SPACE TO WORK

A couple of years ago a good friend let me borrow a copy of Lawrence Weschler’s Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), which is about The Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. I recently bought my own copy, mainly because of the following passage, mainly because I think a great deal about finding or making the necessary space to do the necessary work. The passage in question (p. 59 – 60) talks about Hagop Sandaldjian, a microminiature sculptor from Armenia:

[…] I ended up speaking with the master’s son, Levon, who explained that there was in fact something of a tradition of such microminiature art back in Armenia (he knew of two or three other such instances), although, as far he knew, his father had been the world’s only microminiature sculptor. “He would wait until late at night,” Levon said, “when we kids were in bed and the rumble from the nearby highways had subsided. Then he would hunch over his microscope and time his applications between heartbeats—he was working at such an infinitesimal scale that he could recognize the stirrings of his own pulse in the shudder of the instruments he was using.” […]

That is an excellent description of what it takes to find the necessary space. I often think about, try to imagine that infinite quiet, just a brief interruption in the unstoppable flow of the world.