Pinned

I fought it.
Oh yes, I did.

Everyone seemed to be doing it and this idea exhausted me.

Shut up, internet!

So I fought it by starting an account but completely ignoring it, hoping the whole thing would just go away. [O hai, Plurk.]

And then one day I investigated a little more, started a few boards and BLAM! Hooked.

You see, I thought it was mostly bridesmaid dresses and cupcakes and kittens and inspirational quotes. Or cats in dresses eating cupcakes as inspiration. Not that there's anything wrong with that, certainly.

I forget what the turning point was but there was a moment when I realized that I could see works by Arshile Gorky and Egon Schiele's notebook sketches and Franz Kline's liquor store receipt and the Sex Pistols' hand-written, I mean, scrawled lyrics to Pretty Vacant,

How about this: Eero Saarinen's completely charming list of Aline Bernstein's good qualities. And this extraordinary bit of history: Kate Warne. From the page: "Private detective and Master of disguise during the Civil War. She helped save President-Elect Abraham Lincoln by uncovering a plot to assassinate him on the way to Washington D.C. to take office. She disguised herself as a Union soldier, a Southern belle and a harmless grandmother."

When I begin my day in the studio, one of the first things I do is check the Pinterest stream of the boards I follow. [Some of the people I follow are quite astonishing. Victoria | Outerbridge, for example, provides themed pins every day, like a long and mesmerizing visual tone poem.] The amount of unexpected information is astounding. And some of it's quite useful. In fact, it's been a great source for my Mad Art Lab Quickies scavenging. I even started a few boards to save design ideas and color palettes. However, I have to say that I've also fallen for Evernote [finally, as in "the last person on the planet" to have fallen] to the extent that I could justify the premium version. And this replaced the inspo boards. Still, Pinterest- always offering up some fresh ideas.

But here's the thing. No matter how useful and informative a tool Pinterest has been, the main reason I spend time there is a little surprising. I've made it a place of meditative power. I had started a board called beautiful things which is not the kind of collection you'd guess. And the board evolved as I added pins and it kind of became its own thing. As I curated the board, I realized that when I scroll through the page, I feel a balance and calm from this collective beauty. The ugliness that lives in the world, frequently reported by the activist newsletters in my morning email, falls away for a few moments. For the space of a cup of coffee, I am reminded about the higher order of human achievement and thought and creativity. It takes me to a higher place—one where I can look out over my day and resolve to keep calm and carry on.

Quite literally, it has become my morning moment of zen.

Do you have a Pinterest story?
I'd love to hear it.


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Featured image is an "I want" list by Louise Bourgeois, originally featured in this post.

And finally, thanks to Kiki Leigh. Our conversation helped me put this into words.