voussoirs: THE NEGLECT OF AMBITION

Thursday, 6 August 2026

THE NEGLECT OF AMBITION - WOW!

We appear to be totally entranced by technology. It seems that different ideas just keep getting zealously promoted and happily accepted, approved, and applauded without any questions being asked, without any impacts being assessed, and without any future impacts being considered. There is some sense of agreeable excitement that sees everything new as a great idea - WOW!, just what we wanted - in spite of the implications that never appear to be considered, or taken seriously if they are. The intensity of the ardour, the fervour, the passion, the zest, the gusto for the new, enthuses us as it blinds us to what is being excluded, denied, changed, perverted.

As an example, consider the news item that introduced the hover light, a drone that can remain stationary and light a space – WOW! The presentation promoted the gadget as being used to light a campsite. The boast was that you don’t need to fiddle with lanterns and fire to light up your campsite, as if this might be an advantage. The carefully chosen term fiddle suggests a frustrating annoyance, hinting that this invention might do away with such unwanted nuisances: "Oh, mind the cord."

The blurb continues: Carry the power station with you and the drone will follow along in the air – WOW! The drone features adjustable LED lights and can stay airborne for up to 24 hours – WOW! The Heone-X can light up a large area from its maximum height of 32 feet – WOW! The power station includes controls for one-touch take-off and can top off your other gadgets with its 480-Wh capacity – WOW!

WOW!

Gosh, everyone should have one! It sounds astonishing; even fun: but isn’t camping all about the peace and quiet of nature, sitting around and enjoying the flickering ambience of a fire, or the gloomy shadows of a lantern underneath the night skies? Does one really want this hovering LED illumination in a campsite? The information does not mention any sound levels. Apart from the constant noise of the drone, one would look up, not to see the Southern Cross twinkling in the darkness of infinity, but to squint at the glare of the LED cross of the drone light. The whole place would be buzzing, dominated by the drone’s constant presence, its amazing performance. The wonderment of the starry night would be transformed into a noisy attention-seeking brilliance. One might not have to fiddle with fire for light, but one has to worry about charging batteries and transporting a power station and a drone as a part of the camping gear - and the cord.

We need to be more inquisitive with our new technologies, more questioning of their impacts and issues before we fall head over heels for their hype. Imagine a campsite where everyone had this drone light #: LED drone hovers in place to flood your base camp in light -https://newatlas.com/outdoor-gear/lighting-drone-heone-x/#gallery:1

WOW!

We easily get overexcited with the passionate blurb that comes with the new, with the delights of the extravagantly promised attractions that flood all doubts with blind belief, burying any thought that might suggest that these things may not be as desirable as they are said to be. Take as another example, the hover camera that could perhaps be operated in conjunction with the light – WOW!: HoverAir Versa Is the World’s First Flying Pocket Camera - https://petapixel.com/2026/07/30/hoverair-versa-is-the-worlds-first-flying-pocket-camera/

What can one say but WOW! yet again?

. . . users can snap wings onto the HoverAir Versa, turning it into a dedicated aerial camera that automatically follows the user around. . . . Finally, no shot is ever out of reach . . . “No learning curve. No pilot skills. No controller,” the company continues. “Just launch and go.” – WOW!

It is as though this is all highly desirable, that one could just pick up this gizmo and be an instant, ‘Look no hands!’ expert. Why does technology seek to exclude any human input? - consider the self-drive car.

A WOW! selfie.

What are we doing? Do we no longer concern ourselves with any impacts? Are we bewitched by the new tech? Smart glasses: WOW!* Think of the world with its mass tourism where everyone has such a camera. Do we ever concern ourselves with real outcomes? We have pressed on enthusiastically with our nuclear world, boasting about its wonderful properties/qualities/efficiencies without addressing the waste problem - see; https://www.autonocion.com/us/yucca-mountain-tunnel-boring-machine-south-portal/. Is this the new norm? Do we care?

