I write therefore I think.

Paint it Simple

Christmas was always a big deal when I was a child. A lot of effort went into putting up the tree getting the decorations just right. TV viewing was planned to the last minute. On the day itself there was the need to get the eating finished with just in time to catch the Queen's Speech. We ate of the best crockery with the best cutlery, and drank from the finest glasses. We even had Christmas-and-special-occasion place-mats. Yet it was because of all this rushing about trying to ensure everyone had an enjoyable time that I never really managed to enjoy myself. It's the avalanche of details that did it - so many of them that we all managed to miss the whole point. But there was one thing I always enjoyed. Laying the table. Partly I enjoyed the task as it was a quiet solitary effort. But mainly it was because the place-mats featured reproductions of various Constable paintings, which gave me something to contemplate whilst I was getting on with the job at hand.

One reproduction in particular was my favourite, and I always awarded it to myself. It was Boat Building Near Flatford Mill, and it is still my favourite. It is a beautiful painting. The boat has that light brown smell of freshly cut wood. The trees suggest a slight breeze. It's an overcast day, bright with the clouds in the sky suggesting nothing more than possible showers later¹. The man by the boat is quietly getting on with his task, watched by a lazing dog, his tools scattered all around. A girl with a hint of red in her dress plays near a forest. Behind a man on a barge pulling a dingy along the Stour. I could, and indeed have, spent hours contemplating this painting. To my mind it depicts a world where things are simple.

Regardless of whether or not anyone agrees with my interpretations of this painting, I think we all can appreciate simplicity. In every field of human endeavour it's the simple memes which have staying power. In science, for example, it's Einstein's E=mc² that is remembered, not the tortuously complex theory behind it. In music the melody of Pachelbel's Canon in D has endured for over three hundred year, and still finds it's way into contemporary music. Everywhere you look there are examples proving people like simple.

I like simple. It's probably borderline OCD that makes me do this, but I also like to be surrounded by simplicity. I don't mean I like to be surrounded by simple things. I want my interaction with the systems I find around me to be simple. When I want to flick from a DVD to the TV to check what time Casualty starts I don't want to have to figure-out a complex sequence involving three remote controls all of them bristling with buttons I've never used³. But it's not just in the field of consumer electronics I seek simplicity. Whenever I find I'm repeating the same job over and over, when something annoys me, when I find myself irked, or simply because I'm stuck in traffic, I like to contemplate the complexity around me and ponder simplicity.

In its way contemplating how something I consider complex could be simpler is very enlightening about the reasons for complexity. Over the years I've realised a thing or two. I've discovered that obtaining simple isn't necessarily simple - quite often simple requires complex solutions. Also there is often a good deal of compromise involved in all solutions. It would be hubris to assume what I consider simple will work for all. So once I have a crazy idea I try to look at it from the outside and contemplate how it will be perceived by others. Which is, of course where everything proves unworkable. Not that I mind, it's an intellectual exercise anyway, besides, it gives me an insight into human nature. Which is also enlightening, which when I think about it, is the whole point.