This weekend Ali Larijani and I went to buy a stuff at Ikea.
The thing I like about Ikea is also that which I find suspicious about Ikea, and that is the little rooms, or pseudo-rooms they use to sell their products. They give you as best they can, a glimpse of what your kitchen will look like if you buy this table, or what your bedroom will look like if you buy that bedspread.
I always find it interesting to see what books are placed on the shelves of the little rooms. Whenever I go to somebody’s house that I have never been to before, I always check out their book shelf. Is there any physical thing in a person’s home that reveals more about their inner life than the books they’ve read and the books they aspire to read?
Maybe, but since intensely reflecting on this question would throw me off my train of thought, let’s just answer “no” for now.
Furniture stores often have to flesh out the shelves of their fantasy rooms with books that are officially not for sale. Again, just as in any other room, I am drawn to the bookshelves. What are the imaginary inhabitants of these rooms reading? In the past I have noticed that they read books almost as imaginary as themselves, books that when opened revealed nothing but blank pages. Other times there were books that seemed selected solely because they belonged to no genre in particular other than an impossibly broad title of “fiction.” That is, books you have never heard of with titles so uninviting that you wouldn’t even consider picking them up. A few times I did pick them up, if only to observe in my hands the depths to which the publishing industry could sink, not knowing at the time, that after the birth of my own unpublishable book, I would encounter something apparently far worse. This weekend, I noticed some well-known authors inhabiting the shelves of the rooms. I found Phillip Roth, for example, on a wooden shelf that cost only 49 bucks. Only, this apparent step forward was in fact only half a step since the book was written in what must have been Swedish. The message is: don’t be distratcted, you have shopping to do.
I guess it’s all about compromising in order to produce some kind of fantasy. You are supposed to place yourself in the room, imagine yourself as having these objects surrounding yourself everyday. If the books in the room are all by authors you hate, it will detract from the fantasy and you’ll be less likely to want to situate yourself in it on a daily basis. On the other hand, Ikea can’t win, because not everybody enjoys the same books, so they try to fill the room with books you won’t pay attention to, books that are purely decoration, which, when I think about it, is not exactly unlike home.
The books are about the only nod to a life outside of Ikea’s products. There is no clutter, no crap, just the furniture in its pure utilitarian purpose. You won’t see a jacket slung haphazardly over a chair back, or a dirty napkin on the counter. It definitely has its allure. Yes, things could be so nice and simple, if only I got rid of all my crap. It kind of reminds me of that scene in the gospels, when the rich guy asks Christ how he can be saved, and Jesus says, give up everything that you have and follow me. That’s kind of what Ikea says too. Life could be so plain and simple if I just lived in a room completely devoid of my life as this one. When you think about it though, Ikea is better than Jesus, because instead of getting rid of all your stuff, they have these plastic containers for really cheap that you can squirrel it all away in.
I attempted to rebel against this, to infuse these happy little rooms with an awful truth so as to survey them from a more realistic vantage point. No offense to the feng shui set, but just because every object is so perfect and in place doesn’t mean that your life will be by association. To offset the magic effect of these perfect little places I imagined entering them after having had my arm ripped of by a bear, or other horrible scenarios, which got so bad, that I just decided to suck it up and believe, enjoy the fantasy rather than ruin it. This worked for about fifteen seconds, until I found myself engrossed in a Swedish encyclopedia.
Couple of other things…
A friend of mine suggested that I not link to things like Jews Control (the same joke everyday and yet, miraculously, always funny) and seriously consider how this website could hurt my job prospects. I mulled it over, and have come up with some untenable points that will allow me to continue. One, a blog about what I did today with actionscript would be boring. Two, it would be so boring, that everybody that read it would think I am boring. Three, they would be right. Four, who would want to hire somebody so boring? Five, answer, a boring company.
Boston College basketball. After yesterday I don’t think they’ll be invited to the dance. The next game will probably be against Maryland, who have been playing like a house on fire. We’ve been playing like a burned down house. I just don’t see it happening. If we lost to Maryland, I almost wouldn’t want to see us get in. It’s been painful, very painful.
“Is there any physical thing in a person’s home that reveals more about their inner life than the books they’ve read and the books they aspire to read?” Yes, and that would be the music collection.
But not to interrupt your thread of thought…
Nor had *I* realized the extent to which a customer (myself) could be put off by a worse-than-motley assortment of books doing decoration duty. Moreover, when I check out a motel I immediately look in the office at the books previous guests have left behind; from that meager view I can discern whether I’d be happy there.
Two small things: Never say “unpublishable”, say “unpublished”. And what the hell is actionscript?
a blog is to document your learning process and to remind you how you got to where you are, so you can backtrack and consider the ideas you discarded. a blog also shows potential clients that you are thinking about and keeping track of new technologies. they give a glimpse into your design process.
it doesn’t have to be exclusively about something. you can do actionscript entries and then your musings on wade boggs, that’s what categories are for. you’re interesting and zany if you link to boingboing. jewscontrol just has an unpleasant name, regardless of the fact that the content is benign. we should do a focus group.
smooch