I’m Too Busy Making Things To Write, So You Get The Process Is The Product From 2011 Again. I Wonder If There’s Some Sort Of Meaning In That

I come not to bury Jacques Jodoins, nor to praise him. He doesn’t require anything from me, anyway. He is a watch with the hands and the stem on the inside, and the gears facing out. But he is interesting to me.

His workshop is perfect for the Intertunnel, isn’t it? The Intertunnel is just a big Jumbotron for us to act outrageous on, on the off chance we can get the camera to linger on us during a time-out. Indecent exposure or marriage proposal, doesn’t really matter what you do, you’ll have your moment on YouTube eventually.

But Jacques did not produce that midden of moil for our amusement. He wasn’t trying to get in Guinness or astound Ripley or even catch the woodworking world’s eye in the form of that video. He was amusing himself, first, last, and always.

And what’s wrong with that? Honesty is what you do when no one’s looking. He’s truly honest. He’s not going to take all that stuff down now that he’s been on the Jumbotron and start building the world’s largest train set in its place to take another bite of the attention apple. He was what he was, is what he is, and will remain whatever that makes him. He’ll die down there, and I imagine he’ll die happy.

I know what everything in that basement is. Every last thing. I don’t have 1/2 a percent of it, and if offered, I’d turn down the gift of most of it. And I make furniture every day, for a living.

Unlike most of the world, I am not allowed to have the Process be the Product. At the end of the day there has to be something tangibly different with the world or we don’t eat. Sometimes we don’t eat anyway. Most of the world we inhabit now is all Process and no Product. What is Twitter, or Tumblr, or Facebook, or a million other things you could name that consist solely of: This is how I go, when I go like this.

The federal government thinks the process is the entire product. The public school system can produce only public school teachers. The EPA is now supposed to protect the air from humans. The Department of Energy doesn’t make any, and would prefer you didn’t as well –or else. Cities like Detroit are trying to exist with no population now. Search your mind. You’ll have to search hard to find exceptions, not examples.

I have a tendency to notice things that others overlook. It’s not my fault I notice things; don’t be hard on me. There is no furniture of any kind, not even a component of a piece of furniture –there isn’t even any sawdust– anywhere in Jacques workshop.

He is happy there. Let us praise him. He is our God.

(Thanks to old StumbleUpon friend Maxismax for sending that one along. StumbleUpon. Heh.The process is the product.)