Often, when I’m sitting in a lecture about concurrency, say, or sketching a possible design for some program, I actively love the fountain pen that I’m using at these times. Engaging with I.T., I find such great comfort in using such an old and ‘outdated’ technology. I usuallly don’t find this particularly interesting, becuase it seems to be a sensible reaction to being surrounded by and immersed in Modern Technology (oooh!). However, I’m blogging about this today becuase I’ve come back to a feeling that I was quite used to at one point a few years ago, at art school: I want out of all this computing, I want to get away from it all and not have my head spinning painfully with the unbearable complexity of it all. I want to get back to the workbench, and I want to blog about what I do there.
It seems that I can’t walk the line. I fall to one side of it, only to take pleasure in using the tools of the other side. I say I want to be completely with one branch of the dichotomy — technology these days — but can’t do so without yearning for the other. It rips me apart. I just wonder whether the divide is less consuming from one side or the other.
What I was going to say was that I want to get back to a workbench, and keep a journal of my work, probably on the web. Maybe even that I want to go and make furniture with my dad in WA, who knows?
In fact, fuck this!! I don’t want to be miserable about this! That’s not why I sat down to write. It’s too jolly cold here, that’s the problem, and I haven’t had my customary tipple of sherry yet.
I want to go home. I want to live with my friends in a nice house, and go to work in a furniture workshop with my dad. I’ve been away too long.