My first impression of my desk when I first moved into Willoughby hall in Pratt was very positive. It was the desk that tilts up for studio work. The desk looks awkward if you don't know the function of it because its surface seems way too big when compared to the supporting legs. I wondered why the desk was made in such way, and once I found out the reason, I loved it. I did not expect to have this kind of desk to be my own, and its presence in my room made me feel so much more welcomed to art school. It has only been a month since the school started and all my assignments have been little craft works. I have not had the chance to tilt my desk yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
The gap made between height and width difference of my chair and the desk gives me just enough space for me to fold my laps on the chair and fit into the negative space of the desk. If I lift my laps up just a little, I feel the bottom of the drawer that is attached underneath the desk. I cannot reach the floor when I'm sitting, so if I let down my legs, the gravity makes my knees sore after few hours. I usually like to have my furniture touch at least one side of the walls so little objects like pens and pins wouldn't fall down the edge. It's my precaution to avoid the tedious hide-and-seek when I need those fallen objects.
I collect many things. Some are stationeries like bookmarks, pens, letter papers, and post-its shaped like a leaf or a thought bubble. Others include stamps, vintage photographs, receipts, and teabag bags. All these collections used to stay on my desk when I had a bigger desk with three shelves over it. However, because my desk is a work table now, I can only put some in the drawer beneath it, or on top of a detached bookshelf, on the side of the desk. I am very conscious of the presence of objects on my desk now so the desk is always ready to tilt its face. I put anything except my computer back to where they belong. It might not be long until I stop this because I used to have messy desks before coming to Willoughby, but I am going to try not to break this habit.
I don't know who the last user of this desk was, but someone did not think about having a cutting board or thick paper underneath their work when cutting it with an x-acto knife. The desk has few straight, linear scars. It reminds me of the girl who sat next to me in my second grade classroom. She used to carve out the edges of her wooden desk with an x-acto knife while our teacher wasn't looking. I don't know why she did it, but it became her habit the rest of the year. She kept doing it, and by the end of each class her desk would have a smoother edge, getting lighter as its coated varnish peeled off to show its true self.
I made a habit involving my desk and that is rubbing my eraser against its surface. When my eraser turns black from clearing charcoal marks, I use my white surfaced desk to clean it. I don't have to look for an extra sheet of white paper to rub against and I find my desk effective and convenient to be the alternative.
When I was in high school - when I had only one desk for years, in one place, I had books and papers in tall, three stacks. Because I would just toss my last read book on top of the stack, the books were automatically arranged in chronological order and I had the visual record of my reading history. Now my desk only has my imac, a wireless keyboard and a mouse that cover just 1/6 of the desk. It feels naked, showing its white skin quite boldly. Although I want the desk to be clean for my work, now that my desk is clean most of the time, I have fewer visual displays of my recent activities. The desk tells less stories.
However, there is another advantage in cleaning the desk, other than more spacious space for work. As I produce a mess while working and clean my desk, the same thing happens in my brain; I expand my thoughts and make a mess, stretching all the thoughts out, and then clean, refresh my mind. As I repeat the act of making a mess and cleaning the desk, my thoughts expand and reorganize. In so doing, some ideas crystalize while unnecessary things are discarded. The physical act transits to my thoughts and I become more decisive on what I do and gain a better focus. It is as if what I did physically has transitioned into my brain and my mind mimicked the act the same way. It is like the process of baptism where sprinkling of water on the physical body cleanses the soul.
So far, on my desk, I have cut and arranged pieces of color aid paper and magazines for Light, Color, and Design class, painted my models for 3D design class, wrote emails, read CNN articles, checked on my facebook, skyped, wrote on my diary, ate my meals, made peppermint tea, finished my makeup, read, recorded my daily spendings, watched Korean shows and documentaries, checked my sleep calculator, read others’ blogs, wrote blog posts like this one, listened to music, talked on the phone, took pictures, and checked myself on webcam to see how I outfit looks for the day (since I don’t have a mirror).
