#118 From thin air
It’s been a busy few weeks. Last Sunday, I ran a marathon in under four hours. I learned to play Blackbird, Sunny, and More Than Words on the guitar. I can now play single notes on the harmonica. Parts of a letter I wrote about specific actions my industry can take on climate change have been incorporated into government strategy. Spring has begun in earnest. I turned 43 and am reading unapologetically again. I am not alone.
Meryle Secrest writes about Frank Lloyd Wright, the beloved architect, in her biography:
“He was an early riser and often at work long before breakfast. He often said his best ideas came on the farm, in the fields and woods or beside the stream banks. (…) He worked with enormous patience and concentration, giving extreme attention to detail, and the design inevitably went through innumerable revisions while he eliminated what might be extraneous, discordant or capricious, Howe wrote. Such periods of concentrated effort would be interspersed with intervals at the keyboard playing Bach, Beethoven or his own improvisations. Or he might pull out a new group of Japanese prints to be admired at extravagant length. No matter how chaotic or tempestuous his personal life might be, Wright always stepped into the studio a happy man. He was agile on his feet and often hummed snatches of favorite tunes, quoted the punchline of a familiar joke, or did a make-believe juggling act indicating that he was 'keeping all the balls in the air.'”
One of the wonders of doing many things at once is that separate actions inevitably get entangled, ideas intertwine. Watching Netflix’s AVICII - I'm Tim documentary while reading about Wright, I couldn’t help but see parallels.
The documentary traces Tim Bergling’s life and extraordinary rise to fame as a DJ and producer, all the while foreshadowing his untimely death at 27. Footage of Bergling in his mother’s womb was especially poignant. When Netflix is good, they’re great at the emotions game.
I came to AVICII late. His stardom coincided with years when I was too distracted with life to notice mega trends. I discovered his music when Buitenkunst staged a workshop and show about his work—only then realizing so many songs I love were his. By that time, Tim was already gone.
The high point of the documentary, to me, is how Wake Me Up came to life. Together with guitarist Mike Einziger and vocalist Aloe Blacc, Bergling seems to pull the song out of thin air—as if it had always existed. I remember searching for the original believing it to be a cover of a beloved classic. Timeless art.
Seventy-eight years earlier, Frank Lloyd Wright also conjured a masterwork from thin air, albeit in architecture and not music, when he designed Fallingwater. Secrest writes:
“It was one of the most famous moments in architecture and one of the best documented—it was witnessed by Blaine Drake, Edgar Tafel, Bob Mosher, John Lautner, Jack Howe and others as well as Caraway—tantamount to being at Mozart's elbow the day he dipped his quill pen into the ink and began to compose The Magic Flute. They were waiting to see how this champion juggler, who had kept so many balls up in the air, would retrieve this one. Wright calmly began work, and, Caraway continued, "took three sheets of tracing paper in different colors, one for the basement, another for the first floor and a third for the second floor and sketched it to a scale of one-eighth inch equals one foot. We were all standing around him. I'd say it took two hours." Section, elevation and details: they were all pouring onto the paper, and pencils were being worn down and broken off as fast as they could be sharpened. As he worked, he kept up a running commentary: "The rock on which E.J. sits will be the hearth, coming right out of the floor, the fire burning just behind it. The warming kettle will fit into the wall here. . . . Steam will permeate the atmosphere. You'll hear the hiss. . . ." He had even decided upon the name of the house; it was a tour de force.”
A tour de force, imagined in an instant. I often use an image of Fallingwater in presentations, and it never fails to draw gasps. It’s timeless.
Frank Lloyd Wright lived to be 91; AVICII passed away at 27. They worked in different disciplines, in different cultures, in different times—yet their approach to art feels strikingly similar. Secrest again:
“Very creative men are aesthetically sensitive to a degree often labelled, in Western society, as "feminine," Storr writes, and are able to make contact with the intuitive and irrational side of themselves, the wellspring of their dreams, visions and poetic fantasies. Along with an appreciation for design and form goes a preference for complexity, asymmetry and incompleteness, rather than whatever is simple, straightforward and completed; in fact, the idea of a problem to resolve seems to be essential since it acts as a stimulus to their creativity. They are intensely motivated, endlessly curious people, with a breadth of interests; great talkers, impulsive and expansive by nature. They have the ability to work over long periods toward complex goals with great tenacity of purpose.”
Maybe none of us will sketch a masterpiece in two hours or write a timeless anthem in an afternoon. But by absorbing the works of those who did, by playing their music, admiring their buildings, and reading their words, we might learn to see the world as they did—if only for a moment. And maybe, one day, when the moment comes, pull something worthwhile out of thin air as well.
— Jasper