02.18.26 | on suggestion
The books make me feel weird because I picked things up because I was curious and didn’t feel the need to know why, or think about whether or not they’d be on someone’s substack recommendation post. And when I look at them, I can see the threads and inklings that have woven their way into my adult life. The relevance that can only be understood now, in hindsight after years lived.
There are the books I bought but never read-- Nietzche, after a philosophy class I stumbled through but loved my senior year; and all the things I bought because they seemed cool, before I knew anything about anything.
In a 2016 issue of the literary journal, A public Space, I find Etel Adnan on weaving-- as I currently research weaving workshops in Vermont. There’s a copy of Frieze way before I understood it was a fair, with a bookmarked James Turrell exhibition ad, having no idea what it was like at the time of buying it to sit inside Meeting at MoMA PS1.
When I was 20, I was very in love with guy named Rafael and we would make out on the couch and listen to records for hours. On one such occasion he told me that when you reach a certain age, you stop being interested in new things. You listen to the same music over and over and you don’t seek things out anymore. I remember us lying there, sharpied X’s on my hands from some concert because I couldn’t drink yet, and finding it utterly impossible to imagine being that way.
I don’t know if it’s because of the algorithm or just no longer being nineteen, but somehow I’ve become the way I couldn’t imagine being.
When you walk into the Schindler House, it’s more like walking into a rough outline or suggestion of a living space vs a home. No designated front door, no right or wrong.
Sea of sameness.
Both the books and the house are making me think a lot about suggestion and the quiet way it’s started to take over our lives.
A few months ago, I decided to challenge this. I went to McNally Jackson sans-phone and tried to choose something blindly, the way
It’s like I had these hunches, and now, later, they make a lot more sense.
I read Justin Taylor’s short story collection, Flings, twice and only remembered it after I went on a date last spring with a literary editor who happened to be his good friend.
There’s a funny sort of sadness that I feel when I stop and actually look at them, because they’re like a younger-me was talking and paused mid-sentence. I can picture hastily throwing things in bags to move out and leaving them there.
Which brings us back to Porto and this little brush atelier and a woman behind the counter named Fatima, who responded "tomorrow?" when I said rhetorically "I wish I could learn" through Google Translate. And so that's how it happened: the next day I learned how to make a horse hair brush from Fatima in this tiny Portuguese shop that has been passed down through three generations, with neither of us speaking the same language.
This niche thing I had tucked away in the back of my brain and quietly thought about for years unfolded in a way that was so unexpected and kismet, I never would have been able to imagine it. No one else does it like this anymore and 1) that's what makes it so special, but 2) they should. There's beauty in simplicity, in specificity, and in taking your time. We no longer celebrate those things.
So much of traditional interiors centers on big picture and perfection in a way that is atypical of real life. We design and buy everything for our living room at once, neglecting to think about what plates we want to see stacked and haphazard across our dining table after breakfast, or the way a lamp with a pull chain will feel in our hand when we tug to turn it on.
For the past few months, I ahve been working on a physical offering set to launch in September.
If you are looking for assistance finding your own perfect thing, I look forward to connecting with you through a consultation or brainstorming a larger project.
Furniture For Thought
I was looking for something else when I found this, but I realized it’s kind of the perfect sofa. The shape, the proportions, the side pillows—- it’s just good. Also, this lamp. Someone recently accused me of only liking beige. That’s definitely not true, but I realize this makes it look sort of true.
$16,000 | via Somerset House
675 EUR | via Another June