Rediscovering the Past

It's hard for me to put into words what I felt while visiting Colorado this past weekend for the first time in years. Having lived their over twelve years ago, from when I was a very young child, I experienced an influx of long forgotten memories, feelings, and even emotions. 

It felt almost as if I was in my infancy again as we drove through golden canopies of aspen leaves under layers of deep blue hues. The clouds arranged themselves in ways that inspired photographic dialogues of various places I've been but cannot identify. It felt so foreign, but so familiar all at the same time, to the point where I'm not sure if I am even the same person I was back then, but my conscious mind was planted atop the soil of an unknown existence, one that certainly didn't belong to me...

For how could it be possible that I lived in such a scenically beautiful and dynamic setting? An entire lifetime of backdrops that could only be drawn with a palette of grey and brown, with only hints of green and blue hues--that was what defined me. Or so it would seem. So unsettling was the sight of towering mountains surrounding crystal blue lakes, with wispy stalks of grass swaying gently in the foreground breeze, that I could not seem to come to terms with the overwhelming feeling of bittersweet emotion that came over me. 

On the one hand, I lived there. I lived in Colorado, and that defined my childhood from around age 3 to 8. It happened. It might feel like a long time ago, but I can still see vividly in my mind picturesque scenes of myself and my family at various places I only know exist because of these memories. There's no disconnection between that and my current life, only a fluid transition from childhood into adulthood. It was what it was.

Then why does it take so much effort to see it this way? Why does is feel as though there's a HUGE disconnection between my life back then and now? Why does piecing together the memories feel like the pouring through the pages of someone else's autobiography? 

As I sat on the rock near the lake at the base of Pikes Peak, I thought to myself, "He was here, a long time ago." I recalled the place, and the sights and smells were distantly familiar, but it didn't feel like me. At least, not entirely, and not without effort. 

I began to think to myself maybe the reason nothing was ever good enough growing up was because my story began in a place such as Colorado. Granted, I moved around a lot as a young child, but something is quintessential about the ages 3 to 8 in developing the foundation of who you become as a person. Also those ages have a way of creating endless memories that become undefined in your subconscious, almost like "free" memories that we can arrange however we want. Maybe that's the reason I darkly embraced the cold, empty reality I painted for myself while living in the East--because I knew I would return here one day, and continue whatever it was that I started here. 

And that brings up another point. It would seem my life in Colorado is easier to make connections with my most recent life in Texas, if for no other reason than it's simply closer than Pennsylvania. So in a way, its as if I had two lines of existence--one that began, ended for a period of time, and continues in the west, and one that lived in the east. Being here in Texas, thousands of miles away from the place that made me who I am today (Pennsylvania) it is all too easy to detach myself from that life and almost block it out entirely, as if the whole experience had never happened. From that perspective, my life consisted of Colorado, and Texas. It's a very blue and green setting... 

But I can't wipe Pennsylvania from my memories. It means way too much to me, so I cannot lose my grip on it. While Colorado shaped how I grew up, Pennsylvania shaped everything else about me. And now, looking back on it all, the feelings that can only be described as shades of grey, raw emotion and the feeling of being lost, are priceless in the most paradoxical way. It was me trying to figure out who I was and more importantly, why. Why was it that, under a cold, unsaturated sky, was I forced to answer some of the most important questions of one's life. 

And my life in the east wasn't all cold and grey. Moments of light and warmth, of crisp blue skies and cool breezes, often found interesting ways to work themselves into my life in a way that created some of the most valuable memories I will ever have, and wouldn't trade for anything. It was the combination and contrast of these ideas that makes what I like to call a dynamic existence. It is one that everyone should have. When I leave the east for good, it will always hold a special place in my heart, and the good memories will be painful to recall.

 I now believe living in Colorado is what inspired me hours upon hours of drawing and writing alone in my bedroom as a kid growing up in Pennsylvania. It was an unstoppable torrent of pictures and feelings I never quite was able to get a grasp on while I lived in Colorado--for I was too young at the time. But my life in Pennsylvania forced me into a new perspective from which I could read all these images from the outside and begin to make sense of in my own way. 

The result of all this? I can't pretend to understand any of it. But I'm here in Texas as a consequence of all the choices I made in Pennsylvania and I am determined to find what it is my child version was looking for. Visiting Colorado both helped me understand some of my emotion, and managed to confuse me even further by adding back in a whole new layer of images. Its an inexplicable feeling, but one I wouldn't trade for anything, because it keeps me going every day.

More to come on this topic later...

So you want to be an architect?

So you want to be an architect?

As architects we have the power to create the world. To create context. This is the way I have always seen it. We do not simply create buildings, and we certainly do not create "objects" that we place into the world. We create the setting to a story, the backdrop to our everyday lives. It isn't the mass, but the experiences we shape, that we embed into people's memories. 

