seven year itch.

In an attempt not to become a hopelessly lame grad student who does nothing but read political theory, I went to a lecture at the Corcoran last night. The speaker was Stefan Sagmeister, who is apparently a very famous designer, mostly of album covers, but who I had never heard of until a friend of mine invited me to the lecture. The subject was happiness and design, and Sagmeister, who is quite charming and very European, was incredibly entertaining.

I have absolutely no talent for design, which will certainly not come as a shock to anyone who has seen this blog, but my ineptitude has not stopped me from being genuinely interested in the subject. I like the way design is not quite a fine art while not being entirely practical, either. It can be frivolous in a way that architecture is not, while serving a much more functional purpose than something like sculpture or drawing. It's also a huge field; I'm particularly obsessed with book cover design and fonts, but there are a whole host of different ways to be a designer, and sometimes it's easy to overlook just how pervasive design can actually be. If you have seen the movie Helvetica, you will understand what I mean.

Anyway, all that is actually beside the point, because while the lecture was quite good, the most interesting part had nothing to do with design: it had to do with what Sagmeister calls his "seven year itch." In short, every seven years Sagmeister takes a whole 12 months off. He takes no clients, and devotes that entire year to exploring new ideas and indulging in experimentation without any expectations. Most of the lecture was spent defending this practice, and explaining how it makes him not only a happier person, but also a better designer. Being phenomenally successful, and possibly a tad eccentric, are obviously key to making this kind of lifestyle possible, but I have to say, I think it's a phenomenally good idea. It's tempting to consider this as a kind of sabbatical, but sabbaticals are usually used (at least in academia) to finish writing books, which, while undoubtedly useful, is not particularly experimental and carries very definite expectations.

What I have in mind is instead something closer to what Marilynne Robinson did after the success of her first book. Rumor has it that, instead of immediately starting her next novel, as most successful authors do, she took several years off and did very little except read. Not just literature, but also history and theology and philosophy. And this is why she can write so well on such a wide range of topics, which is what makes her, I think, such an excellent writer, both in her fiction and non-fiction. Robinson's seven year itch lasted longer than Sagmeister's, but nonetheless, it speaks to the same kind of commitment to experimentation and curiosity. The attraction of this idea goes back to an obsession I have with being interdisciplinary; it seems that the deeper I go into my specific discipline, the more obsessed I am with not being stuck in it.

In short, since I got to take most of 2009 off to travel and read and lay around New York, I am now thinking that I'll do it again seven years from now. Even if that turns out to be impossible, I think that just the idea could make surviving the next seven years much, much easier.