Seeing that this entry is about works done by the human hand, I originally wrote it with a pen on paper. I write far more often with a pen than I do with the clickety clack of a keyboard. When the mind reels with ideas, concepts, and emotions, the best way to embrace this—to sort my thoughts and grasp them—is to write, ink to paper. The cathartic and rhythmic movement of writing line after line is unmatched for creativity and clearing the mind. So I write my heart onto paper, and then type it all out to share here with the world.
The work of the human hand is something to be cherished. My eyes, my ears, my heart–my entire being is so drawn to the work of hands. Whether it’s visual art, music, sculpture, woodworking, words–it doesn’t matter, I’m in love with it all and I’m certain I feel this more now than ever before because we are overwrought by the digital. Something made by robots copying people is not art and the human eye can detect that. In fact, the human eye can detect a lot more than that if we just slow down and listen to our intuition.
I’m not just talking about artificial intelligence. When I’m designing a logo or a graphic that will eventually be rendered digitally, I begin with sketching by hand with a pencil to paper. However, it loses something once it reaches the final stages in the design process. Vectorized, shiny, complete, I package up the files with their crisp edges and professional clean lines to send off to another happy client.
Pristine, polished. And yet – lacking.
It really doesn’t compare to the marks and scratches done with the pencil. There is something gorgeous in the repeated dirty lines, sketched out again and again to achieve the shape I was aiming for. The grey smudges left by graphite and the natural oils of my hands. The dings and divots of the pencil’s point, the texture of the paper. It’s all there, visible and evident– the hours, the thoughts, the intentions put into a piece by moving these hands in a craft I’ve loved longer than I can remember.
It’s beautiful, the work of hands. The craft, music, and creations of people, instilled in us by a Creator so great and profound and broad and beautiful – of course the things we make would reflect such beauty. We strive for it because we come from it and if that isn’t awe-inspiring I don’t know what is.
Art–raw art–made by people is something to behold. I love a good painting or drawing, and while realism and accuracy are phenomenal–deserving mounds of respect and admiration–I can’t help but favour the rougher pieces. I love when the brush strokes are obvious, the pencil marks, the notches and nicks that show an individual made this.
It’s the same in music. I listen to orchestral pieces often, they are powerful and moving and gorgeous, with years of rehearsal and finesse behind them. Recorded and mastered to perfection, then sent out into the world on platforms where I can listen at the touch of a button. But there’s something to be said for just some guy and a guitar with a bit of passion at a pub – his voice raw and breaking, the drum of fingers against strings, the metallic zip as they slide up the fretboard.
You see, I don’t believe we are meant to make everything perfect and flawless when we ourselves are imperfect and flawed.
We see beauty in each other. We see beauty in animals and nature – in the wild and unruly billowing clouds filling the skies before a storm. We see beauty in trees and mountains and the sea, not because they are neat and clean and uniform but because they are so remarkably the opposite of those things.
We adore laugh lines around twinkling eyes,
old and aged and creased by the sun and a life well lived
They are beauty we cannot recreate
with ones and zeros on a screen.
The lopsided grin of a mischievous lover
the broken speech of a wobbly toddler
the piercing giggles of babies and the hoots and hollers of ladies at lunch with
their Sunday best of friends for decades
We love the imperfect
Beauty is scars and asymmetry and wrinkles and fat and
cracked
calloused
hands.
It’s heartbreak
It’s the spectacular switch from green eyes to brilliant emerald jewels when
red rimmed, shining with tears
It’s the lump in your throat
It’s the splatter of ink around a masterpiece that screams
I was here – me – a person – a human
I was here,
we are here and we are flawed
and smelly
and germy
and loud and riddled with blemish and weakness
but we are beautiful and we are anything
anything
but lacking.