„I tell my daughter and architecture students: just don’t stop drawing. You will draw as well as you drew when you stopped drawing. You could be 50. When you stopped drawing at 8, you will still be drawing like an 8 year old.” – Russ Tyson, Whitten Architects in Portland, Maine.

I heard that quote on Youtube [link] yesterday. Like so often recently, I was watching architecture videos as my pastime. Many of them are stunningly well made, beautiful.

Since I was a kid I am thinking about how I would have designed my father’s house. Actually it was „my parents” house, because my mother contributed big amounts of money. But then, in the end she had little to say in the design and construction phase, and worst of all, didn’t even get her name to the house. Which I guess was the cornerstone (so to speak) of my parent’s divorce 20 years later.

I digress. But „side-talking” (as a student once called it) might not only be my flaw, but also my forte. Some students watch my videos especially for the nuggets they will find. I myself, when watching these absolutely stunning architecture videos, I keep on wondering: how did these people afford to pay for all this? How did this project change their relationship to their parents and grandparents, to their spouses even? How’s the daily lives of the families living there—do they even live there?

Back to movement.

I would say that, allow me to make this case, it’s pretty much the same with movement as it is with drawing: just don’t stop moving. You will move as well as you moved when you stopped moving. You could be 50. When you stopped moving at 8, you will still be using the same level of skills you build up until you were 8 years old (which might be quite good actually). Minus impairments from accidents, disease, identity, overuse and ageing.

But what is movement? What is drawing? What parallels could we draw?