I Want to be A Stonemason.

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It was for work like the last, in particular, that I used to harbor distaste for Gaudí. Since then I've realized how absolutely deliberate, thoughtful, organic, and profoundly beautiful it all is. These buildings are incredible. Why didn't I like them? I guess I just always thought they seemed..."silly". Really, it boiled down to the embarrassing fact that I wouldn't have been caught dead taking a woman back home, for example, to something like that. Which is really because we've learned to evaluate everything as we evaluate products in 30-second televisioned glimpes. Mystery, complexity, challenge, engagement, commitment have all been foregone. There once was a world, but it has been replaced with an artifice. Ehhhh the whiskey doesn't want me to but I shall stop that at that. Back on track: I thought His work seemed "silly", then I gained perspective (a luxury of the -------): if you found any of this in miniature, nestled in sand along the ocean, you'd think what wonderful wisdom is hidden in nature and take it home to treasure.

These are not square, and that was my perspective: square. Why? Conditioning, I suppose. But why do we want squares? Squares are easy. I could make guesses about how they were our way of defying nature, of setting ourselves "apart" - and they might be reasonably accurate. There is also a lot to be said about industrial manufacturing, modular building, and how in certain ways they lend themselves to straight lines. But that's not really important here. What is important: phenomenologically, why should we hang on to the square? 

The square teaches us nothing. It holds no wisdom, no lessons. Squares are merely digestible; it is easy to discern when a square was intended to be achieved and whether it was. We get immediate satisfaction from that, from being able to glean intention and evaluate its specific success. But we do not get lasting satisfaction.  Squares offer no fuel for lengthy contemplation. Gaudí takes time. That is why it is good to live a life within him. And we are round pegs, we do not fit into square holes. Yet we continue to choose to make them so. 

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's easy. 2 - 5 - 1. It's a trick that we all know and that it works for something. But do yourself a favor; respect yourself. Calm the fuck down, think things over, stop making decisions before you understand the choice. And, above all, enjoy complexity, because everything is all you've got.

Mies achieved the square. Kudos. Now what did Gaudí achieve?

All photos taken from antonio gaudí by George R. Collins.