my two youngest laugh themselves silly
every time they make little piggy noises.
the ‘oink, oink’ tickles deep inside their noses.
today my girl drew me this pig:
and it struck me
how very little it takes
to distinguish one thing from the next.
i mean this piggy has ears like a bear,
an odd artistic smile that is almost human
and a round head like you see in almost every 6 yr old’s drawings,
so it must be the nose alone that makes us see it as a pig,
but clearly it is a pig.
a circle with two pencil tip dots inside
and its whole species is defined.
this afternoon i read about designers who pare down
so they can pare down some more etc until
what’s necessary to make their point
is all that is left of the design.
isn’t that the place we all start out at as kids?
focused on only the basics that allow us to say
what we want to say.
perhaps adulthood, true maturity,
is really about getting back to some of the simplicity of that clarity.
that and allowing ourselves to laugh deeply
over how funny it feels to say ‘oink’.