From the Ground Up

"The Lego brick is not initially thought of as a material typically used in creating art. But as an Architectural Artist, it lends itself perfectly to my applications just as paint to a painter or metal to a blacksmith" - Adam Reed Tucker.

     Over the past two months I've been grinding away at my first commissioned Lego model. My local library (one of the best in our region of Michigan and one of the reasons we chose to live here) is a gorgeous building, a wonderful resource, and a perfect setting for a Lego reconstruction. Built in conjunction with a monthly artist demonstration event I was asked to build at, the model contains over 5,000 Lego elements from 23 different resellers as far away as Germany. Two months is a tough timeline for a project that should take five to six months, but with some help on the backside of things and the pseudo-flexibility of homeschooling, I managed to get from blueprints, photos, and drawings to the placement of the final, custom-engraved elements in just under eight weeks. The model is now property of the library, and will remain on display in the lobby.

     In other news, as of yesterday, my personal site, paulvermeesch.com, is now live. This site will be a portfolio of sorts as well as an umbrella for my different interests, and a method by which I can be contacted more easily. Eventually, this blog will likely be migrated over to that site as well once I can iron out the kinks of Wordpress.

     And not only have I been building a small library and small website in the past few weeks, I've also been building a small business. Through paulvermeesch.com/lego, I am now available for Lego modeling commissions. Drop me a note with who, where, or what you'd like to see built out of plastic bricks, and I'd love to talk with you about it!

Trapped in a Reference Frame

"It concerned some boy whose farm or cottage stood on such a slope, and who went on his travels to find something, such as the effigy and grave of some giant; and when he was far enough from home he looked back and saw that his own farm and kitchen garden, shining flat on the hillside like the colours and quarterings of a shield, were but parts of some such gigantic figure on which he had always lived, but which was too large and too close to be seen." -G.K. Chesterton

Humans have ever aspired to be birds. From the time of Icarus all the way to today's inane wingsuit jumpers, mankind has wanted to soar over mountains and treetops, preferably in slow motion and to epic music, because slow motion and epic music make things all the more awesome. But why? Why did DaVinci and the Wright brothers and all those comic book authors dream of human flight? Perhaps it was because they were all sick and tired of living in two dimensions, of only being able to venture into the third by falling off a cliff or being shot out of a cannon. Perhaps mankind was sick of its reference frame; weary of seeing ground beneath its feet and all things from the same lousy perspective. Mankind strove to reach outer space not just to explore the stars, but so that it could look back at planet earth; so that it could defy its reference frame and see the globe from a distance. Distance gives perspective. This is why model train layouts, like architectural models and those miniature scale sailboats are so enduringly appealing. They allow the viewer to escape his reference frame and view the trains and buildings and boats from a greater "distance." This is likely why Legos are so appealing to me. They have the potential to recreate life in a different reference frame, one where the ground needn't necessarily be beneath our feet. Indeed, extreme distance gives perspective, and extreme closeness gives wonder. I've often wondered what it might be like to swim around inside of a plant cell, or be like Calvin, imagining himself as a bug in Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. One can escape the bars of our reference frame by gaining distance or by imagining, like Chesterton's traveller, that we have always been living on top of an enormous giant. Our appreciation for the commonplace will inevitably grow as we see the commonplace from a different perspective. 

The Kingdom

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." - Winston Churchill 

     Just as there are two ways to reach home, perhaps there are two ways of reaching the kingdom of God. The first would be to travel around the world and through potentially eons of time until one reached the messianic millennium. The second would be to never leave.

     The kingdom is that ambiguous little thing that kept popping up all over the gospels. Whatever it was or is or will be, God thought that it was important enough to warrant a trip to planet earth to tell us about. All too often, I think we might look through the wrong end of the binoculars when it comes to Jesus's first coming. If his only purpose was to die and be raised in order to break the curse of sin for all mankind, why didn't he allow Herod to murder him as a child? Salvation might have come thirty years earlier. Obviously, the messiah's life and teaching are supremely important in the grand scheme of history. With the physical life of his son, we might argue that God began the kingdom of heaven on earth. Jesus did not lie when he said "the kingdom of heaven is now" for the kingdom was now. The mustard seed of the kingdom of heaven, planted and nurtured by the life of the carpenter from Nazareth, has been growing for the past two thousand years into a sturdy young tree. Indeed, time will only tell when the growth of the mustard tree will be complete, but perhaps many of us have been waiting for something we already have. We wait for God's commands to be written on our hearts without realizing that many of the commands already have been written onto our hearts with the Holy Spirit prompting us toward righteousness, where our ancestors relied on the commands written in stone. 

