What Makes It Work?
Those of you who know me IRL have probably borne witness to my deep and abiding love (if not oogy crush) on Tim Gunn, the mentor/muse of Project Runway. [BTW: New season starts July 12. Be there.]
Tim, also called "a hot bitch" by one of the former contestants, manages to vehiculate budding designers to new heights (and frankly, new lows) with perhaps the single greatest pedagogical mandate ever: Make it work. [This is closely followed by the line in season two where he enjoined a contestant: "That's fine, just be prepared to say: 'No Nina, I WANTED her ass to look fat in it.'" Sadly, I'm paraphrasing here, so what you have is but a pale shadow of the true glory that is this statement.] Make it work: a model of brevity and palimpsestic layered meanings. Implicit, I think, are at least two different ideas.
1) I brook no excuses; you must finish it on your own.
2) It's your vision; let's see if you have the engenuity to carry it through.
Brilliant, no? It's somehow authoritarian and encouraging simultaneously. Tim Gunn, where have you been all my educational life?
These musings are inspired by the fact that it is currently 1 p.m. and I have managed to eke out over 200 words today. New words, not synonyms of old ones. Located at the current end point of the draft, not somewhere in the introduction. And I'm not done yet. This is following on the heels of two days of futzing, trolling the internet, meeting with people, fretting over departmental politics (Generational Split, Part 2: The Revenge), etc. In other words: countless distracting minutia: 2, kfluff 0. What, I ask myself, is making it work right now? And how do I replicate it? I think it has something to do with the elusive ability to put other crap on hold; not answering the phone, not responding to baiting emails... In other words, serenity now. [Or, as I imagine TG saying off camera, "Focus, bitch!"]
***Special note to the web developer for governmental agencies: Please forego the process of placing key pieces of legislation on pages that are not linked from the homepage, leading to 45 minutes of endless searching, only to send hapless researchers to Google searches in desperation. WTF?!
****Clearly, today's edition was brought to you by the letters I,R,L,T,G... How about just by letters that find themselves in acronyms? lol.
Tim, also called "a hot bitch" by one of the former contestants, manages to vehiculate budding designers to new heights (and frankly, new lows) with perhaps the single greatest pedagogical mandate ever: Make it work. [This is closely followed by the line in season two where he enjoined a contestant: "That's fine, just be prepared to say: 'No Nina, I WANTED her ass to look fat in it.'" Sadly, I'm paraphrasing here, so what you have is but a pale shadow of the true glory that is this statement.] Make it work: a model of brevity and palimpsestic layered meanings. Implicit, I think, are at least two different ideas.
1) I brook no excuses; you must finish it on your own.
2) It's your vision; let's see if you have the engenuity to carry it through.
Brilliant, no? It's somehow authoritarian and encouraging simultaneously. Tim Gunn, where have you been all my educational life?
These musings are inspired by the fact that it is currently 1 p.m. and I have managed to eke out over 200 words today. New words, not synonyms of old ones. Located at the current end point of the draft, not somewhere in the introduction. And I'm not done yet. This is following on the heels of two days of futzing, trolling the internet, meeting with people, fretting over departmental politics (Generational Split, Part 2: The Revenge), etc. In other words: countless distracting minutia: 2, kfluff 0. What, I ask myself, is making it work right now? And how do I replicate it? I think it has something to do with the elusive ability to put other crap on hold; not answering the phone, not responding to baiting emails... In other words, serenity now. [Or, as I imagine TG saying off camera, "Focus, bitch!"]
***Special note to the web developer for governmental agencies: Please forego the process of placing key pieces of legislation on pages that are not linked from the homepage, leading to 45 minutes of endless searching, only to send hapless researchers to Google searches in desperation. WTF?!
****Clearly, today's edition was brought to you by the letters I,R,L,T,G... How about just by letters that find themselves in acronyms? lol.
posted by kfluff at 1:04 PM
2 Comments:
You probably already know about this, but just in case- did you listen to Tim's podcasts? They were awesome, good inside scoop stuff!
Maisie
(not Dan, but I can't figure out how to comment not as Dan!)
Thanks Maisie-not-Dan! I'm usually too lazy to download podcasts, but for Tim, I'll make an exception.
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