designprocess

i don’t know how to do this. waking up alone on a sunday morning sucks.

i don’t fail at things. how did i get this so wrong? why can’t i fix it?

“You are tired of Berlin, at last?”

“Oh no… I feel more as if Berlin had got tired of me.”

“Then you will come back?”

“Yes. I expect so.”

“I believe that you will always come back to Berlin, Christopher. You seem to belong here.”

“Perhaps I do, in a way.”

– Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin

i’ve ridden campagnolo c-record “sheriff star” hubs for several years. they’re bicycle wheel hubs, specifically made for riding on indoor velodrome tracks. i know that there’s lots of info on the web about how they’re not particularly reliable for the road, but i always thought that if they could hold up to the strains of the velodrome, they’d last on the road. plus, i mean… campy stuff’s the best, right? i figured if i rode them carefully, didn’t do stupid tricks on them or bunny hop over every curb, that they’d last. i’ve been proven wrong.

i have been doing some work with brooks saddles lately. it’s a true english company that does things because they believe in them. i got to visit the brooks factory in birmingham to see how they made a brooks saddle. i guess the most amazing thing is seeing that the entire process is done by hand, on machines that look like they’re as old as time.

so a brooks saddle starts life as a chunk of leather. they only use the thickest part of the cow (the ass).

all the leather is cut out by hand using heavy dies

then the leather is soaked in a bath to soften it

and then meets its first press that gives it shape

it’s trimmed afterwards

then it meets its second press

it then gets branded with it’s model number

and of course the brooks badge

then the saddle gets its first good polish

meanwhile in another part of the factory, the metalwork is made (by hand, of course). the saddle skeleton is stamped out

and then punched into shape

titanium ones are harder, so they need to be heated to red hot first. brooks does this by putting them on the bricks, under two acetylene torches.

the rails are cut out and bent by hand

and the two parts are rivetted together

back in the leatherworks, someone rivets the nose to the saddle

the rails and skeleton are then riveted onto the saddle

and the rivets are hammered so that they’re flat (!!!)

and for a swift (and i’ve always wondered how this got here) the sides are cut out — by hand, of course

the saddle is then tensioned

and polished

and that’s how you make a brooks saddle!

(originally posted on londonfgss.com)

that staccato night before i left for berlin was our last night together. so tonight, i’m putting off going to sleep because i cannot face the cold, empty bed.

Cocaine

For I have seen love
and his face is choice Heart of Hearts,
a flesh of pure fire, fusing from the center
where all Motion is one.

And I have known
despair that the Face has ceased to stare
at me with the Rose of the world
but lies furled

in an artificial paradise it is Hell to get into.
If I knew you were there
I would fall upon my knees and plead to God
to deliver you in my arms once again.

But it is senseless to try.
One can only take means to reduce misery,
confuse the sensations so that this Face,
what aches in the heart and makes each new

start less close to the source of desire,
fade from the flesh that fires the night,
with dreams and infinite longing.

— John Wieners

it’s 10 september now. almost 10 months since my last (and first) post on here. it’s true; everything’s changed in that time. how to explain what’s happened in that time. first and foremost, i quit my job. my dream job that ended up being a nightmare. creative director of a big international company that was famous for creativitiy and good design. bullshit. i spent two years fighting to get anything good done there. in the end, my portfolio pieces are really nice, but not a lot of it ended up having an impact. anyhow, they’re loosing tons of money (millions a year) so i don’t imagine they’ll be around for long. not in the same form anyways. but i’m not bitter 😉

i got a really good payoff when i left. so i’m taking a year off. well… that’s a bit dependent on us selling our flat, actually. if we sell it and get good bank, i’ll probably take longer off. if we don’t sell it, i may start half-heartedly freelancing again in the new year.

so that was back in june. what have i been doing since then? lots of travelling. lots of bike riding. lots of thinking. i moved to berlin. sorta. i’m here now, planning on spending until the end of october here to decide if i like it enough to stay. tomorrow’s a week that i’ve been here… so far, so good. i guess i’ve come to sort myself out, too. i’m taking a year off cuz i’m sick of design. i’m done with making massive amounts of money for big corporations. i’m done with making people want to buy things they have no real need for. and thinks that i don’t really believe in. i got a lot to figure out, really.

i’ve been adding to my collection of vintage lugged. most recent acquisition: 1956 holdsworth zephyr. full campag c-record group set. he’s real purdee. i’m sure there’ll be more posts of him soon. he came with me to berlin. he likes it here, cars don’t try to kill him and the roads are smooth and not covered with broken glass.

anyhow. just a short entry today to quickly catch up on what’s been going on. more later, and i promise i’ll post more frequently.

i’ve been thinking a lot lately about punctuated equilibrium. it’s an evolutionary theory that says that biological stasis is the norm for a given species, but evolutionary change occurs in dramatic, rapid bursts, followed by long periods of no change.i feel like thats how my life works. i do something for a long time, and hit a wall. then  after some sort of epiphany i change my life completely. i think it’s time.