NOT MY OWN TRADE
- Hijack - Pssst! Careful... don't tell Paolo. This week he's away and I've taken over his blog. Too many accesses and temptation has been too strong. I'm hijacking his space and I'll use it as my private stage. That's a bore to be always serious and never tell anything personal about life. Until he's back, his blog's mine. He'll never know. He deserves it, so' he'll learn not to leave his password on a post-it under the lab's desk. I'll leave all in order and my actions will go undetected... Note: it contains vaguely futurist concepts and one (1) bad word. Not my own trade As Primo Levi said speaking about writing (his work was chemistry) and defining it 'not my own trade' (in Italian: l'altrui mestiere, that's to say the trade of others).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi I've read Levi works (and still I'm sorry not to have known him personally before his death) can guarantee Primo 'knew' writing as well as chemistry (it's sufficient to compare him to Solgenitsjin to agree) but as a matter of fact he considered always himself as a 'chemist who was writing'. Why? Well, it's the paradox of the technician. The technician never considers himself an artist, even when it's not true. The reason is cultural. When you face a 'project', something which just 'has to work' you never thing to be creating something. You say, 'damn, this bridge has to stand' or 'I must obtain a 0.5% distortion' or 'this poison has to kill mosquitoes, not bees' or even 'how can I transform this piece of wood into a bow...' ooops, I was about to get in-topic again, I must be careful... ...but... You produce something that wasn't before <=> You create Creation->Creativity Creatiity<=>Art That's to say even the technician trade contains two parts: the creative one and the one we could define normative. It required a bunch of time to put together the H-Bomb because there was a need for creative solutions to develop the fission-fusion reaction before the explosion crushed the device. Once created intelligent solutions for the bomb, the practical test (ie. transform Eniwetok into Swiss cheese) normated the valid ones. A perfect proof. There's not harsher mistress than Nature. 'Sorry but this device won't kill anybody. You failure, two-cents killer. You don't know the Art to murder people. You're no good in weaponry'. Simple as it comes, as the British (who had to import the Bomb from US) say. But Art has to excite emotions, some say. True. Don't tell me 18 megatons down the street leave you indifferent. This is Art at its maximum, emotion that can vaporize your heart (and many other parts of your body). Back to less thermal examples. Raise your hand if you think Alinari Brothers weren't artists. But what if they had not known the photography technique? Were they more technicians or more artists? Is my cat a black-spotted white or a white-spotted black? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fratelli_Alinari More? What kind of fantasy did Einstein need to conceive Special Relativity? If some thinks S.R. Is difficult, please read the Wikipedia article, otherwise we are not getting along well. Please now read, afterwards we are going on. Yes, you can skip formulae, that's good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity (time to read Wikipedia article) We technicians... Hmmm... never heard a long-haired management engineer, sitting in a bar with a bohemien look, handing a nice beer, his shirt open (a female engineer would maybe render the scene more interesting), a ciggy hanging from the lip (I know, it's science fiction since in Europe you can't smoke between walls, even without a roof) declaring: ...y'know, life of us technicians... Who is gonna take him seriously? What fascination can a budgetary controller have? An electronic designer? A specialized worker? A stone cutter? A glass worker? A mason? Why not, a mason . Let's take this one. Imagine one of these professionals sitting to have one pint after hard work, with his Fiat Ducato parked out, with a group of fans who steal him bricks for a souvenir, telling them all the episodes of high masonry that saw him as a protagonist. 'I remember in '72, there was a difficult building, a roof was not watertight, impossible to understand where the fault was. Then I tried with the C37 waterproofer...' -people is keeping breath- 'and you know? There was a broken tile! But now I've to go...' and everybody 'no please, another one...' So take that. Some time ago I had to have made some masonry works. The company sent me one (1) specialist with his helper. They traveled one hour every morning and set to work calmly, we met at lunch hour and exchanged some words. Noises came from the upper floor and I thought 'this is gonna be a real mess, we'll need two other workers to set it all straight' When the week was over the said goodbye and went. I went up for a reconnaissance of the disaster and...nothing. I mean, in a comparison among tho photos, one taken before works and another afterwards, it seemed Minerva (goddess of artisans and intelligence) had glued the new on the old without disturbing all the rest. But I knew what mess the room had been, up to two days before. Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, this was Art. Something our Mason could be recounting at the bar, handing his beer. But probably the idea never touched him. Reasons? If asked, probably he'll answer, maybe with pride, he only is an artisan. Like Faussone, specialized worker: «If we exclude prodigious instants destiny can give us, loving our own work (a privilege of few) is the best approximation of happiness on earth: but this is a truth not many know.» http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_chiave_a_stella or the protagonist of the short story 'Azoto' (Nitrogen) of the book 'Il Sistema Periodico' (The Periodical System) or: 'attempt to obtain a cosmetic dye from chicken's poop' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Periodic_Table_(book) ...If that's not creativity! Some among 'us technicians' have been geniuses enough to become myths like 'the One' Ferruccio Lamborghini (I didn't say Enzo Ferrari, too obvious:-), but that's not the norm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferruccio_Lamborghini To be continued....
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