3rd of March

“Not every person has the same kinds of talents, so you discover what yours are and work with them. Don't try to be me, or try to be Frank Lloyd Wright, or try to be I.M. Pei. Try to be yourself. You have to understand what drives people to build buildings.”

- Frank Gehry

This resonates with me on two levels: one, where he is Frank Gehry, ridiculously talented architect, saying that you need to be true to your talents and not try to be anybody else, and two, the link between understanding what drives people and creating spaces for them to live, work, worship, or play in. Not what people do, though that is connected to drive, but what motivates them.

I kind of freak out over his buildings – if you know not of them, go forth and investigate. Explore. From the wildly imaginative and seemingly impossible structures like The Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to his more modest structures using found or industrial grade materials (his home in Santa Monica, for example), he is endlessly inventive, and continually interested in pushing at all sorts of boundaries. If I remember correctly, he has been quoted as saying “If you know where you are going, it's not worth doing.” I'm paraphrasing, but this is close. Love that. This is a guy that will never hang up his spurs. 

'Use what you got' is pretty much what he gets at, repeatedly, in different ways. But he would never suggest that you use what you got in the 'expected' way... no, no, no! Work it into something new, something that is a unique expression of you. Which requires, first, that you look deep within yourself, and then to look deep within people on the whole. And then to keep looking, keep learning. 

I maintain that you need to understand what drives people (first of all yourself) to build, or do, anything. If you want to do it well, that is. From whatever perspective, it is a crucial thing to be able to do. Not unhelpful to be able to access more than one perspective, by the by. At the very least, if you have put in the work to try to understand people, whatever it is that you are doing, making, or building will resonate with people, because they will be a part of it in an integral way.

That is a thing to aim for, methinks. 

the Keeper (word to think about/keep with me for a bit): 

"Resonate” - v. 1.) produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound. 2.) evoke or suggest images, memories, or emotions. 3.) produce electrical or mechanical resonance.

Try to be yourself. Try to understand what motivates people in general, but certainly those that are around you regularly.