I live within uncertainty.

I am a trained technical and creative professional with more than twenty-five years of experience. The discipline doesn’t matter really, but my field of choice is architectural consulting.

I am trained to banish uncertainty. I do this mostly on behalf of others, for money.

The professional banishment of uncertainty is a Sisyphean labour - it is never-ending. It is also never concluded or resolved absolutely. Instead of this, it is a repetitive, reflexive practice, one that is perpetually anticipating and swiftly reacting to constantly changing circumstances.

We sell the banishment of uncertainty. It is profitable to do so.

This is the cornerstone of our business and central to the story of our competence. Our clients don’t rely on us primarily to provide ‘design’. This is important but secondary.

They rely on us to eliminate risk. The engine of risk is uncertainty.

Uncertainty is an immense domain and of necessity it is ill-defined in its centre and edges. It exists in the eye of the examiner. To our clients almost everything is uncertain except what they want, or need, or both. We are paid to be one, or perhaps two, steps ahead of them. Within the field of our experience, there are less uncertainties, and our clients benefit from this.

But this is an important point: we are only one or two steps ahead. Less is uncertain, it is true - but much remains indeterminate regardless of our experience and insight.

This keeps the work interesting. But that’s enough of the day job.

Today I am on my own time. When on my own time, the time I spend leading my personal creative life, I wallow in uncertainty.

In this vast realm I am free from the need for my activities to secure financial reward. The day job pays the bills. Here, I am unencumbered and unrestrained. I can move to any point of the compass at will - it simply doesn’t matter.

I do not need to anticipate, manage, manipulate or control risk of any kind. I am free to unknow.

Perhaps most significantly, I am free to set aside all the techniques and methods I have learnt, without consequence. Almost all of these tools are painstakingly calibrated to banish, or at least manage, uncertainty. Here, now, I can abandon them all, and embrace the consequences.

I am free to surrender entirely to a personal ignorance. A panoramic, sweeping vista of uncertainty I am not seeking to resolve.

I am free to declare this without fear of repercussions. And I do so now.

Today, I unknow. Let’s see what happens.

Photograph by Ruth Hametz.

I recently received an email from a random member of the public (well, the design profession) in response to an article I wrote about a house. Doesn’t matter which house. He was an understated troll, keen to demonstrate his knowledge, in that way that some men with a bachelor’s degree in architecture feel the need to do.

The message was not openly hostile, but it was just a bit off, a bit nasty. It left a sour taste in the mouth. It was faintly sarcastic, made a stab at being clever and ‘cutting’, and was just a bit sharp.

Anyway, that’s enough oxygen given to that person. Into the junk folder with that email.

People who exhibit those qualities possess something that I have not seen evidence of in any of the interview subjects I have encountered in 23 years of interviewing: a jaded, bitter cynicism. I’m not interested in conducting dialogue on those terms, and won’t do so.

I have not just interviewed architects in my time so far. I have also interviewed interior designers, landscape architects, urban designers, graphic designers, ceramicists, artists, lighting designers, other writers, publicists, event managers, visual merchandisers - all manner of creative individuals. They have been, without exception, invested in putting both themselves and their work out there, without being guarded, without being rancorous, and without being burdened by an unseemly ambition.

These people are not perfect, far from it. They are certainly self-interested in the most literal sense. After all, by talking to me, they are promoting their interests directly. But there is nothing intrinsically negative about that fact.

In my experience, people who do interesting work don’t seem to be particularly angry about it. People who send unsolicited emails sometimes seem a bit angry about - well, who knows what? I know who I would rather have a coffee and a chat with.

Oh, and the photo of the smiling girl is just to brighten up what would otherwise be a dull post. Look at that smile!

Earlier today I recalled that I am not Igor Stravinsky.

In fact, I have been, and remain, not a great many people. Today, though, I am not Stravinsky in particular.

Don’t misunderstand me: I am not comparing my talents to that master, that genius. Quite the opposite is the case, but inspiration comes from whence it comes, unbidden. Today it is coming to me from thoughts of Stravinsky, who I am content not to be, as much as I would like to exercise his talents.

I am me, which is perhaps sufficient - it will have to do - but I imagine that it could be very helpful to be Igor Stravinsky. At least, I suspect it would be helpful in the short term given current projects.

Stravinsky composed the astonishing, and tantalisingly brief, Rite of Spring for the 1913 season of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, with choreography by Nijinsky and sets by Nicholas Roerich.

Dynamite!

I want to do something like that, but to compose with words, realising that I do not have the capacity, skill or predilection to compose in music. Perhaps it is more correct to say I wish to partially transpose? No, that is not really true. Let me explain.

If I say I wish to do in words the kind 0f thing that Stravinsky did in composing and conducting the Rite of Spring, I am confessing a deep desire and sweeping, lofty aspiration. Almost certainly beyond my capacities, but why not aim high? That piece of music excites me, and inspires me. This is not, however, a disclosure of the intention to transpose that piece itself: it is more a statement of the desire to swim in the same deep pool, with consideration of form, structure, texture and experimentation with the forms of chaos and order. I would like to make something astonishing.

Transposition between media as a working method, rather than the transposition of individual works, is something of ongoing interest to me. It works for me to do ‘something kind of like that thing, but in words instead of music’.

It is both dumb and naive, by which I mean that it is simplistic in essence to the point of stupidity, even while being necessarily and inevitably complex in execution. I like the challenge at both of those levels: dumb simplicity and eye-watering complexity.

I do like it, the dumb ambition of it. Will I succeed? Who knows. Time will provide an answer to this.

I know that it doesn’t really matter. I have the rest of my life to work it out, and in the meantime, I will be making something.

_________

This business of not being other people is a bit problematic. Consider Wilde’s suggestion to be oneself, as everyone else is taken, if I may paraphrase with gay abandon. Not being Igor Stravinsky is considerably easier than working out who Marcus Baumgart is. It is also less self-focused and self-regarding, somehow less introverted.

At least I think it is.

I am a writer. It is a simple definition: I write, therefore I am a writer. That is part of who I am. It may or may not be the most interesting part of who I am; it is certainly the bit I am most interested in.

I run a business to pay the bills, and to give me something to do during the day. It keeps me quite busy, but there is always time to write. I am writing right now during my lunch on a perfectly normal work day.

Why do I write? I do it because I can; I do it because I wish to make something, and words are my medium. I like words.

I have been published many times. That is no longer a measure of achievement for me.

I write for myself, apart from the writing I do for magazines and the web. My personal writing is for me alone, and anyone else who may become interested in it by stumbling upon it in due course.

To make something astonishing (or to wish to) is a perfectly non-viable project (a profitless pursuit) that is perfectly viable and worthwhile because absolutely nothing is contingent upon it. I don’t need to make a living off it, I don’t need to meet any targets in doing it, it has no KPI’s, and no timeframe. It is not pointless, but it finds its reason for being in the act of making itself, not in the substance of the produced material, the actual text.

For the project to be worthwhile - wholesome and constructive - it needs to be outward-looking, not tediously introspective. It needs a subject, and that subject will not be me. God of the Starving Dog forbid.

It needs to be big enough and loose enough to encompass within it fiction, fact, non-fiction, description, narrative, storytelling, and so-called unfiction along with any other form of written text imaginable. Lists and dot points spring to mind. Not everything, certainly - but not restricted to one kind of written thing alone.

More to follow.