Why I Like To Watch Other People Work -- Terry Garey
When I began this project it was with the hope that I would bring people together. Not in the achieving world peace sense, or even by making this some sort of fannish focal point. No, what I am hoping to do is something akin to introducing people to each other at parties. People who for one reason or other don't know each other yet but should. People like Terry Garey who despite writing very well indeed doesn't seem to be nearly as well known as she should be. And this when she lives in that notorious centre of fandom, Minneapolis. Still, I do what I can, so go read about watching other people work and see what I mean.
I always have. But it isn't just the motions, like our cat Dudley who would watch Ctein spot prints by the hour, his eyes going back and forth like one of those tick-tock cat clocks. We babysat an iguana once, and Dudley would watch the creature breathe in and out.
No, for me it's different. I like to watch competent people accomplish work. (Yes, Ctein knows how to spot prints to beat the band, and the iguana was one hell of a good breather, but you see what I mean.) I always loved watching my father when he did odd jobs around the house, even though it meant that I grew up with the conviction that holding boards was a complicated, exacting business and that knowing which screwdriver was which was at least as important as nuclear physics.
On TV these days, I can watch all sorts of people doing all sorts of things, whether it's This Old House, Julia Child, The Frugal Gourmet, or Hands, an Irish production that shows up on The Discovery Channel every now and then. Norm Abrams of This Old House is my hero, with his big broad thumbs and broad belly. Norm always knows which kind of nail to use and why, he always knows how to test for dry rot, and he quietly does his work, only getting a little excited when he gets to use a new power tool. The host of the show grandstands around and leads the homeowners through their paces, but Norm gets stuff done. He does a good job, despises waste and clutter, takes his time when he needs to, and explains the practical end of carpentry with a love of simple beauty and a job well done that warms me to the marrow. To watch Norm balance on a board in order to get some shingles on right, ignoring vanity and gravity, thrills me more than any leaping pair of male thighs on MTV possibly can. After all, when Norm is done, someone has their windows an straight and plumb; when MTV is done all that's left is sweaty spandex.
Julia Child was my first hero, though. I could watch reruns of her gaily dismembering a chicken over and over again. I will never cook a pot of tripe unless I am forced to by starvation, but I'll watch Julia do it: gluing the piece of pastry over the hole in the baking jar to seal in the aromas.
It isn't the tripe I'm watching, it's Child, who loves what she does and loves explaining what she does. She is parodied by comedians quite often because of her subject matter and her rather ungainly person and easily mocked voice, but they always miss the point. The point isn't that she's tall and plain and near-sighted and sort of hoots when she talks (they also portray her as fat, which she isn't), the point is that she loves food, she loves cooking it in a particular way, and she loves showing other people how to do it. She's passionate. She's not a snob. She teaches how to do peasant dishes much more often than she teaches how to do haute cuisine. She shows the audience the ugliest fish imaginable and treats it with respect and affection. It has given its life for her and she's going to make sure it isn't wasted. Using her own body as illustration, she points out which joints from the steer are best and why. She makes little jokes and ironic sallies as she cooks, strewing flour about the place and squinting at the prompter without her glasses to see how much time is left. She rends dead lobsters with her bare hands, and hacks into artichokes with determination and aplomb. Her deserts are usually a bit funny looking, but I don't care that she can't make perfect cream swirls and chocolate leaves. I care that she cares, that she does her best, and I love her obvious satisfaction at the end of every show, when she presents the items she has made on a nicely set table, bringing civilisation out of the chaos of nature. Julia Child is my hero, and my own cooking, even in times of poverty, has been the better for it.
Hands is an Irish series that has run three or so times on The Discovery Channel, a cable TV channel that runs nature programs, documentaries and the like. I discovered it by accident and was enthralled. Someone, somewhere, and somehow decided to do this series on the old hand skills that are fast disappearing in Ireland and other parts of the world: shoemaking, tailoring, spinning, candle-making, the making of bridles and saddles. Each half-hour show depicts, with beautiful photography and sensible commentary, real people making real items. The shoemaker explains his trade, showing how he chooses the leather, who does what part of the operation in his shop, explaining how the old hand-powered tools work, and even how they are made, what the materials are, where they come from, where they are used, and how the shoe goes together. We see a pair of shoes made from start to finish. We see the piles of hides, the linen thread, the old pots of polish and glue, and old experts and the newer journeymen (and journeywomen), and we watch their hands cut and slice, stitch, trim, nail and glue, pull, fit, tug, polish, and produce a pair of shoes that will last for a long, long time, and cause no one who made them even a second of embarrassment.
I watch an old man make a violin, and an old woman explains why she's pouring kerosene on wool before she spins it, and he talks about his youth in the shipping industry and she remembers how she knitted stockings and sweaters for her husband and eight children for forty years.
I watch chandlers hand-dipping wax for the candles for the churches, and hear them comment that most people can't afford the beeswax ones much any more. I watch a tailor whip-stitch a lapel into submission and mark across hand-woven tweed with a stubby piece of chalk so he can cut the line later when he gets to that bit. I watched in fascination as be measured his client and guided his choice of material so that the cloth was suited to the coat, as it were.
Part of me keeps saying, oh well, these modern days, but the beauty of it makes me proud, somehow, and makes me want to attack my next project, whatever it is, with all the attention and skill I can offer it.
So that's why I love to watch other people work. I wish there was more stuff on TV like those programs. I want to know how the world works. I want to know about the auto workers in Buenos Aires, and the wine makers in Italy, the clerks and bookbinders of India, the dancers in Sri Lanka, the farmers in Britain, and the women who sweep the streets in Russia. I want to know more about the people in China, Africa, Pakistan and Kansas, and what they eat, how they make their living, how they raise their kids.
It beats knowing if Cindy will finally get Jeff to raise the ancient voodoo curse he cursed her with when he gave her Margy's underwear by accident because Vince had amnesia and couldn't get to the hospital on time to see Lorina give birth to a two-headed calf, thus revealing the truth about old Mr Sims and the new nurse in the urgent care ward and their illegitimate son who is secretly an artist who sculpts gladiolas in butter and sells them to keep his stepmother in the style to which she is not accustomed and who is really his grandmother except that she walked out on his grandfather years ago who had remarried and didn't know anything about the curse. Or the gladiolas. But they never show him making the gladiolas. If they did, I might watch.
Why I Like To Watch Other People Work is reprinted from Rabbit-Ears #1 -- Ed. Mog Decarnin (1989) and is © Terry Garey