It is the hype, its fervour, that appears to be the distracting element here. We seem to engage just too easily with the swift talking of the ‘snake oil’ salesman, convincing ourselves that we need these things as we push aside all doubt; dismiss all concerns. A part of this sales pitch appears to be the creation of a ‘brand,’ a circumstance that has the connotation of ‘branding,’ as in cattle - branding the consumer to lock in a commitment to repeat the purchases – with these ‘brands’ being promoted with an exaggerated, assuring, self-confident ballyhoo in order to generate profit – nothing else. We get the same sales pitch in real estate, e.g. at Tugun on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia:

“Tugun is just now finding its brand with these buyers, who would have mentioned Mermaid Beach, Burleigh, even Coolangatta.” (These places are other Gold Coast suburbs.)

https://www.realestate.com.au/news/pop-off-inside-tuguns-record-115m-sale/?campaignType=external&campaignChannel=display&campaignSource=google&campaignName=content&campaignPlacement=demand_gen&campaignContent=news&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23712681526&gbraid=0AAAAACmCU6NSs0Trvb9XMQC5NPFttGrh1&gclid=CjwKCAjwsrbTBhAvEiwA0Bpp4RvVrQ_SVoSLRz5CcPP1zkvyKFLT5KbYlvr31-6Rz4QnVxjtypbsORoCwQoQAvD_BwE

Record $11.5 million Tugun property.

The pattern is made clear in the television programme, Shark Tank, where guests come and perform like trained monkeys before the team of investors to present their product. The question eventually asked is usually how much the product costs ‘to land,’ and how much it is sold for. It is rare for anything to be made by the guests seeking investments. If the product is made by them, the inevitable suggestion is to go elsewhere to get it made more cheaply for greater profit. There is no thought given to the relationship between the making, the object/product, and the user – the craft that William Morris and Eric Gill spoke of so ardently: ordinary work with hands. Only the figures are critical – e.g. the report that tells “land for $5; sell for $75” is met with a chorus of WOW!s as the eyes roll in a dollar sign motion without a blink and the offers pour in. There is only one object – profit; to ‘build the brand’ and reap the ever-increasing gains. The general intent is to turn the company into a multi-million dollar enterprise. No thought is given to anything other than to the impact on profit. All other matters, subtle or otherwise, on place, performance, people, and experience, are irrelevant.

The example of the drone light can be seen in this way – as an intriguing, branded gadget that might attract and sell in ever-increasing numbers; and the hover camera too – WOW! The sales are critical; the aim is always for a constant, unlimited increase in growth. In other contexts this is called ‘cancer.’ There is no thought given to any actual impacts on the lived experience unless it has to do with the PR hype. One is encouraged to think about these issues only in terms of the blurb that defines the ways of seeing.

. . . as with cars, quantity is everything. One company can turn out a car every minute – WOW!: https://www.evworld.com/article.php?id=760&slug=; another boasts record sales of 8,000 a month in just one small country – WOW!: https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-model-y-claims-23-year-holden-sales-title/; and so it goes on and on. Millions of vehicles are produced every year, year after year, and we boast about this achievement. It seems that the only issues for the consumer to consider here besides record-making quantity, are the brand, the performance, the gadgetry available in each model, the colour range and accessories, and the cost. There appears to be no thought being given to any future, overall impact. How many cars does the world need? What is the impact of putting millions of new cars on the roads of the world every year, be these petrol, electric, or hybrid, or anything else. What is the limit? What should we do? Getting more and more efficient in the manufacturing of cars by using robots - "Look, no hands!" - is clever, indeed impressive, but what happens to these vehicles? What is the impact on habitation; on life and well-being itself?

We could make millions of drone lights to illuminate the world, but . . . The Australia First Nations people knew the sky; its stories – Sky Country; why are we so excited about blocking out this wonder; ignoring it? Why is there a desire to see the magical mystery of fire turned into a nuisance, and dismissed as an annoying fiddling? Setting a fire is exciting; the collecting of the twigs and branches of various sizes; the stacking of the pile so that the flames progressively ignite the larger pieces; the enjoyment of the final flare of the flames and the glow of the embers as folk gather around the flickering warmth. What does a drone light do other than hover, glow, and distract? One of the great excitements of the campsite is the experience of the fire; and the different light of the lantern that changes the ambience of place and circumstance, turning it into something memorably mysterious and special: a site for ghost stories. Should we care?

"When Arthur turned the key in the front door at midnight,

the air inside tasted cold and metallic, like a coin kept too long under a tongue . . . "

It's like camping under a street light.

