On creating an aesthetic
maybe we all just want simplicity and peace
We both were looking for something remote and pastoral: a white crofting cottage dotting a brilliant green landscape, rock walls and sheep, the sound of the wind rippling through red-tinged grasses —and a view of cliffs in the hazy distance. We wanted a mood.
“Would you call him a sculptor?” I say to my spouse Janyce.
“I think his art defies category,” she says.
It’s Friday night and we have our feet up on the ottoman, squeezed between the trays piled with books, remote controls, and coffee cups. There’s the mask I couldn’t find earlier, peeking out from under a pile of newspapers. Both of us have our laptop screens open in front of us, but now we’ve switched to staring at our flatscreen hung on the wall across the room. We’re watching the artist Andy Goldsworthy perched high atop a row of winter hedges and slowly crawling over the bare branches, his body a black silhouette against an overcast sky in Scotland.
“Who are you texting?” says Janyce.
I’ve kept my phone balanced on the top of the couch within arm’s reach so I can respond instantly to all the texts as they arrive throughout the day. One of my family members has a worrisome case of Covid, friends are dipping in and out of an open conversation that’s been ongoing for days, and our building contractor has fully adopted the “quarantine style” of homeowner contact.
“You know, I think this texting really works for Brad,” I say to Janyce while looking down at my phone and the latest image to flash across my screen.
He just sent me a picture of some onion lamps for the outside of the family Cape house we are remodeling. Earlier in the week, I texted him a picture of the style I liked.
“Find me something like this,” I said. “But to scale, you know, cottage size.”
I turn the phone so Janyce can see the picture of the rustic bronze lamp named Nantucket hanging from a curved hook. I love it. It conjures up all the nautical romance I had in mind, choppy gray waves, sails whipping in the wind, a distant fog horn sounding, salt air. No matter that this little house is tucked in a residential neighborhood at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, nestled in between scrub pines, and a good ten-minute drive to any beach. It’s all about creating the cottage oasis aesthetic.
Just this morning I was video chatting with my friend Dawn in facebook messenger.
“We’re going to market it under the name of Quail Cottage,” I said.
“Of course you are. It’s named after a bird,” she said.
“Well no, that’s not it. It’s because it’s on Quail Trail,” I said.
“Ahh, I’m going to send you the perfect article about this whole cottage aesthetic,” she said.
In the article, “Cottagecore and the rise of the modern rural fantasy” author Anita Rao Kashi says, “Cottagecore is indicative of a desire for simplicity and anti-modernity. It is the equal and opposite reaction to the contamination, helplessness and incoherence of our contemporary mise en scène.”
Earlier in the day, I took a quick peek at my son’s latest Instagram story. He stopped a few times from his ride through the woods on his mountain bike to snap a picture of a log that had fallen and was now covered with a row of mushrooms. He added his own red cartoon mushroom to the end of the row and then stopped to span the forest in front of him, taking a silent video of all the carefully concealed deer. Each one raised it’s head boringly, almost with a yawn, as if to say, “Yeah, we live here, what’s your deal?” My son is 25, booted out of his real job in the sound engineering industry because of the pandemic, and now has taken to camping and mountain biking while temporarily delivering Amazon packages and slowing way down to embrace a more natural aesthetic. His friends are all doing the same: kayaking, hiking, finding no-stress jobs and homespun hobbies— one is even starting his own sourdough bread-baking business out of his kitchen.
Like my son, I’m also striving daily to cultivate simplicity and inner peace, a kind of “cottagecore” attitude to get me though this time. It’s mild outside, hovering around 40 degrees, but I feed the wood stove all day. I wrap myself in wool blankets and carry my laptop from room to room for a new view to the yard. I watch the bird feeder. I watch the sunlight travel up the wall, I walk in the woods at 7am, and I mostly revel in making the small design decisions for a tiny Cape Cod cottage that will go on the rental market this summer.
I’ve always had a thing for cottages. For our honeymoon, it was imperative that we go away to Scotland, a destination I had been trying to get to since childhood. But rather than the city of Edinburgh with its grand castles and museums, we both were looking for something remote and pastoral: a white crofting cottage dotting a brilliant green landscape with rock walls and sheep, with only the sound of the wind rippling through the red-tinged grasses— and a view of cliffs off in the hazy distance. We wanted a mood.
November, 2011, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the front of our Christmas tree from this angle and it’s recently lost a whole section of lights in the middle, now just the bottom third is lit and casting a blurry reflection of light onto the wood floor.
I’m distracted. But I’m still listening to Andy Goldsworthy talk about why he makes art. I’m watching him take bright yellow leaves that have fallen off the trees, dip them in the water of the nearby stream, and carefully, silently, even meditatively, place them on a fallen tree log to create a design that is both pointless and weirdly beautiful. Funny how this documentary called Leaning Into the Wind from 2017 is so prescient of the present collective mood. Goldsworthy’s ephemeral, landscape-based art is all about looking, noticing, studying, wondering, questioning and slowing down. Maybe he’s on to something.