NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 16, 2011
Undignified work
How often the realities of the contemporary world are brought home to us, not by some major event in world news, but by some minor event, happening in the presence of our ears and eyes.Consider a noise that has been afflicting this writer. It comes from a power stone saw. A house is being extravagantly renovated, in view of my window. Paving stones are being cut for a new, rather decorative driveway, that replaces most of a front yard. This is part of a project that has been going on for years, transforming a modestly handsome Edwardian house, into a miniature Disneyland castle. This noise, like that of most power tools, was probably not intended to go directly to the pain centres in the human brain. It just worked out that way. Pain has a purpose in the human metabolism, however. It directs one's attention to something wrong, that needs to be dealt with. Though, sometimes it turns out nothing can be done. There was no point in arguing with the workman about what he was being paid to do. On near approach one could anyway see he has attitude problems. I would, too, if I had his job; especially if I was as incapable of performing it as he is. For on closer inspection he'd been making a dreadful mess. A tremendous pile of waste rock was accumulating; it took him four or five tries to make any stone fit; and those already laid had irregular gaps between them. Among my Methodist paternal ancestors, going back to northern England, were skilled stonemasons. The memory of this is retained in the family; and at an early age, in England myself, I worked on a "lump," or small building crew, though hardly as a stonemason. I got to watch one, however, and served as "hod" both to him and a magnificently skilled, and prayerful, Plymouth Brethren bricklayer. This was in the middle of the 1970s, in south London. Later in life I had occasion to employ a capable French Canadian stonemason, in Kingston, Ont. I have read about the craft, and sketched and studied some ancient buildings. This is the extent of my qualifications as a masonry critic. A skilled stonemason works with a hammer and chisel. It is exhilarating to watch him select and shape a stone. He knocks a few chips off it decisively, and then it fits, often perfectly first time. The pile of waste at the end of the day is small. This gravel nevertheless has other uses. The work is silent except for the "ping" when chisel meets stone. This is an attractive sound. Like other real craftsmen, the stonemason seems almost to be at leisure. Often, only his eyes are working. Yet the wall he is building grows and grows. A skilled stonemason works in three dimensions, against gravity. He wouldn't be laying paving stones. That is apprentice work. The paving stone was delivered to a constant thickness, and gravity is on the workman's side. The real job here was laying the bed beneath it. But that having already been done (crudely, by a steam-roller), I'd have assigned the workman two days. This one is now in his fifth desultory week. So what is my point? It is about standardization, regimentation, and statistics; about the statistical way of looking at the world. For consider: done properly, silently, and in the old way, without power tools - inside two days, including all materials - that work would have contributed a thousand or two, to our Gross Domestic Product. But done this way, with all the waste and power consumption factored in - to a shoddy result - our GDP is raised by many times that amount. Bear this in mind, the next time you hear statistics about our economy. My example is egregious, but the truth is that little I see around me could pass the "knife-blade test." My analogy is to a method used by stonemasons in every civilized culture, to test their work. Mortar is for bricks; stone should not require it. The stones should fit together so tightly that the mason cannot insert a knife blade between them. If he can, he takes the stone back out, and quietly utters his mea culpa. Craft apprenticeships (even to nursing) typically began around age 14, well into the 20th century. A decade or more of that, and you were ready to work on your own, without supervision; to keep your own accounts; to get married, and have a family. It was an earned independence. To a child of the 21st century, this is unimaginable. He obtains paper qualifications from people whose qualifications were also on paper. But then, to a child of the 21st century, well-made durable goods are glimpsed only in the flea market; and a life of purpose and fulfilment in work is the purest luck. Between market forces, and the Nanny State, we live largely as marketing and statistical cyphers. That noise, coming from standardized power machinery, is thus not without meaning. It articulates our tawdry consumerism; it bespeaks labour, stripped of dignity. It tells us that the best way forward might well be the way back. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top