We need to be much more circumspect about matters and not be diverted by the new tech wonders that appear every day along with the zest and gusto of their promotions. Are the best questions: 'Why do we need this?' and 'What are the future implications?' We accept these gizmos with the enthusiasm of children in a candy store, being just as excited as they are over the buzz of sugar with our buzz of the hovering drone, engaging with these gadgets like children at Christmas with new toys that might stay interesting for a few minutes, until the next one is opened. We need to be more circumspect than this.

WOW!

It is the buzz of the drone that will remain to haunt the ardent camper seeking refuge in nature. The excitement for this new tech could be as short-lived as the sugar buzz. We know how loud music can disrupt such quiet places of retreat. Why should we not be concerned about consequences like those of drones? Why are we not concerned about futures where we have unquestioned exponential growth? We need to look at all impacts, implications, and repercussions as part of a whole rather than entertaining the new just because it is there and excitingly different, in spite of the promotional hype, for there is always an end that needs attention, as we are discovering with our nuclear waste, and as we shall discover with our vehicles too. What happens when . . .? is the question that needs consideration, analysis, and determined action.

Our blind enthusiasm for AI seems to be dragging us into a world with no end, a matter that has to be a serious concern, for this is the pure neglect of blind ambition that has no idea where it is going, but remains totally committed to ‘going forward’ – to ‘progress' as if excellence, satisfaction, and contentment can be achieved only with this approach to life.

We must not neglect the subtle, abstract richness in experience, and its variety of wonder and enchantment when we are confronted with the impressive items developed by technology, which could all be equated with adult toys that only distract and entertain us for a while, as we prepare for the next hit which is very likely already in production, getting ready for release while we remain as 'I's looking for 'Thou's ^ as we seek to know ourselves in the same way as the poet of old :

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Psalm 8:3-4 in the King James Version (KJV)

Perhaps this might be the best outcome, with everyone lighting the area with buzzing drones, all happy with the glare and the noise, rather than having just one user. The situation could turn out to be like the one person with loud music in a campsite where folk are seeking quiet.

Martin Buber, I and Thou, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1971. First published in German, 1923; English, 1937.

NOTE

There are many more items that could be referenced in our list: batteries; satellites; rockets; fireworks; ballpoint pens; and even Lego could all be included.

We produce nearly everything to run on batteries, being proud of the environmental sensitivities and portability, but have no solution to what happens at the end of the life of these power packs as we devise more and more gadgets to use more and more batteries of all shapes and sizes.

We place thousands of satellites in our skies with no idea what they might do to our world, or what might happen to them when we no longer need them, just letting them burn up, believing that they just disappear with zero impact, in the same way as we used to dump everything into the streams, rivers, and oceans.

We fire off an ever increasing number of bigger and bigger rockets into space without a thought about anything but their projection; and if one goes astray we are happy for it to head for the moon without any qualms; no worries. We give no attention to the burnt fuel remains as we admire the flare.

We use fireworks for our celebrations that ignore the dense smoke, the trash, and the pollution left behind as we cheer and scream out for more and delight in the sparkles, the bangs, and the flares.

AI Overview

Crews cleaned the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., by initially using long-handled nets and manual trash removal, followed by major draining operations overseen by the Department of the Interior to clear out heavy July 4th fireworks debris, ash, and residue.

We produce millions of disposable, plastic ballpoint pens, but cannot make a refill for a pen that will accept one at a price cheaper than the disposable unit. We happily accept the 'advantage' of cheap writing tools without any thought given to the future trash.

Lego has two issues: it uses small pieces of plastic that are assembled to create wonders. We give no thought to this plastic world, remaining amazed at the images produced, treating them with the respect of the original, be it a van Gogh, a Leonardo da Vinci, or a Michelangelo, without a glitch of concern about the significant, mocking difference, merely expressing astonishment that seeks more and more: see -

https://www.yankodesign.com/2026/08/04/michelangelos-iconic-david-bust-gets-recreated-in-lego-turning-plastic-into-sculpted-marble/

