Reductionism.
Taking the slow-cooked essence of a thing and giving it form.
Attention.
The soul of it. The heart of it. Finding that and naming it. And getting rid of all else.
This is design, but not as formal.
This is craft, but updated: informed by the trained hand. And eye. And the sum of everywhere its maker has been, and the language she has come to understand.
It is in this vernacular that the modern craft is made.
Soft. Sophisticated.
Elocution and thought both mature.
The modern craftsman
The modern craftsman takes the story and chisels spontaneously. Delivering, ultimately, a piece of such workmanship that make women cry. And men cry, too.
Like David, for example.
Michelangelo was post-modern.
His art? The taking away.
Metaphor
It is fall.
The leaf-by-leaf removal to reveal the structure in bone. The skeleton.
Undressed as such, he is vulnerable. Cool and stern and poised.
Robust in the columns, pale in thin fingers.
Whispers of lavendar rustle the edges, removing hopes already lost or fading.
The cluster of buddedness cloistered until next season: the next moment, the next adventure, the leafing. Spring.
The modern craftsman is conscientious of only the sweetsong of the remainder's vertebrae; the meat of the marrow.
The scope, the scale, the layers... these are irrelevant for now.
We are in the moment.
We are in the making.
She reveals herself as do the clouds at dawn.
The wide yawn, an awakening.
The "yes" of "I believe," and "I know," that this is this.
This is all there ever was, and all there'll ever be.
This?
Yes.
The universal.
Fly forward, sling back, the master craftsman calls out the belly of the New Spirit.
A pregnancy of hope, not cynicism.
Leaning forward with a tilt of promise, not remorse.
Sailing ahead with a gait of plaited and kerned invincibility, or the approach towards that end
The integral.
The integrity.
The moon, the stars, the sun.
dk
