Hand made pirate ship

To follow up on my blog about the Watts Towers, I wanted to write about another fascinating weirdo-with-a-vision that came to my attention last year.  This picture (from the weblog Panbo) is of a "pirate ship" named Raw Faith that was built by hand by a guy in Maine using, from what I have heard, plans he found on the internet.  The boat was named after his daughter, who overcame a lot of obstacles and evidently was the inspiration for the ship.  The interesting thing about this ship to me is how much a lot of people hated it- it got tons of criticism from the beginning.  The Captain repeatedly had trouble sailing it out of its harbor in Maine and had to be rescued by the coast guard several times.  It sounds, overall, like kind of a pile of crap boat- it just wasn't made quite right.  However, I find it amazing and rather inspiring that someone built a huge, old-timey ship all by themselves using plans from the internet, for chrissakes.  I mean, you gotta admire that dedication.  And honestly, the thing is really kinda beautiful to me- all rough and bare bones but weirdly graceful with the symmetry of the sails on the water.

Anyway, it made me think about these crazy outsider weirdo projects (I read that the Watts towers are part of a category called "naive art" and I like that name)- what makes the towers a famous and preserved example of this thing called naive art but the Raw Faith a public nuisance eyesore that lots of people, including vehement message boards dedicated to the topic, insisted should be scrapped permanently?  The vision of the guy who built Raw Faith was also singular and rather beautiful- but his project just never quite transcended the public's negative view of it.  Maybe because he insisted on doing something serious with it.  Maybe weirdos cross the line when they insist that their creation is a valid thing that should be given the same respect as, for example, boats that are built to specific standards by professional companies and trusted to carry people around safely.  But we would miss out on so much if no one ever took a chance to make something crazy and different, all on their own, just driven by guts, determination, and a dream (even if that person is a lunatic who alienates everyone around them).  I feel like maybe we should afford the failures some of the same respect and awe that we afford the victories.

Here is a picture of Raw faith sinking a few months ago.  It is weird, I almost want to send a letter to the crazy captain saying thanks for reminding me how hard and deep people can dig, and making something that was so pretty even as it sunk thousands of feet into the open ocean.

Everything Stella & Charlotte collected on a walk one day

The Watts Towers

One of the things that I undoubtedly find fascinating is people who develop some kind of singular, obsessive vision that they insist on carrying out.  Maybe I find this fascinating because I don't have any kind of single coherent idea of something I want to produce in my life.  I definitely want to finish my dissertation, but the scale is a bit different and the result will be,um, less than riveting (except to me, of course).  Anyway, I am especially interested in these kinds of grand endeavors when they are taken on by people who are kind of outside normal society- I'm not talking about Donald Trump building a giant casino or whatever.  Basically, I guess I am interested in passionate and dedicated weirdos.  In December, I took a drive up to see the Watts towers, which are my current favorite example of the kind of endeavor I am describing.

The guy who made them, Sam Rodia, was an immigrant.  He built them over 30 years or something like that.  To erect the towers, he used steel rods that he bent using the railroad track close by, then covered them in mortar.  He used broken glass, pottery, bottlecaps, toys, shells, and whatever other junk he collected to decorate the towers.

I think they are absolutely amazing.  They remind me of Gaudi, but spindlier.  They look like an idea of how architecture could be in a dream.  I find it interesting that he built it like a little town, not like a house or an art piece but a real imaginary place where he thought of people living.  I also found it funny that they are right in the middle of a pretty regular, working-class neighborhood in Watts- people walk their dogs around them and the house across the street was playing Mexican music at top volume.  They tried to tear them down at some point, but people rallied to save them, and now this normal neighborhood just has this fantastical weirdo's creation right in the middle of their normal everyday existence.  It seems like some grand weirdo creators create things in secret not really worried about whether anyone will ever see the thing they are doing and some weirdo creators, like Sam Rodia, are like goddamnit, I'm gonna make a thing for everyone to see and it's going to LAST.

making a nest

Last weekend we went to the Santa Ana Zoo with our friends Natalie and Odette.  The SA zoo is awesome- they have lots and lots of monkeys!!  If you are a little zoo, you might as well optimize the space and get the most entertaining animal.  I like that strategy.  I also find it totally intriguing that they HAVE to have these monkeys- The guy who donated the land for the zoo, Joseph Prentice, did so only with the stipulation that the zoo must have at least 50 monkeys at all times.  I wonder if it is a struggle to maintain that number of monkeys?  What happens if they dip below the magic number of 50?  The story is awesome.  Also, they seem to use the term "monkey" loosely because (ok, this is the 8-year old animal-nerd who lives inside me coming out) they totally have non-monkey primates, including gibbons (apes) and lemurs (prosimians).

Anyway, the thing I really wanted to write about happened after exploring the zoo, while Stella, Charlotte, and Odette were playing on the zoo playground.  I noticed that right after entering he playground, all the kids kind of congregated in this little spot under the slide that mimics a kitchen- there are two benches and a table.  It looked like they were having some kind of important strategic meeting under there, and there were at least 6 kids involved.  Then, all the kids collectively started some kind of spontaneous kid-project.  First, they started picking up sand with their hands and putting it on the table.  They made a nice sized pile of sand.   

Then, they started going over to this push and picking leaves off of it.  They did this for a long time, all the kids grabbing bunches of leaves, and not being all that gentle with the bush.  Some of the kids seemed to stay by the table, supervising.

They carried the leaves back and forth, although sometimes Stella just picked leaves and scattered them on the ground for fun.  They also gathered sticks.  I went over to see what they were doing, and found this pile of leaves.  There seemed to be a little confusion over the goal of they play, as one kid told me they were making a pie and another told me it was a chicken nest. Eventually all the kids agreed it was a chicken nest.  The nest got bigger and bigger.  The kids worked together pretty well on it for at least 15 minutes, when two kids got in a fight over one stick they both wanted and parental figures intervened.  I wish I had pictures of all the kids crowded around the table, but I thought other parents might think I was weird so I tried to just get the kids associated with me in the pictures.

 

I have been thinking a lot about this since it happened.  I am so intrigued by these kinds of spontaneous collective endeavors, where a bunch of people start to play together in some way that they didn't really plan out beforehand.  Another interesting element to me is when the play is not dictated in some way by the setting- it is kind of unexpected.  Kids seems to do this relatively frequently, grownups not so much.  I am going to look for more examples of grownups doing this.  I wonder if there are ways to induce this kind of thing more often, especially among grownups?