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ON GARDENING

I am strongly of the opinion that the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not make a garden; it only makes a collection. Having got the plants, the great thing is to use them with careful selection and definite intention. Merely having them, or having them planted unassorted in garden spaces, is only like having a box of paints from the best colourman, or, to go one step further, it is like having portions of these paints set out upon a palette. This does not constitute a picture; and it seems to me that the duty we owe our gardens and to our own bettering in our gardens is so to use plants that they shall form beautiful pictures; that, while delighting our eyes, they should be always training those eyes to a more exulted criticism; to a state of mind and artistic conscience that will not tolerate bad or careless combination or any sort of misuse of plants, but in which it becomes a point of honour to be always striving for the best. Gertrude Jekyll Colour in the Flower Garden Mitchell Beazley London 1998 – Introduction (first published 1908)

MORE IS LESS

Significantly, in the era of the ‘information revolution’, the same process is now affecting disinformation: whereas in the past it was lack of information and censorship which characterized the denial of democracy by the totalitarian state, the opposite is now the case. Disinformation is achieved by flooding TV viewers with information, with apparently contradictory data. The truth of the facts is censured by over-information, as we have seen from the press and television discussing the Balkans. The globalitarian state, built out of economic-strategic alliances, is no longer old ‘Anastasia’ with her scissors: it is Babel. Now more is less. And in some cases, less than nothing. Deliberate manipulation and unintentional accidents have become indistinguishable.

Paul Virilio Strategy of Deception Verso 2007 p.48

(first published Editions Galilee 1999)

‘That which precedes the event is not necessarily its cause,’ claims the wisdom of the ancients. p.76

As Negroponte has rightly remarked, with the ‘liberation of information’ on the Web, what is most lacking is meaning or, in other words, a context into which Internet users could put the facts and hence distinguish truth from falsehood. On the Web, where, as everyone knows, the terrorist temptation is constant and where depredations of hackers are committed with impunity in a strange state of legal indeterminacy, the difference between (true) information and (false) deception fades a little more each day. In entering the looking-glass worlds of television and home computers, we are in the end left in the position of Kinglake’s old ‘English soldiery’. As they saw it,

insofar as the battlefield presented itself to the bare eyesight of men, it had no entirety, no length, no breadth, no size, no shape and was made up of nothing . . . In such conditions, each separate gathering . . . went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; nay, even very often in ignorance of the fact that any great conflict was raging.

As Albert Camus asserted: ‘When we are all guilty, that will be true democracy.’ p.78

ENCOUNTERING CONRAD

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 92

At the end of his book, Kapuściński asks whether, in our encounters with others in the future:

Will we jointly wish to refer to what – as Conrad puts it - ‘speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity of dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.’?*

* J. Conrad, Preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’: A Tale of the Sea, New York: W.W.Norton, 1979.

Architecture stands in between of all of these circumstances of encounter, but how does it explain itself beyond being a bespoke ‘grand design’ of a potential genius?

ON THE CULTURE OF OTHERS

Herodotus . . . wanted to know them because he understood that to know ourselves we have to know Others, who act as a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected; he knew that to understand ourselves better we have to understand Others, to compare ourselves with them, to measure ourselves against them. As a citizen of the world, he did not believe that we should isolate ourselves from Others, or slam the gates in their faces. Xenophobia, Herodotus implied, is a sickness of people who are scared, suffering an inferiority complex, terrified by the prospect of seeing themselves in the mirror of the culture of Others.

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 19

CLEVER PEOPLE SELF-DOUBT

I last met him when Philomena came out back in 2013. Back then, Coogan was a bracing, combative interviewee. He saw every question as a potential ambush and moved to thwart any perceived journalistic angle. Today, though, he seems more comfortable with the process, more at ease with himself. It used to be that he felt he always had to have his guard up. Now he accepts that he can sometimes afford to let it drop. He’s middle aged and a mass of insecurity and contradictions. He suspects that, on balance, that’s not such a terrible thing to be.

“And actually I think acknowledging your own fallibility makes you a better artist and a better person,” he says in a rush. “It’s fairly obvious to me that the real wisdom lies in seeing people’s failings and trying to understand them. Because the alternative is that very childlike, Donald Trump thing of believing that admitting any weakness is fatal. What was it Bukowski said? All the clever people are full of self-doubt and all the stupid people are very confident. That’s the era we’re living in now. That’s the era I don’t want to be a part of. So all you can do is try to go about things differently. Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt.”

