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Just finished watching Crash, and am now thinking about the ability films and other media have on stirring emotion and changing our perspective. I used to say that I never felt more emotional than during or after watching a film. There was a time when I would go to a film on a weekend night, then head back to my apartment to write while under the influence of my zealous mind, trying to capture the feeling in my own work.

From poetry to fiction to music to screenplays and now to design, I seem compelled to create for the purpose of influencing—stirring emotion and changing perspective—changing the world for the better, I like to believe. That seems like a rather presumptuous and egotistical task. And the passion behind it I find rather mysterious.

Is it passion for beauty? Is beauty the realization of a more humane world? Is that what we strive to do as designers? Reflect the beauty of the world and provide hope for the human condition?

Or are we just trying to make cool stuff? And is making cool stuff still sticking to the path? Do products and services that look and feel better, that treat us well, ultimately affect change and enable a more humane world?

I think they do. And that’s why I’m passionate about what I do.

As part of my internship with Adaptive Path, I am writing an essay for the essay section of their website. I’m still formulating what it is I’m writing about, and a colleague recommended I look at design-emotion.com.

The first thing I noticed when viewing the site is a list photos, designers who have been interviewed about design and emotion. All of the designers are men.

Given generalizations of women being more emotional than men, I found this amusing.

Why are they all men? Is it a lack of women in design? A lack of women designers being appreciated? Men being more interested in emotional design than women? The site curator being male?

In relation to understanding the connection in my life between writing and design, I was inspired to read a comparison of the craft of writing to the craft of design in David Wroblewski’s “The Construction of Human-Computer Interfaces Considered as a Craft” from Taking Software Design Seriously. This was required reading for our seminar 2 class.

There seems to be a connection between the writing process and design process (Wroblewski’s references John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction and Bill Strickland’s On Being a Writer). This connection has surfaced in other readings as well, especially those we read last semester for Richard Buchanan.

Creating a piece of good writing is a wicked problem: an ambiguous problem with a solution that cannot practically be found or measured. A good idea and some words thrown on paper will not necessarily generate a strong piece of writing, just like a good idea or some applied technology will not necessarily result in a product that connects with users.

Both are iterative processes. Almost always, a strong piece of writing is not the first thing written. Similarly, even if you frame the problem well and have solid research, the first idea for a solution will likely not be the final design.

In On Being a Writer, John Steinbeck says (Wroblewski uses this quote):

Although it must be a thousand years ago that I sat in a class on story-writing at Stanford. I remember the experience very clearly. I was bright-eyed and bushy-brained and prepared to absorb the secret formula for writing good short stories, even great short stories. This illusion was canceled very quickly. The only way to write a good short story, we were told, is to write a good short story. Only after it is written can it be taken apart to see how it was done.

This fits nicely with our graduate study program in design, whereby we are really only given guidance and tools to create a good design and an environment to evaluate the designs we have created. Though we are not, and cannot be, given the secret formula for creating good design.

However, maybe that’s how it works for a lot of things. There is no formula for success. No secret to happiness. Life, it may be argued, is like the process of design or the process of writing. The end is ambiguous, and there are multiple solutions for the same problem. The only way to live life is to live life. Only after can we see how it was done.

I read the following quote in the appendix of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which a friend laid in my lap while I was drinking beer and searching for new clothes online at 1 a.m.

I wished to show that space-time is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spacially extended. In this way the concept of “empty space” loses its meaning.
–Albert Einstein

It reminded me of the talk Stefan Holmlid gave at the Emergence conference, titled “Introducing White Space in Service Design: This Space Intentionally Left Blank.”

Here’s an excerpt of my notes from the talk:

White space in service design modeling: the space in time between two actions; instead of focusing on what happens between, we look at the actions. We look at this as something the service doesn’t depend on, but it does, in order for other things to take place.

I wonder what kind of conversation Stefan and Einstein might have.

Stephan concluded his talk with ee cummings, who is one of the first poets that I took an interest in. It made me feel nostalgic.

“nothing” the unjust man complained
“is just” (”or un-” the just rejoined
34 in 73 poems by from ee cummings

Why I write poetry is a question I’ve been asking myself since I started writing during senior year of high school. Recently I’ve been reconsidering the question.

What compels me fill a blank sheet of paper with ragged lines of rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and meter? Of all writing, why did I choose poetry?

This post is an attempt to answer these questions.

Compulsion

“Compulsion” is a word that I keep coming back to as I consider my answer. In a sense, I don’t feel like I made a choice to write poetry. It happened. And then it kept happening. And I felt compelled to keep writing. There was a bunch of stuff fluttering against the windows of my mind like trapped birds trying to get out. One day I opened a window.

It was this compulsion that resulted in me writing poems during my calculus lectures when I was supposed to be learning to be an engineer. And the same compulsion led to me switching to English Writing as a major, not because it made sense, but because it seemed that’s what I was inclined to do.

My Past Self Weighs In

This weekend, I stumbled upon an old journal. A few entries in, my past self offered this explanation as to why I write poetry:

I write poems cos¹ they’re quick
You can tell a little story
And then bang!
Like an orgasm
It’s over.

—June 22, 1999

1 “cos” instead of “because” was a phase I went through.

Here’s another bit I found:

What inspires me to write poetry?
The answer’s unknown—a curiosity.
Maybe it’s a love of words
Or the cleverness of a phrase.
Maybe I have nothing better to do
When I wish to fill my days.

—September 30, 1999

I included these because they show a history of me trying to answer the same question that I am trying to answer now, and for the uncanniness of their surfacing during the very weekend I planned to tackle the question.

In a Nutshell (why not eggshell?)

I can only speculate why the compulsion exists. But I believe it’s the coming together of my interests and tendencies, that when considered in whole, make poetry a likely vehicle.

First, I have a natural interest in words, both how they are used to express ideas and their etymology. I am also intrigued by ideas, and have a passion for exploring ideas to whatever end, no matter how ridiculous, and a proclivity for turning words, phrases, and ideas upside down.

I enjoy sharing my ideas, knowledge, and experience. And while I struggle with the inherent egotism of writing with the idea that my words have the merit to affect others, that is in fact one of the reasons I write. It’s one of my ways of trying to make meaningful connections with the rest of the humans.

Writing poetry is also a way for me to explore myself. There’s an inexplicable mysticism to writing and making permanent passing thoughts that amazes me (actually, stringing together words in any form of communication is an amazing feat if you think about it, especially when you consider how often you don’t think about it). Countless times I have read my poems and wondered where they came from. So it’s a way for me to tap into parts of myself that I don’t know exist, and perhaps help me to better understand the complexity of my humanity.

Finally, when it comes to writing, I am lazy. Novels seem daunting. Even the short stories I have written were a chore. Blog posts can be a bitch. So poetry has the appeal of brevity.

It may not be all encompassing, but that’s pretty much why I write poetry. And as long as I feel I have something to share, and something within myself to explore, I hope to keep writing.