In the
summer of 1996 I sat down to assemble the material that would become Radical
Writing, today an
online course in the revelatory power of self-expression. A compilation of my
life’s work of creativity, self-exploration, and metaphysics, the project
required a level of concentration I knew I wouldn’t be able to achieve in my
everyday surroundings, distracted by animals, friends, art work, and the
minutiae of ordinary responsibility. I needed remove. I needed my own private
Yaddo.
With one
phone call – to Michael Graves, a longtime friend – I
secured the ideal retreat: his own house. Michael’s star at the time was still
in the ascendant, his image, his work, his words ubiquitous in the worlds of
international architecture and cultural power. He traveled among the pantheon
of star architects in a moment of recent history philosophically obsessed with
style. He had broken early from the Modernist pack and, radical for the times,
became a lightening rod for his controversial reintroduction of color (not beige?!), classical form, and
narrative into contemporary design.
It was the hot topic of the 1980s and 90s, and Michael was peripatetically
designing, drawing, lecturing, writing books, having exhibitions, teaching at
Princeton, making appearances, and sustaining his practice. In 1982 he won a
competition to design a municipal building in Portland, Oregon (Philip Johnson
was a juror and supporter) which is widely considered to be the first built
example of postmodern architecture. It is a broad-shouldered office block set
atop a two-story base with pilasters, keystones and other elements of classical
architecture blown up to almost cartoonish size and used to decorate the
exterior of the upper floors. Ironnically, for an architect, he is perhaps best
known popularly for the teapot he designed, first for Alessi and then for
Target. A little bird sits at the tip of the spout and sings when the water
boils (its progenitor, an Art Deco era teapot he found at a flea market, still
sits on a kitchen counter).
While
Michael traveled (constantly), he sometimes allowed friends to stay at his
house. Among them was Fran Lebowitz, the writer/raconteur. Fran suffers from
noise phobias and likes to get out of Manhattan when she has to concentrate.
Unfortunately, she claims that even the leaves falling in Michael’s garden were
too great a disturbance. My timing in asking if could come for a stay was
lucky. Michael was leaving the country for several weeks, and his entire house,
he told me, could be mine for the duration.
The house,
known as The Warehouse, was constructed as a storage facility in 1926 by the
Italian stonemasons who built Princeton University. Michael had moved into the "ruin of a building" in the 1970s, needing a place to live
after a divorce. An Italophile, he was struck with
how the building resembled a Tuscan barn -- rugged, a tough building whose strength appealed even though
it had no plumbing, no heating or cooling, bad wiring, and a seriously leaking
roof. He renovated room by room, year after year, “living like a student", extemporaneously within the
small rooms as it evolved. By the time of my encampment, the 7,000 SF of raw
space had become a gracious villa with a wisteria-covered terrace,
double-height library, and rooms furnished with blond Biedermeier tables, desks
and chairs, silk embroidered rugs, polished wood floors, Art Deco kitchenware,
and walls hung with paintings and drawings. Equally satisfying, the rooms were
filled by day with sunlight and a soft, quiet darkness by night.
The term
for the individual glass panes comprising French doors and windows is “divided
lights.” The Warehouse is a gentle prism of skylights and divided lights. I
located my sleeping sanctuary in a second-floor bedroom with north-, east, and
west-facing French windows. Downstairs, I established my writing desk in the
breakfast room, under a two-story-high skylight bathed for hours a day in a
shadowless ambiance. This was fortunate: the work I was doing centered on
revelatory self-expression, including the deep shadow of the psyche. The
atmosphere literally kept me alight.
From the
light of the rooms of The Warehouse and out onto the tree-filled surroundings,
I felt bathed in dappled illumination. The lot on which Warehouse is located
adjoins a park. A stroll though it brings you to the Graves office. The Joyce
Kilmer National Forest is also nearby and, I came to see how, truly, that poet
had it right. No poem is as lovely as Princeton’s trees – willows bending like
ballerinas en reverence, statuesque elms, and centuries old poplars and oaks.
As my work
progressed, I grew nomadic, moving with my laptop from one room, one corner,
one chair, one window to another. Each location provided a different surge of
energy or soothing of spirit. When the weight of thoughts and meanings grew too
heavy, I sought the leafy canopy of the garden outside the kitchen. When I
needed animation, I sat under the wisiteria-twined pergola to enjoy the parade
of linear shadows cast by an allee of sycamores.
By the end
of my stay, I’d accomplished all I’d intended. Radical Writing was born – the structure formulated,
the tone established, my confidence intact. Now the heat of composition lay
ahead. The subtropical Miami light that filled my own house was well suited for
that. Still, it was hard to leave The Warehouse. For weeks I’d been pampered
with a light so quiet, even Fran Lebowitz, I thought, could try it again. I had
been drinking in the grace of quiet illumination, and I was grateful.
In
2003 Michael was overtaken by a meningitis-like infection that ate away at his
spine and left him paralyzed from the chest down. Still, he managed to lecture,
make appearances, and nominally participate in his practice. He became a
leading voice calling for reform in healthcare design (arguing that hospitals
and medical products were not just thoughtlessly made but often soul-sapping
for patients). He was a superb visual artist and had sketched continuously throughout his life (as a boy, his mother would have him
“come out and draw” for company as a kind of “performance”). Throughout his
illness, he continued to spend much of his time painting (gouache landscapes
and portraits of his young son) and drawing.
"Whether I was paralyzed or not, I would draw, because drawing for me is
like playing the piano," he told CNN. "You've got to keep practicing,
got to keep doing it. It's not that you lose it, but you don't draw as well if
you don't draw every day." Like writing. Like Radical Writing.
Michael
Graves passed away in 2014 at the age of 80. He died “suddenly and
peacefully” at home. I take comfort knowing that he spent his last days in The Warehouse. Where else could he have been so surrounded by familiar
beauty and the blessings of writer’s light.
http://michaelgraves.com/portfolio/the-warehouse-graves-residence/
http://www.aptonline.org/catalog.nsf/vLinkTitle/MICHAEL+GRAVES+THE+WAREHOUSE