Coogan gulps for breath. His eyes widen and then he rocks with laughter. “There you go, that’s my big artistic statement,” he says. “Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt. Took me the best part of an hour. Got there in the end.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/04/steve-coogan-interview-stan-and-ollie

HILLS

The hills bespeak a healing power and closeness to unseen help now lost in the security of modern welfare. Those who befriend the silent peaks in a lifetime's work know well their embracing strength. (p.91)

For only once is it given to man to lie in the arms of the eternal forces which give all matter form. (p.98)

Iain R Thomson Isolation Shepherd Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2007

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121 King James Version (KJV)

SPAN

17 August 2012

This blog began as a co-operative concept. While the idea and the stimulus was generated through discussion, the blog has turned out to be an individual enterprise. SPAN stands for ‘Spence and’ in the context of others. As a word, it fitted in nicely with the idea of voussoirs - parts and pieces, complete with keystones, that could ‘span’ the gaps in understanding and communication. The word SPAN also allowed for a shared input into a blog.

Spence Jamieson is an architect and the author of these articles. The blogs show the scope of his interests.

THE IDEA

chapters and verses as architectural commentary:

the wedge to isolate, array and shape ideas; the keystone to highlight core, supporting issues. voussoirs is a concept to start an architectural discussion to span the large gap in the debate on things architectural; a bridging of the void in architectural issues by exploring considered bits and pieces. The state of the profession today is highlighted by silence and self. It is introvert and protective. Educational centres remain isolated within their own constructs, being run primarily as businesses. They put very little back into the community. They indulge themselves in their own interests and exclude contrary and different ideas and ideals. They constantly avoid any challenge on concepts or strategies that might change the plotted course. Rarely does comment ever come from this academic world into the public or any arena. Very few publications help direct the public interest. Rarely do newspapers grasp the issues and explore them. One aspect may be given space in the popular press, but architectural debates and concerns are rarely given attention. The professional institutes are doing much the same as the educational institutions. Private practice is doing likewise, offering, if anything, only its own pushy propaganda to the public. Yet there is a discussion and debate in these silences that needs a larger and more open platform. Discussion is alive and well amongst a few in at least one curry house, but the debate needs to be a broadened. voussoirs is the place for this discussion. It is a site for ideas, comment, articles, and critiques on things architectural and associated issues. It is here that matters can be aired and ideas discussed and debated without fear of the neglect and disdain that institutions and private groups and publishers give to open speaking and differing ideas.

There can be no true understanding of any idea if discussion and debate are curtailed in favour of a preferred position.

ON COMMUNICATION

. . . there has been a growing feeling of concern to solve what is now commonly called “the problem of communication.” But if one observes efforts to solve this problem, he will notice that different groups who are trying to do this are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.2

ON ART & METHOD

Even in relationships with inanimate objects and with nature in general, something very like communication is involved. Consider, for example, the work of an artist. Can it be properly said that the artist is expressing himself, i.e., literally “pushing outward” something that is already formed inside him? Such a description is not in fact generally accurate or adequate. Rather, what usually happens is that the first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what he may have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, he sees the similarity and the difference, and from this perception something further emerges in his next action. Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which he is working.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.4

THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE

The early 50's and 60's is a period that is gaining interest in architectural ideas. Perhaps this is why Princeton chose to republish The Tao of Architecture. It is a beautiful little book that discusses the implications of traditional wisdom in architecture. Given the astonishing lack of direction in current architectural theory, the publication is very timely.

Amos Ih Tiao Chang, The Tao of Architecture, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1956, reprinted 2017.

p.26

Laotzu's idea of formation is heavily concerned with emptiness or non-existence. To him who regards nothing as persistent, what is essentially important in things is the possibility of becoming something, not the opportunity of remaining as something confronting deterioration. Consequently, meaningful incompletion is taken as the most desirable state of tangible being.

p.22

. . . the full meaning of existence is beyond the power of any manifestation. What appears tangible, architectural or natural, is only a means to suggest that which is lacking in appearance and existing in man's intangible understanding and aesthetic feeling.