     Like the Chestertonian traveler who leaves Bristol and journeys around the world to a strange land of rolling hills, tamed dragons, and peculiar people under tall, magical, black hats, only to find that he has returned to Bristol with all its top hats and motorcars; so too, we should rediscover the kingdom of God not as something to be expected, but something to be lived out. Every plant that the Father did not plant will surely be uprooted, but the roots of the kingdom of heaven run deep.

Preschoolers and Sheep

"When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?" - G.K. Chesterton

     When the opportunity presented itself, it was tough to pass up the chance to film and edit a very Biblical preschool/kindergarten Christmas program complete with llamas, sheep, and CGI establishing shots for a local Christian school. Shot in six hours and edited in three days to meet our deadline, the whirlwind project gave me a whole new respect for preschool teachers. Those youngin's can be hilariously impossible sometimes. You can watch the finished product below.

On Swords

"All good things come to a point. Swords, for instance." -G.K. Chesterton

     I read somewhere that at Handel's first performance of Messiah, the crowd was projected to be so large that women were asked not to wear hoop skirts and men were asked not to wear their swords so that standing room could be maximized. Oh that we sill lived in a time when you had to be explicitly asked not to wear a sword as a part of your default formal attire.  I find it a great pity that society has moved beyond the era of swords. We could have at least gone from swords to lightsabers, but alas, we had to go through the "gun" phase, and lightsabers don't exist yet. I've considered applying for a concealed weapons permit simply so I can carry a sword cane around. But then I'd have to have an excuse to carry a sword cane around, something far less easy to come by. Swords, though, don't have quite the stigma against them that guns do, primarily because swords are far more pretty. Swordplay way-back-when was an art, much like the weapons themselves. There isn't the same degree of sophistication and dignity about a Berretta when compared to a 16th century swept-hilt rapier. Perhaps the weapons do carry the same lethal function, but a Berretta certainly isn't going to be a part of your default formal clothing.
     That said, neither a gun nor a sword must be seen as deadly instruments. Chesterton, (whom I must point out carried a sword cane), wrote a marvelous little book about an allegorical practical joker titled Manalive. One of the book's main themes is the use of a pistol to "deal life" at those who value it least. By shooting holes in people's hats, the main character breaks the conventions, but keeps the commandments, not wishing to harm anyone, but only to frighten complacency out of them. What was once a killing machine has, in the hands of a concerned friend (and good shot), become a tool to shock a love of life into people who insist that "the pleasures of life, trivial and soon tasteless, are bribes to bring us into a torture chamber."

     Swords are much the same. They demand more awe than fear, their mere presence in a room adding some sense of craftsmanship, dignity, and history. Swords are one of those few instances where art and warfare intersect. When the warfare function is taken out of the equation, you're left with an awe-inspiring piece of artwork that you can swing around the room like what's-his-name from Princess Bride. All around, a whole lot more fun than swinging around Mona Lisa or American Gothic.

Dead as a Doornail

"But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail." - Charles Dickens

     In which I refrain from commenting on the election and instead bring you a lighter post. Here's a list of goofy clichés I've dredged up from all corners of life: from film, books, billboards, packaging, comics, and conversation. Enjoy!

• The ten square foot desert island with the palm tree in the middle. Why do we always see them at low tide?

• Falling anvils and pianos. This is one cliché that never gets old.

• Well... That and grannies armed with rolling pins.

• Happy kids in textbooks. The gal in a turtleneck holding up a graphing calculator with a giant grin. Really? Let's see some groaning, some pain, some agony. Red pen at the least.

• Protagonist in the movie nonchalantly spinning the postcard rack after walking into a store. Bash a window. That would shake things up a bit.

• "I'm glad that 14 terabyte data transfer only took thirty seconds, or else I would have been caught infiltrating this secret compound.

• "Quick! Push the fruit cart into the road so the lead car in the chase will crash into it, sending watermelons and pears skyward in an awesome slow motion collision!"

• "Phew. Reinforcements are just three minutes away..."