I did not do my drawing assignments on my desk because I had to face the shoes, not the white wall right behind the desk, for direct observation drawing. I have not slept on my desk because I managed my time well and have been sleeping early to not fall asleep on the desk while working late at night... so far. I did not exercise on my desk for obvious reasons. So except for these three activities, all my room activities always have accompanied the desk.
Dorm rooms - little space makes me utilize more of what are already there.
Dorm rooms - little space makes me utilize more of what are already there.
Desk is a place that is of my own. No one can use this desk except me because it is organized in a certain way that only I would know, including what is around it: a bookshelf that has teabags on the top shelf and art supplies on the bottom, three different tote bags packed according to what I need on three different days (Monday's drawing class, Tuesday's 3D class, and Wednesday's art history and English class), tangled electronic cords that only I can tell which is which, and so on. Desk is the place only I can approach. It is comfortable place for me, but it is not as approachable for others. For some reason, more than a bed or a chair, a desk has a sense of presence that is stiff and less friendly to the non-owners. It almost feels like a holy relic. That impression might arouse because the desk is the main place where its owner goes to expand and express their potential skills, through the medium of writing, reading, painting, drawing, and thinking. When the desk has a trace of the owner's passion through messy but productive files of work lying on it, that sacredness heightens.
The desk is used to time out myself from the physical activities. By sitting on the chair and sitting in static posture, I activate my brain to start its cognitive activities instead. The desk is where my lower body finally rests from moving, where I find my spot to be conscious of my state and ongoing thoughts. The first thing I do when I sit on the desk is to draw a deep breath. The desk becomes my site for meditation, and the initiator of reflection on myself.
Is this the essay draft or simply the post on your work space?
ReplyDeleteI'll respond to it as a draft: I like that you include significant detail and I think you do a good job of cataloging the items on your desk.
I think you are strongest when you talk about how these objects are used by you, how they are engaged by your body and your habits in your daily life.
But it seems to me that there needs to be more extended analysis of this: specifically, the way these objects are defined by the rhythms, patterns, and repetitions of your everyday practices. The focus on repetition is important, since it is through repetitive use that things become a part of the everyday.
In the context of the everyday, it is not the objects in themselves that are meaningful, rather it is how they are made familiar--given meaning through your daily embodied use of them that they become something familiar. In this way, everyday objects become (through use) an extension of the body, a function of self, an accumulation of embodied memory.
In the same way, domestic activities like cleaning, rearranging, organizing, and decorating make previously strange spaces (like a dorm room) into something more like home--an extension of the self, of our embodied identity. What makes things interesting is how you live in them, accumulating meaning over time.
So I would push at those aspects of your paper that begin to deal with this. Expand on your discussion of practices. If you want to talk only about the work space, think about it within the larger context of the dorm room as living space.
When you talk about cleaning your desk as a way of clearing your mind, I get a glimpse of your embodied relationship to it. But why is this so? How does your desk become aligned with your psyche? What practices have inscribed in your body the sense that the order or disorder of the desk is an expression of your mind? What processes of inhabitation creates the desk as an extension of self? Or vice-versa?
I think you are gesturing towards this deeper analysis at a few points in the essay--when you talk about the "stories" the desk does not tell because as a result of it's lack of clutter. But even the lack of clutter tells a story--even if it is a different one than before.
By attending more to the use of these objects--the lived experience of them in the everyday--you can better map the rhythms and patterns that construct objects and spaces as meaningful. In so doing, I think you will gain the depth and insight you need to make the essay more focused and analytic.
These kinds of observations are more difficult to capture--they are elusive, as Perec notes, because they are so much a part of our habits of body that they seem to have no meaning at all. In part, this is one of the framing questions of any critique of the everyday: How do we observe the things that we do without thinking? How do we use rational language to capture the rhythms and cycles of our unthinking bodies? It is okay to acknowledge the difficulty of the project within the context of the essay and to reflect on the possible forms of documenting the everyday that might be more appropriate to the topic.
Thinking about this might be a nice way to either frame or conclude your essay. If you have the time, look at some of the links I've included on our class blog for ways that various artists have approached the everyday.