LIVING IN IMPERMANENCE

Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts – serious, sad thoughts – and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space

see: THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE in the sidebar

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY

I prefer, by far, real islands to imaginary islands, just as I prefer prime documents to novelistic remakes. That's because the real is richer than the imagination. The real demands investigation and is an invitation to sensitive knowledge, whereas the imaginary is more often than not just a collection of stereotypes, a soup of clichés offering an infantile kind of satisfaction. Then, a relationship to the real and its resistance requires changes in thought, in ways of being, in ways of saying, it leads to a transformation of the self. Whereas imagination is nothing but compensation. There's even something horribly autistic about sitting in one spot and spinning out invention by the yard. How much more interesting an open and poetic process involving contemplation, study, movement, meditation and composition.

Kenneth White Across The Territories Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa Polygon Edinburgh 2004 p.86

VISION, CIVILIZATION & SPIRIT

The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time - - - is he who shall create poems in stone.

When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.

It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.

Louis Sullivan

AN UNCHANGING PROFESSION

ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

. . . no one can relieve (the architect) from the need to rely on his own discretion, for that discretion is linked to a responsibility which belongs to no one but (the architect). It is the exercise of discretion hampered by considerations of cost, of risk, of exact justice, of conflicting interests, of uncertainty as to facts, of misunderstandings and of diverse individualities and dishonest or incapable agents, which is the chief care and preoccupation of architectural practice. To design a building, to draw and specify every part of it, and to direct its construction and see it completed with no other anxieties and dilemmas than belong to the exercise of those duties, is unknown.

H.B.Creswell The Honeywood Settlement Faber and Faber Limited London 1967 (fourth edition: first edition 1930 Architectural Press) p.128

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

CATHEDRALS and SYMBOLISM

Everything is the symbolical representation of an idea. p.28

The same artists, who had to follow a strict rule when treating the history of God, could use all of their imagination when treating the ornamental: whence the blossoming of the grotesque and the original. p.38

In those days religion, drama, and art had the same aim and sought to provoke the same thoughts. They did not pretend to amuse the people; they endeavoured to teach them. p.51

This way of thinking and reasoning takes sometimes a very subtle turn. p.53

Hélène Fouré The French Cathedrals Their Symbolic Significance Bruce Humphries Inc. Publishers, Boston, 1931

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 2

ON DEMOLISHING BUILDINGS

Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, than the remorseless way in which the educated ignorance, even of the present day, will sweep away an ancient monument, if its preservation be not absolutely consistent with immediate convenience or economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considerations, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would only consider the steps, and the weight of the following very simple argument. You allow that it is wrong to waste time, that is, your own time; but then it must be still more wrong to waste other people’s; for you have some right to your own time, but none to their’s. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste the time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of the dead; for the living can redeem their time, the dead cannot. But you waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy the works they have left you; for those works they gave the best of their time, intending them for immortality.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture George Routledge & Sons Limited, London p.109

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 1

How to avoid insult

But how much of nature have you in your Greek buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have lately built; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building in question will forgive me; for it is just because it is a good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair instance; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the institution on the mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise. It is not his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture and Painting George Routledge & Sons Limited; New York: F.P.Dutton & CO - p.64-65

ON EDUCATION

'. . those who are responsible for giving instruction in the theory of architecture should be practising architects. The warning is necessary because, strange though it may seem, English schools of architecture to-day tend to be run by men who either do not practise at all, or whose practices are for them a very subsidiary spare-time occupation. Often a teaching appointment is a means by which a clever student avoids the humiliation of entering an office as a junior assistant, thus depriving himself of the only opportunity he will ever have of learning something of the practical side of his profession from the bottom upwards. There can be no doubt whatever that the teaching of theory has suffered severely as a result of this habit: and this leads me to the conclusion that no man should be permitted to teach until he is recognized by his Faculty as a Master of Theory and Practice. In other words, he should be not only a practising architect but also, what is unfortunately a much rarer specimen, a good architect.'

W.A. Eden, The Process of Architectural Tradition, Macmillian & Co. Ltd, London, 1942, p.p. 86-87

ETHICS

Thus Pugin laid the foundation stones of that strange system which dominates the nineteenth-century art criticism and is immortalised in the Seven Lamps of Architecture: the value of a building depends on the moral worth of its creator; and a building has a moral value independent of, and more important than, its esthetic value. We must not consider this emphasis on morality peculiarly Victorian. Whenever esthetic standards are lost, ethical standards rush in to fill the vacuum; for the interest in esthetics dwindles and vanishes, but the interest in ethics is eternal.

