In which the Author muses on the
mutually defining nature of work and tools . . .
I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions
And I'm giving you a longing look
Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book
Chapter One we didn't really get along
Chapter Two I think I fell in love with you
You said you'd stand by me in the middle of Chapter Three
But you were up to your old tricks in
Chapters Four, Five and Six
And I'm giving you a longing look
Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book
The way you walk
The way you talk, and try to kiss me, and laugh
In four or five paragraphs
All your compliments and your cutting remarks
Are captured here in my quotation marks
--Elvis Costello, "Everyday I Write the Book"
Recently, I've been pondering a corollary to all of those form/function variants. Regardless of whether you maintain form follows function or--like Frank Lloyd Wright--believe form is function, each of these design-meets-Oscar-Wilde aphorisms is self-referential: What's being analyzed is the form and function of X--be it house, furniture, or user interface for a computer application. But I've been wondering about less insular interactions of form and function: Can the form of creative tools impact the function of the work itself?
Think of this as the obverse of the dusty observation that a man with hammer sees nails everywhere. What if the temptation to see phantom ten-pennies was resisted? A hammer would then force the worker to parse a project in terms of the actual nails--just as a screwdriver would effectively filter out the nails and shift the focus to threaded fasteners.
I've been thinking about this because over the past few months a shift in my own creative tools has resulted into in a corresponding morphing of my workflow and, ultimately, interaction with my
own work . . .