• Replies to "how are you today" questions. LOUSY! AND I WON'T BOTHER ASKING YOU BECAUSE I KNOW YOU'LL BE WONDERFUL! Life is a bit to predictable sometimes.

• Rome wasn't built in a day. Yeah, well, they didn't have cranes or front-loaders back then.

• When life gives you lemons, keep them. Because hey, free lemons.

• When it rains, it pours. Or it just sprinkles...

• If you can't judge a book by its cover, hire a new designer.

• All's fair in love and war. Take that Geneva conventions!

• Cereal box characters. I challenge you to find one single box of cereal in the cereal isle who's character doesn't have a the goofiest grin you thought was possible. 

• 50% MORE*

          *Than our half sized product.

• 100% NATURAL! I would pay money to see an orange juice carton with 100% ARTIFICIAL smeared across the front.

• Action hero whips out an arrow from his back quiver and let's it fly into the nearest bad guy within a second and a half. Oh- wait. Hold on. The arrow's stuck in the quiver. My arm's not long enough to get the tip far enough out. Ah. Two hands. There we go. Hold on there, Mr. Orc. The notch isn't clicking onto the string. Darn. The tail feathers are backwards, let me flip this one around. Pull back--boy this bow is stiff--oh, the sights need to be adjusted for this distance...

• The epic battle on the swinging bridge, tall building or freight train. A card table would be just fine, thank you.

• Crumb. My car ran out of gas right in the middle of this intense car chase.

• Soccer ball, saxophone, and a stack of books in the group shot of happy kids on the billboard. The ultimate childhood stereotype.

• That mountain switchback road in all the car commercials that I'm convinced is a soundstage in Hollywood with built-in sunset lighting.

• Riddles that end in "how did he die." No one ever seems to live through story riddles these days.

• Barber shops with pitiful names. I have yet to find a barber shop that has a name that would make me want to get my hair trimmed there.

• Typography. The flowing script font on devotionals, the blocky or pixelated font on all bad guy's computer screens, the serif font on all smart books, the sans-serif font on all books trying to be smart, and the bold, italicized, and non-Times-New-Roman font on the MLA guide.

• Goats don't eat tin cans. Really. They don't. Or shoes for that matter. They just eat grass. Lots of it.

• And last but not least, professors with bow ties.

Resolving Literature

"'Unlike literary critics, judges cannot merely savor the tensions or revel in the ambiguities inhering in the text--judges must resolve them...'" - Justice William Brennan

   I must admit that Calvin's reason for avoiding math is far more brilliant than any excuse I could think up. I, like Hobbes, had never considered the literary qualities of mathematics, but after stumbling across this wonderful comic, I began to consider the mathematical qualities of literature. These considerations were compounded when I read the intriguing quote above in an essay by Annabel Patterson. Justice Brennan here proposes that the appreciation of literature and the resolution of literature are two mutually exclusive approaches to interpretation.

     So sure. I can savor the power dynamics and balanced conflict of 2+2, perhaps admiring the symmetrical formal aspect of the sentence. But where will all that contemplation get me? Nowhere, really. The same is true of literature. I can examine the racial theories, questions of voice, and rhetorical strategies all I want, maybe even throwing in a psychoanalytic approach to the text's composition, but it doesn't get me anywhere at all. 

    All literature has function. There are some who pride themselves in writing gibberish, tidying it up with some nice rhetoric, and calling it literature. It's not. True literature is always an equation; a means to a meaning. Literature can be as simple as 2+2=x, or as complicated as b - 11 + (-0.2)(-60/2)² = -0.2(x² - 6x + (-60/2)²). We can "appreciate" this equation all we want, but x will continue to loom in the background--a stark reminder of a meaning and truth that the author of the equation has concealed using the tools of addition, division, distribution, rhetoric, and voice.

    And yes. I did just reduce literature to numbers, and yes. The analogy does break down. Interpretation never leads to a single correct answer. There is always uncertainty with complex literature. This does not, however, nullify the fact that there was a concrete "answer" to true literature when it was written; an unknown variable that interpreters should always be in pursuit of. All too often, though, interpreters leave the "solving" to the lawyers and content themselves with how aesthetically impressive or pleasing the literature is. They appreciate or admire the tools of logos, ethos, and pathos, perhaps observing an interesting tie to nationality or canon, but they don't use them to determine true meaning. X marks the spot, but they refuse to dig.