Kenneth Clark The Gothic Revival - An Essay in the History of Taste, (1^st edition Constable 1928); third edition John Murray 1962, reprinted 1974, p.149.

MODERNITY

The everyday is covered by a surface: that of modernity. News stories and the turbulent affectations of art, fashion, and event veil without ever eradicating the everyday blahs. Images, the cinema and television divert the everyday by at times offering up to its own spectacle, or sometimes the spectacle of the distinctly noneveryday; violence, death, catastrophe, the lives of kings and stars – those who we are led to believe defy everydayness. Modernity and everydayness constitute a deep structure that a critical analysis can work to uncover.

Henri Lefebvre, The Everyday and Everydayness, in Stephen Harris and Deborah Berke, Architecture of the Everyday, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1997, p.37.

NAMING

The simplest act of substitution is to put the name of a maker in the place of his or her work, which amounts to a paraphrase in itself. . . . All paraphrase sets aside the original: To put the name in place of the painting is to remove it from immediate consciousness; to narrate the life of an individual is an act profoundly different from looking into a painting and one that cannot be conducted simultaneously with it. To substitute a temporal narrative, already present in a name, for the physical work of art is to give up those features of the thing that were transient and unrepeatable, bound to a moment that is irrevocably ended; the unique insistence is, for the moment at least, sacrificed on the altar of continuity.

Thomas Crow, The Intelligence of Art, The University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p.1.

ON BRANDING

Branding is now the art of getting people to think what something might be rather than what it necessarily is. It's about the manipulation of the virtual reality in which so many live. The manipulators include anyone with an interest in what we might think of them - not just big companies with products to sell but political parties with votes to win, design gurus with clients to attract - anyone, in other words, acting in some kind of market. They all have an interest in controlling their appearance to make us believe it is the reality.

John Humphrys Beyond Words How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now Hodder and Stoughton. Great Britain 2006, p. 86-87

see:

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/faking-provenance-misuse-of-meaning.html

PRECONCEPTION

Leone Huntsman Sand in Our Souls The Beach in Australian History Melbourne University Press 2001, p.16:

Thus first impressions were filtered through existing preconceptions, starkly revealed in Sir Joseph Banks's description of the people seen from Captain James Cook's Endeavour when it first touched on the Australian continent in 1770:

In the morn we . . . [discerned] 5 people who appeared through our glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us that we fancied we could see their Colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.

Here Banks refers to William Dampier's unfavourable accounts of the West Australian aboriginal people in published accounts of his landings in 1688 and 1699, and reveals his own awareness of the extent to which perception was influenced by expectation.

see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

THE MUSE - GETTING IT RIGHT

"It can be in the morning, any old time, I wake up with an idea and it starts following you around.

"You go, 'Ah that's good' because you know when it's going to work, it's going to be fruitful.

"Other times you'll get the edge of an idea and maybe it fades away or there's just no way it can be made to serve, you know?

"Then you just, it takes its time and you work on it and if necessary you work on it more than once. I'm known to work on it two or three times before you get it right."

Les Murray

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/les-murray-latest-volume-reflects-on-bunyah/6816714

http://www.lesmurray.org/

JARGON

The world seems to find it necessary to use more and more jargon in general reporting and conversation. It is especially noticed in accounts and discussions on the arts. The ABC TV arts programme presented on 7 January 2017 at 6:15pm had more jargon than usual; indeed, had more unusual expressions than previously encountered, ones that had not been heard before:

"unpicking the tapestry" of one's life;

and

looking at "the fan deck of what you do."

These reminded one of other popular fashionable expressions:

“to unpack an issue,” meaning to analyse it in some detail;

and

“to segue,” meaning to shift to a new topic or activity.

This last term is a favourite of radio announcers. The Italian word is often misspelt as ‘segway’ because of the similar phonetic sounding that is more commonly understood as Segway, the brand of a human transporter.

The parallel is interesting, as the idea of being ‘transported’ is common to both words, but it seems to hold little interest to the radio voices that appear just too cleverly happy with the use of this different, interesting expression.

Thursday, 6 August 2026

THE NEGLECT OF AMBITION - WOW!

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