SpiralTruth

Check out Popular Mechanics: Types of Skills Everyone Should Know to brush up on some of the things we forget about in the day to day. The most interesting stuff to me is on vehicle repair. I remember my uncle telling me about how you can check codes on your car while he was helping me install my own brake pads for the first time.

Especially to my fellow artists: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, talked a lot about how artistic types sometimes avoid figuring out how things work. A classic scene was where the narrator fixed his artist friend’s bike with a piece of aluminum from a coke can, much to the horror of the friend. His point was that if you take the time to think about these things, they’re not really a big mystery, and that once you understand something, you can be creative in solving a problem associated with it.

Us artists tend to concentrate on what we see as “beautiful”, and normally don’t think of day-to-day mechanical devices (like cars, or bikes, or computers) in that sense. If you can appreciate the beauty of human ingenuity, that’s the first step to a little more independence, and a little more cash in your pocket to spend on your passions. Yes, it takes time away from focusing on your art, but if art is based on your life’s experiences, won’t adding a few more practical skills only improve it?

Installing my own brake pads probably saved me $200-300, and it really wasn’t that complicated. So next time you’re going to “bring it in”, whatever “it” is, ask around a bit and keep the same open mind you have in your artistic exploits… you might find someone only too willing to show you a new skill – and get some new material to write/paint/talk/whatever about in the process.

Tags: maintenance, car, DIY, artists