Hello reader,
The last issue was in August. Which feels like yesterday and ages ago. Back then I mentioned my effort to „not break the chain“ — just to do exactly that a month later. Oops.
Once the rhythm is lost, it’s so much harder to start again. But it wasn’t just the fact that the chain was broken. I began to write these emails after returning from a short sabbatical and during the first shutdown. Things went at a slower pace and I had a lot of mental space for thoughts and reflection.
Then life sped up again and there were lots of other things on my mind. It got busier work-wise, my son started school, those kinds of things. I must confess that I also got a little addicted to the horrors of US politics, spending way too much time checking American news outlets.
I think I’m cured of the latter (thanks, Joe). But work, fortunately, hasn’t dried up and school is now taking place at our dining table. Hence, this shutdown feels very different from the last one.
As I write this, my daughter is doing a puzzle on my left, while the boy enters from the right, asking what I’m doing.
„I’m writing something.“
„Why?“
„Mhhh… Good question, I have to think about it.“
Exeunt kids (with a puzzled look on their faces).
So, why am I writing this?
I didn’t have any clear intention when starting this newsletter. Neither about the why nor the what. That’s why „9 Ambitions“ felt like a good name for it.
It’s a quote from my favourite novel, Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder, a book I reread every couple of years.
If you want to check it out, go ahead. But here’s a warning: you might be disappointed. It is a beautifully written book (so you can definitely enjoy the craft), but I know that it won’t speak to most other people the way it does to me.
Theophilus North is kind of a fictional autobiography. Wilder had a twin-brother who died at birth, and in this book, he imagined what his life could have been like. The protagonist of the novel is a kind of alter-ego of his (potential) brother but also an idealized version of Wilder himself.
The book starts with Theophilus, 29 years old, arriving in Newport, Rhode Island, after quitting his job as a teacher, not knowing what to do next.
„Professions. Life careers. It is well to be attentive to successive ambitions that flood the growing boy’s and girl’s imagination. They leave profound traces behind them. During those years when the first sap is rising the future tree is foreshadowing its contour. We are shaped by the promises of the imagination. At various times I had been afire with NINE LIFE AMBITIONS — not necessarily successive, sometimes concurrent, sometimes dropped and later revived, sometimes very lively but under a different form and only recognized, with astonishment, after the events which had invoked them from the submerged depths of consciousness.“
Those Nine Ambitions are the saint, the anthropologist, archeologist, detective, actor, magician, lover, the rascal and finally, „The NINTH, to be a free man. Notice all the projects I did not entertain: I did not want to be a banker, a merchant, a lawyer, nor to join any of those life-careers that are closely bound up with directorates and boards of governors — politicians, publishers, world reformers. I wanted no boss over me, or only the slightest of supervisions. All these aims, moreover, had to do with people — but with people as individuals.“
When I picked up the book — I was at my parents house and wanted something/anything to read — I could immediately identify with this curiousness described in the first pages. I, too, wanted to explore different worlds, dive into diverse themes and „encompass as varied a range of experiences as I could“.
I actually never persued that many professions. I earned my first money as a tennis instructor (another parallel to the book, in which the protagonist teaches tennis to the residents of Newport) and ran a record label (which did not earn me any money), but apart from that, I only worked as a designer.
But the beauty of being a designer is that curiousness and a wide range of interests is part of the job description. Sometimes I am an anthropologist. There are situations where it helps to be a rascal. A good designer is, to some extent, a magician. And like a method actor, you have to deeply understand and empathize with the people who are your subject.
In the following chapters, Wilder describes how Theophilus uses his abilities to solve problems of the town’s residents. And problem-solving, of course, is also at the core of the designer’s profession.
Rereading the book these days, I realized that Theophilus’ story is kicked-off by an epidemic related „shutdown“!
„It happened that in 1926 it became possible for me to enter upon my new liberty earlier than I expected. Six weeks before the school’s term-end an epidemic of influenza declared itself in central New Jersey. The infirmary filled up and overflowed. Beds were installed in the gymnasium which soon looked like a lazaret… Classes came to an end…“
Come to think of it, this novel, although written 50 years ago and taking place almost a century earlier, might be a timely read, inspiring for those stuck in a rut (which seems a common condition these days).
„I discovered that several things were happening to me in my new state of freedom. I was recapturing the spirit of play – not the play of youth which is games (aggression under the restraint of rules), but the play of childhood which is all imagination, which improvises. I became light-headed. The spirit of play swept away the cynicism and indifference into which I had fallen.“
Imagine, improvise, be light-headed!
Until next month,
Johannes