Curiosity and Fascination
Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau, 2° le gaz d'éclairage . . . (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas . . . ), 1946-1966, Artist/maker: Marcel Duchamp, American (born France), 1887 - 1968
“Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.”
- Linus Pauling
My mind works in mysterious ways. I start down one road, sometimes meaning to take it for months, and then when I turn the key and get ready to drive off, I find the road I was planning to drive is too narrow and the real road I must take becomes clear.
And so it is with this piece. I have a database in Notion in which I keep my queue of topics for Things to Realize. When I think of a topic that I believe is worth exploring, I add it to the queue and maybe add notes and a target publication date. I had in mind a couple of potential topics for this week, including an entry called “On Pipes.” Two words on the list, and a whole framework in my head. This was to be about my recent rediscovery of pipes and pipe tobacco, a discussion about cigars vs. pipes and why I like each, and a brief touch on how they are completely different from cigarettes and “vapes.” My goal was to share something that I like that some people literally wrinkle their noses at, in order to open a dialog and provide nuance, after which we could sing Kumbaya, and, yes, smoke the peace pipe.
I spent the last couple of days thinking about how to approach this topic. I thought of you, dear reader, and how you might receive it. As sat down with my MacBook and turned the key, I realized, this is not the right road.
I had coffee yesterday with a great friend of mine, and in our ranging conversion, which started out as a venting of our shared frustrations with technology, we talked about things we had been doing lately, and I mentioned that I recently started reexploring pipes and pipe tobaccos after years of smoking cigars, and how going back to pipes was a fascinating contrast. He, in turn, spoke about his transition from home-brewing beer to brewing cider, about buying apples by the ton, and some of the nuances and caveats about brewing cider, and how much he loved it. We talked about photography, how we both explored it when we were young adults. I could see in his eyes the passion of his pursuit of brewing. I told him of my explorations of different types of tobaccos, how each category is different and how blends within each category are nuanced and different in interesting ways, and he found it interesting, but not enough to pick up a pipe. And we both agreed that it was great that we both have passions that we love.
This conversation made me think of passions and curiosity in a broader view, and the road to this piece became clear. A key factor of the joy in life is being curious and open to what the universe has to offer, and being fascinated with what you find. There is no dearth of amazing things on this planet, and there is fascination in everything if you look with curiosity.
When I was a kid, we took field trips as part of our school program, and one field trip was to the water treatment plant of our town. I never even thought about what happens to the water when you wash clothes and dishes or use the bathroom. The water treatment plant was fascinating. The sequence of actions to process raw sewage into potable water that could be released into the stream thrilled me. It still does. There was a settling pool with what they called “sludge,” and this sludge was dried out and ready for transporting to wherever they transport sludge. It was dry, and it looked interesting to boys like us. And of course, my buddy had to test it out. He had to walk out onto the surface, and after a few steps he sunk hip-deep into the sludge. We all learned a real practical lesson about what happens to the solids in sewage after processing. Considering what it was when it went into the plant, it wasn’t so bad when it came out. But his mother was not happy.
Everything has a technology. When we moved to Central Oregon, we lived on a grass farm for a couple of years. Up until then, I’d see fields of hay, and think, “great, fields of hay!” and then buy bales for my horses from my local farmer. We saw the interactions of earth and sky and water and wind on our fields throughout the seasons of the year. We saw the cold, fallow field in winter start to transform in early spring to a faint green halo of new grass shoots spreading before us. Come April, the opening of the irrigation canal feeds the pool used by the massive pump to push water to lines of sprinklers 150 yards long. The incessant “tick, tick, tick” of the sprinkler night and day and the longer hours of sunlight transforms the halo of green shoots into an undulating sea of gorgeous green timothy and orchard grasses. In early July, the farmer stops the irrigation and lets the hay mature and dry, and he watches the weather for the right time to cut. When the time is right, he harvests the hay with tractors pulling cutting blades that are sharp enough to easily chop down 30 acres of hay. Once cut, the hay needs to dry to exactly the right moisture level so that it doesn’t mold or ferment when baled. Then comes the tractor equipped with a specialized implement to rake the hay into lines for the baler, and the baler is attached to the tractor for yet another pass in the field to gather up the lines of hay and compress them into 100 pound bales, automatically tying them with twine and spitting them out onto the field. Finally, the farmer fires up the big Massey-Ferguson (always Massey-Ferguson) machine, and plucks the bails off the field and sends them to its collector to form two-ton blocks of about 50 bales, which he deposits into the hay barn in perfect stacks, until all the hay is off the field.
This is what it takes, and more, to grow and harvest a field of hay, and this happens two or three times a year. It’s fascinating to me, and yet on the surface, it’s just a field of hay.
We need to feed ourselves with fascination. There’s always something to know, to be curious about, and there’s always something to discover if you indulge your curiosity. It takes skill and it takes mastery to do even the most apparently mundane things. There is a certain Zen to doing something right, to take something and transform it into something else, something better. There is a creativity and a pleasure in finding, creating, and using tools, whether they be physical or spiritual. There is a joy to discovery, of finding new things. This is the theme of this newsletter.
My plan was to write about the joy I am having geeking out about different kinds of pipe tobaccos and exploring something completely different from what I have been doing for the last several years. I find it fascinating that two things that are similar can be so different. I mean, cigars are rolled-up leaves, and pipe smoking is taking similar leaves and burning them in a pipe. How different can they be?
In the end, though, it’s not about me and my fascinations. No, it’s about you and your fascinations.
It is a good thing to be curious about the world around us and to be fascinated at what we see. If we are curious and fascinated, our all-too-brief visit on this orb will be fun and worthwhile. If we add to that charity and mentorship and love, why, we will have lived a good life no matter when the Reaper comes knocking.
I will leave you with this, another class trip. We didn’t just take thrilling trips to the treatment plant, no, we sometimes actually indulged in a different kind of culture: we took a trip to The Philadelphia Museum of Art. I loved everything about this trip. The climb up the stairs, the sculptures in the garden, Van Gogh, Monet. And then we visited the modern art exhibition, and I learned about surrealism. They displayed Salvador Dali’s Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War). I was fascinated! And we visited the Marcel Duchamp exhibition, and I learned about Dadaism. The way Dada was explained to me, it was Duchamp’s way to pull the beards of over-the-top art critics who raved about art just because it came from a celebrated artist, not because of the value of the work itself.
From my art teacher: “Duchamp took an old three-legged stool and shoved a bicycle fork through the hole in the seat, and presented it to the critics. ‘Masterpiece!,’ they cried.”
I was in love. It appealed to my 13-year-old rebellious brain. I loved his other displayed works, like The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) and Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2). And then I saw the barn door. The barn door pictured at the top of this piece.
It was over in a special spot in the corner of the exhibition. The kids and other visitors looked at it, and puzzled at it, and tried to appreciate it. After all, it’s in a museum, so it must be art. One of the kids said, “well, it’s just a barn door, that’s all.” Just another example of dadaism. I went over and puzzled over it myself. And I noticed a hole in the door with some light shining from inside. And so I looked into the hole.
The piece is called Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau, 2° le gaz d'éclairage . . . (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas . . . ), and it changed my life. I never looked at art the same way again. If you are near Philadelphia, I suggest seeing this piece in person.
Stay curious, my friends. Be fascinated.