Our points of interest are not always aligned with everybody else’s taste and we sometimes tend to hide our dreams for fear of negative comments and discouragement. Years may pass before we feel confident enough to truly express ourselves. It is important to recognise our dreams, if only to encourage ourselves. By doing so we become conscious of our sources of inspiration, themes become visible, and when we begin to see a line in our own work this can lead us to new, unexpected creative directions.
I’ve always loved the idea of a tree house. I collect books about them. The low branches of old trees would be perfect…
This summer I’ve read Nick Weston‘s ‘Tree House Diaries‘ (interesting review linked hereby) about the half year he spent in a self-built tree hut, living almost entirely from what nature around him had to offer. That sense of independence is difficult to achieve in western modern society. But it has also to do with an age-old longing for shelter, of course.
One day years ago I brought a weaver bird’s nest back from India. It is the ultimate of architectural construction, ingeniously assembled, light-weight, flexible, – and a male weaver bird has to painstakingly make several of these nests before his bride is convinced by him!
Then I came across an adult but quite abstract version of my dream, a three-dimensional sketch but a real architectural project (Jerry Tate Architects with the Dartmoor Arts Project), as if built by a giant flying weaver bird…
My musings lead me back to some of my previous blog posts, thoughts about Italo Calvino’s ‘Perched Baron’ and a secret garden, one of my favourite trees and, perhaps in order to reach the desired heights, feathers and more feathers. … Rests only to build that nest.