Authenticity

It strikes me that there has been a lot of talk of authenticity involved in the house, especially in fit and finish, the things with which we interact. Aside from the Jungian implications, which I fully embrace, it strikes me that some people want their house to be stately, to stand proud and reflect well. Some want clean horizontal lines and uncluttered pen spaces. Some strive for peace or tranquility, and others a sort of messy id-ness, wearing their insides out. Traditional, historical, craftsman, victorian, colonial, a house reflects the self- perception of its creator or owner, some notion and some period of time of how life should be lived, in public and in private.

We seek authenticity, a sense that in our home genuine things can happen. Genuine love, friendship, connection. Genuine contemplation, conversation, and even (though increasingly rarely with age, it seems), genuine sleep.

I was thinking about this because it strikes me, in thinking of you, the reader, how easy it must be for some to find this journal overwrought, sentimental, or striving too hard to be meaningful. Passing for a moment the irony that would present for a creative life dedicated to eradicating those very qualities from the human story experience, it might be difficult for some of you to connect with something so innocent and permeable as the search for authentic expression. 

We have so many filters in our lives, so many ways to take the real and recontextualize it in ways that diminish its significance, as if we're afraid to admit to ourselves that the breaths we take are precious to us and we care deeply about how, where, and under what conditions we expel them. To cite a banal example, I notice how fast Barak Obama's message of hope and rational government has been pushed away by a parody of saintliness, as if striving to be better (could our government be worse?) was too insignificant to admit that we cared about it, and this by those very thinking people who, I'd wager, for years have pined for just such a rational and intelligent approach to governance.

The political message is not the point here; the psychological process is.  Some might call this process cynicism, but I think that's too easy. We wrap ourselves in a general blanket of dismissiveness for protection against the authentic, to protect ourselves from a harsh life, a life that often feels like its getting away from us, moving too fast, getting too complicated, getting too regulated or just too multifaceted for us to make sense of.

But a home is the shelter from that life, the external container of our internal space. How we shape and form it should be emotionally naked and raw. Most people don't get this opportunity, however, the space and time to make it just so. They either do it bit by bit over time, an epic narrative, or live in various states of benign neglect, making do with what shelter and comfort we can find within the walls we inhabit.

I am increasingly aware that we have been given a great gift, albeit one born of adversity. We get to reconsider and reconceive our home almost from scratch. We didn't choose this path; it has been thrust upon us. But it may prove great nonetheless. In the seared and empty walls of the wooden box on Moreno Drive, we can pour the imagination of who we are and aspire to be. And we're trying to do that honestly, authentically, and with heart.

In that space, I think, there is no place to hide.

So pardon me if I can't muster ironic distance, clever retorts, mild quips, or even--most of the time--a wry smile toward this experience. I know it is vastly more entertaining to read that sort of narrative. Goofy characters, quirky irony, etc.  I can be funny (I think). But every time I try, I simply revert to a contemplative space closer to the bone. I don't want to push this away, or wrap myself in a warm blanket of protection. I want to breathe clean air, to get the smoke out of my lungs, to stay clear and present to the experience (perhaps that explains the scooter). 

This journal hopes to find a way to share with you that exposed feeling so that you can touch that parts of yourselves as well, to find in the space of our reconstruction a bit of your own inner authentic space. I want you to put this down and look around your room and think about how the home in which you live effects you moment to moment, plays in your senses like flavors play on your tongue, writes the narrative of your inner life. I want to find a language on these pages that you can embrace with the same emotional nakedness that we feel, turned out of our home into that speeding world,  trying to find both a way back in, and what "in" really is.

Soapstoned

We are soapstone people. In the world of kitchen countertop materials (and you didn't know there was such a world, did you), soapstone is a lover, something you just can't help but reach out and touch. People admire their granite, are pleased with their corian or ceasarstone, think their tile is pretty, and love their soapstone. Reading posts on our favorite remodeling community website, GardenWeb, you can hear in the voices of contributors their rapture every time they slice an onion or burn some toast. the passion is palpable.

We want that. We want our space to be a living expression of our lives, not a picturesque shell that contains them. perhaps it is because I spend so much time at home. Writing and living in the same space, I can go days without leaving the house. But E feels the same way (I think). We seek that sense that the house is an extension of what is valuable to us, and that tends to express itself less like objective beauty (What lovely granite!) and more like something that is itself alive (This room feels so warm!).

We also want a house that ages in beauty. You can read into that whatever you like ;-)

Upstairs in the master bathroom, we are considering a unique Moroccan concrete tile (made in Thailand...what a wonderful world) whose color is pressed into the wet concrete under tremendous pressure

 before it is fired. the result is a soft, matte finish tile in those powdery colors one associates with Greek islands and north african mosques. Like saltillos, very soft and inviting.

Driving home from the airport this evening, lamenting being once again in the habitrail of the los angeles freeway system, I started wondering why we were so enamored of all these soft, erotic, and sensual materials. Our last house had none of it. Lots of colorful mexican glazed tile work, talavera sinks, and hand-painted stuff, certainly, but nowhere near the obsession we now seem to feel for building materials you want to touch. 

I think we might be afraid, on some deep level, afraid of the house, of houses in general, and in our attraction for soft comforting materials seek a home of warm embrace, a home we can walk around on and have every surface respond gently to our step or touch, a home not singed by a sharp tongue of flame or grinding grit of charcoal and ash. 

Burnt wood is cold and desolate. think of the logs left cold the next morning after a campfire. it is as if we want our house to be as enveloping as the white egyptian cotton spa robes Elicia loves so much and quickly replaced (as anniversary presents) last week.

In architecture and design, the phrase they use to describe the style of highly detailed repetitive patterns--usually in tile-- that cover every available inch of moorish-style buildings is horror vacui, latin for "fear of empty space" or more poetically, "fear of emptyness." As the Artlex artists dictionary defines it:

horror vacui - The compulsion to make marks in every space. Horror vacui is indicated by a crowded design.  Some consider horror vacui one of the principles of design. Those who exclude it from their list of principles apparently interpret it as posessing an undesirable, perhaps obsessive quality, in contrast to the desirable, controlled principle of limitation, or perhaps to that of emphasis or dominance.

When you live next to the Sahara, a fear of empty space is a rational response.

I think we suffer (without suffering) from something else, a fear of deadness perhaps, or more generally, plasticity. Horror mortis, perhaps? Having seen our home reduced to a dead thing, we want to restore it to life--our life--with surfaces that though inanimate are nonetheless alive to the touch, breathing in their softness and sensuality, and warm in their spirit. 

if the house could, like some mushroom-fueled shimmering mirage, respirate of its own accord, we would, I think, wish it.