and were now hurriedly leaving. Where to go? A lifer in the area recommended a town to the south of us, closer to New York City. Another friend confirmed what a “pretty cool town” town it was. If you are not going to listen to the opinions of others, you need time. Why, I now ask myself, did I think, a town half an hour south would make my world a better place? We landed in New Paltz and cannot get out of here fast enough and get closer to the city. But you can hike, some protest. I don’t want to hike, I want to work! A one year tour of two Anywhere places and due to force of circumstance we made bad decisions. This is no reflection on these towns per se. It is about place and the factors that make place very different from space. There is space everywhere. Anywhere. Lots of it. With little sense of place. Which is why the great tourist destinations tend to be places which are inseparable from their spaces. It is noticeable. It is not Anywhere. What is important to each of us? Space or Place. New York has power in it’s place and that power is due in part to the lack of space. They also work at different speeds. Place is immediate, you feel it, you know it. Space is slow, spend half your life on that ranch before falling in love with the dust and scrub.
I do admire those who have a home in a beautiful spot on this planet. A place chosen, a place that has congruency with its space. I’ve had that in my past. Although at times I feel as if I am walking backwards now, the view is one of some hard won lessons. Perhaps when one is fully engaged with work and those dear to us, place becomes those relationships and the physical location, the structure, even the land begins to disappear. In living in my own most beautiful areas, I was so absorbed in my work, the surroundings earned only passing interest. Without work that provides essentials for living and no close knit friends or family, we look to the place itself as that which needs to be changed. When life is out of balance I look at the heaviest object as the one that might need to be moved
“It may seem sometimes like we don’t know what we’re doing. And it’s true: we don’t. That’s a bit scary, but you can take comfort in knowing that nobody else knows how to do what we’re doing either… so there are no experts in what we’re doing. Except for us: we are becoming experts as we do this.” Tony Hsieh of Zappo’s
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