049: Dunce, the Knight's Away!

Dunce, the Knight's Away!, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Copycats

Today I took a shot for a group that I didn't really want to do as I had already planned a different shot and then the choice was changed. Other than the disappointment in not doing the shot I had planned for Flikr Group Roulette, this one led me to a crisis of confidence - but then it also taught or reminded me of some things. Basically, I had to do a copycat image, and that meant I ended up doing a comparison between my image and the one that I had copied.

And technically, there was no comparison. Argh!

*breaks out the vodka, drinks himself into a stupor*

Once posted, it quickly generated some comments. It had made some people happy!

*screws cap back on vodka bottle*

Hold on, isn't part of my art the giving of simple pleasure?

*Puts vodka bottle back in the cupboard and washes glass up*

In ye olde days, several careers ago, when I was an apprentice mechanic, responsibility for my on the job training was given to at what the time seemed an ancient geezer. Fred, of the white hair and the impossible responsibility, had the knack for training up new comers to the trade, and probably welcomed the largely uncritical extra pair of muscles when man-handling Morris Ital gearboxes back into place while lying on our backs under those blessedly unreliable cars (we became a specialist team one summer with those gearboxes, doing around twenty of them).

It was a large garage with about fifteen mechanics and body shop people, plenty of technical skill to be in awe of. And yet with Fred I never felt that my lack of skill was a problem, nor do I remember him doing much in the way of direct teaching. In fact, I learned my skill by observation, and it was not just technical skills, for not everything one did was by procedure or repeating experience. Technology changed, and there were always new and unexpected problems that no one had seen before. What I learnt was to feel the cars as systems, almost like a person, to visualise what was happening.

I had, although I was not to realise it until many years later, was to stumble upon art in a car workshop. And my art was not the same as Fred's, we often arrived at the same or different conclusions, by dissimilar thought processes.

One day I was watching Fred as he tested the set of bronze rings from one of the gearboxes for cracks. He was relying on his experience, trying to physically pull these rings apart to see which of them had cracked through, the cracks being too fine to be visible. I then picked them up and carefully tapped them on the vice, and those which were fine went 'tiiinnng', while those with cracks went 'dnk'. Although lacking the technical knowledge, I had discovered a better and easier method of testing.

Other than being proud of myself, I did not think much about it, but several career changes later I began to realise how important it is to lay technical skill aside sometimes and rely on one's art. Without any particular linguistics training, I continue to surprise my wife, who is a doctor of linguistics and who has been teaching language and teachers of language at university level for over 25 years, with insights into her core skills. The secret is not to be overawed by knowledge and technical skills in others, but to look and try to understand what you are seeing.

The photograph I was copying was technically good, the art there for anyone to see - a sexy, feminine image. Mine was flat, rough around the edges and masculine, but isn't that one of the things I have been working with all summer? The contrast between the masculine and the feminine, often mine?

Then the original idea I had had came back to me, it wasn't a competition in technique, I was contrasting, my lack of technical skills was not a problem. I was not supposed to be working on fine skills, it was the contrast itself mixed in with humour that had driven me. Almost point for point I had contrasted the two images, leaving only the basic alignment of them the same.

It has been another piece of the jigsaw that is me, another step in bringing my life into focus, to understand my core processes better. And in line with the see-saw concept I outlined previously, my image had driven me to write all this.