We are all familiar with this quote by Archimedes: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
Well, perhaps it’s the engineer in me (I was an engineer long before I attended medical school), but I’ve always been fascinated by levers: physical levers, intellectual levers, and, more recently, creative levers.
Anyway, at the Japanese-inspired store Kobo Seattle, I discovered a lovely wooden toy set called Balancing Blocks (seen in the photo above), produced by Fort Standard and designed by Gregory Buntain.
Having played with them over the past few weeks I am beginning to see them less as a toy, but rather as a creative tool—one I can use to create small, temporary wooden sculptures within various natural contexts.
And how will I leverage these wooden sculptures?
I will photograph them using my apprenticeship-level Black and White photography skills, simultaneously using these sculptures and their surroundings as inspiration for a series of haiku poetry I’ve always wanted to write. (As an aside, my poetry craftsmanship is at pre-apprentice level.)
Who knows what will come of this? Perhaps a couple of photos with some scribblings, perhaps something more. But regardless, these wooden blocks will be the creative lever that I used.
Addendum: Check out Law of The Lever to learn more about what Archimedes actually wrote.