If our life is a story, then we are the main character. Everyone around us are supporting characters. The places we go are the setting, and the experiences we have are the plot. This is what makes architecture so significant--the role it plays in the setting of our story. 

Do you really understand the power behind this idea? Let me provide a background context which may or may not help understand one architect's way of thinking.

A lot of my desire to be creative stemmed from watching anime as a young child. I grew up one such motion pictures as Studio Ghibli and Makoto Shinkai. Some of the most thought-provoking, intriguing, unexplained yet beautiful imagery I have ever seen. It portrays our life on earth in a harshly realistic, yet childishly playful manner at the same time. It finds the happy moments in the darkness.

When I was five or six, my mother used to sit down with me at our cheaply made electric piano and teach me to play songs I liked. Such was the beginning of my understanding of music composition. Music and architecture are so inexplicably intertwined, probably because they are both elements of the setting: the place, and the soundtrack. Creating music has since been something that is really important to me, as it is one of the main components of creation in general. Learning to create one thing inevitably helps you understand the process of creating something else. 

I can't remember who taught me how to draw, but that was probably the most important step in my path to becoming an architect. I learned through many years of practice how to turn a plain white sheet of paper into an entire imaginary world, becoming so dynamic it feels like half my childhood was spent in a place that never really existed. But it did exist, and drawing was my way of showing that. 

As a kid I was always in quiet contemplation, I wasn't actually in the classroom like all of my peers. In other words, there was a lot of disconnection between my physical and spiritual self. Luckily I was able to grow up with friends that at least partially understood my point of view, otherwise I would have been alone in my thoughts all of the time. I would always spend my time trying to perceive the world in my own way, and to create new worlds based off my perceptions, and my close friends would try hard to understand me, and were intrigued by the work I made. A lot of them wondering, where does all my seemingly endless motivation come from?

The good thing about moving around a lot as a child is that you get many different perspectives on the world in which we live. And the good thing about growing up poor is that you are forced to face life head on. You can't buy your way out of any situation. It develops you as an individual. If you want something, you have to work and save for it, then you begin to understand its value. My father always told me I would be working as soon as I turned fourteen. Did I resent him for that? No, in a way, I was thankful. Firstly, because I knew he was spending all our families earnings just to support myself and my two sisters to give us a somewhat "normal" life. I knew it would be impossible for him to set aside money just for me. But I was also thankful that he cared enough to know that having me work would be a huge step in developing my independence and help me accomplish my goals in the future. 

My parents were always doing little things, that I often did not notice, to ensure that I could follow a comfortable and meaningful life. It takes a while for you to understand what it means for someone to work a physically and mentally taxing job that they hate everyday of their lives just so you don't have to. In a way its almost like they are almost giving up on their own lives to make the most out of their children's. My father was always trying to make sure I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and for that I am eternally grateful. You really need someone as a kid to ask you these questions. It might well be the most important thing anyone ever says to you. 

All of this is important, but this doesn't really answer why I wanted to become an architect, does it? 

It mainly has to do with the whole idea of experiences that I mentioned earlier. When I think back on the most powerful memories I have growing up, the setting was a huge part of them. To be able to create that setting for someone else, to create a quiet backdrop to other people's stories, this is the ultimate creative job for me. 

One time, not too long ago, I had to say goodbye to some people that are very close to me. The extent of that goodbye was unknown to all of us. It was snowing the last night we would see each other, and we decided to go to the new music hall at the local college. We were the only ones in the building, and there was a Steinway piano sitting in the middle of the lobby area. My close friend played a few songs on it, and the sound resonated throughout the building in one of the most beautiful ways I've ever heard a piano played. Describing this experience in words does not really suffice, it was an experience only we will remember and understand. 

It should also be pointed out that the architecture of this new music hall was quite awe-inspiring. In a way, it followed the characteristic of Japanese architecture in only using earthy elements and tones. But the design combined with the experience I had there, combined with the music, made it entirely unforgettable.

Architecture really is the perfect job for someone who thinks like me, because in a way we are extracting ideas out of our own experiences in order to create experiences for others. If you didn't know already, anything you come up with is a composition of memories and imagery from your past--you never create anything that is truly new. I find this fact very perplexing, that even the greatest, most aesthetically innovative buildings were extracted out of the architect's own experiences. But we will never know what. 

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Hopefully all of this makes some sense and begins to explain one particular mindset of an architect. It is much deeper rooted than what I see in architecture school. And I believe only those that have that deeper motivation to create will really succeed as an architect. So let me finish by asking you once more, do you want to be an architect?

What does it mean to you?