my father was telling me recently how, in backlash against the "mc mansion" trend (in which huge "luxury" homes are built by people who must build their own house as part of their version of the american dream, but in which they build them out of exactly the same bargain, prefab materials used to build "habitat for humanity" homes), "real" mansions are now being built on philadelphia's mainline. high-end materials, including carved limestone (carved with lasers these days, but that's progress for you), the works.
these "real" mansions are also artificially aged. chains are taken to the beautiful hardwood floors, to make them look scuffed, worn, trodden upon by generations. in one example, my father reported, the person who had made the house had added, against the wall of the fireplace, a small groove -- where, had a fire poker stood for a hundred years or so, it might have created a similar groove. you know, in real life.
i wondered to my dad if the closets of these mansions didn't also contain pencil marks representing the ages and heights of the various children who had "grown up" there. he didn't know.
the integrity of building -- and of buildings -- is something i learned the most about in ayn rand's the fountainhead. but in reading that book -- rather later in life than many -- i discovered that the popular consensus is that rand lacks finesse, is a rubber mallet of overblown symbolism and ideals so, well, ideal, that they are downright immature. i asked around, and yeah, it seems, at parties where people talk about such things, that is just what people say.
so don't go to a party and try to impress anyone by saying you are reading the fountainhead. because you will be laughed at and mocked by someone who has paid huge amounts of money to give their home the "evidence" of imaginary people having lived in it. i'm just trying to save you the pain.
back to the mansions. what's the next possible step?
maybe these mansions will be built, solid as san simeon and unapologetically shiny and new, without the vulgarity of "distressing" and artificial aging. and the owners will then hire multiple large families to live in them, quickly -- and hard. raise those kids! pace across that floor! be thinking of really emotional and family-oriented stuff while you do that pacing. don't be just DOING it and thinking about your paycheck, people! get a good mix of thoughts going, too: some sadness, sure, but make sure it's mostly joy. we have to live here.
they could get multiple families going, living really hard, making the mansions all loveworn, 24 hours a day, in shifts.
who are the families they will get to do this? i know it's all a hypothetical, but we know one thing for sure, in the present, and in the real: people who build, or would even live in, houses that are aged for the purpose of looking like they have been lived in a long time, do not relish the prospect of, nor trust the authenticity of, their own lives adding anything to their mansion.
so they'd have to hire out. there's plenty of families out there. families who'd love to live in a big house like that, even for a prescribed number of hours a day. families perhaps down on their luck, but full of heart, and full of love.
families with nothing but their memories.
we haven't gotten to anything specifically pottery barn, or textile related, yet. or have we? maybe there are a whole bunch of folks out there in FREE MARTHA t-shirts just thinking i am being so reactionary and blaming a company for just providing what people want to buy -- how can that be pottery barn's fault?
i am looking at the difference between pottery barn -- or toll brothers, or whomever -- is selling, and what they actually have to sell. and i'm not saying YOU need to do look at this because YOU can't see the difference between good and bad, between cheap-and-fake and good-and-worthy; this is my exercise more than it is anyone else's. i don't care if everyone else skips these entries entirely.
i'm not saying pottery barn (or toll brothers, or martha stewart omnimedia) is WRONG for selling items people will buy. i'm saying that when i started to look at it in a new way, i started saving shitloads of money that i was then able to spend on yarn and books, foundry type and handmade paper. when i found a way to separate in my mind what pottery barn was "selling", and what they actually had to sell, i found that i had most of what they were "selling" already, and what i didn't have, i was willing to wait for, in the fullness of time, and in the context of the actual history of my life.
i think it has helped me appreciate what is beautiful and meaningful in my life. i think it helps me as a knitter.
i haven't gotten a pottery barn catalog in about three days, but we did have the king holiday this week, so they might be behind.