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Phd proposal ideas

Certainly one of the strangest years of my life. Poised with a year to work off followed by a leap in to the unknown. I spend our long walks ruminating over the ideas I've worked on i n the last few years. Issues of self, free will, which still hold water, which relate to making because, much as I'd like to do a PhD on neuroscience I have no history in this. All I've done, all I'm known for on a professional level is furniture making. The last piece of writing I enjoyed on the subject of making was Richard Sennets' The Craftsman'. A brilliant book. Though a lot of my later inspiration came from antonio Damasio, his two great books, 'Descartes myth' particularly placed the body back in to the conversation. The twentieth century saw a drift where cognition was all that was really studied. Emotions were either ignored or deemed too slippery for serious research. Since candace Perts' work and her discoveries regarding opiate receptor sites came the realisation that receptor sites were all over the body. Damasios somatic marker hypothesis revealed a pulse of neurotransmitters marked any new object we encounter enabling our emotional response to our encounters to be far quicker than any cognitive process could ever be. When you step over a venomous snake in the jungle it is your reactions that save you. An over emphasis on the significance of consciousness prevails today. After all, the vast majority of what our brains do is below the surface. Our unconscious processes that keep us breathing and our hearts beating and the countless other bodily processes that keep us alive. Our understanding developes below the surface and the illusion of self that Buddhism has been aware of for centuries has finally found acceptance amongst the neuroscience community. And here I step in to point out that there is no duality. Our consciousness and unconsciousness, our being can not be separated up in to brain, body etc. The commonly heald false dichotomy of working with your hands or working with your head. The crafts councils foolish promotion of objects outside of their sphere and lack of attention to the defence of the maker. Only in the field of sport is pay reflective of the inspiration of out Wayne too eye, the spontaneity of Gascoigne whose brain was developed beyond the rest of humanities for a short time. No where is the balance of physical intellect and intelligence of planning given the respect it is due save for dark corners of our culture from Cheltenham celebration of craftsmanship to displays of customised cars and motor cycles. These areas are considered self involved. Private displays for the initiated.
So from somewhere within this botch pitch of ideas I need to map out some plan of research and submit my proposal to the university for judgement. Try not to slip in to the political as our makers have been so poorly treated. The tradesmen provincial left overs from a by gone age of engineering, subsumed by CNC and cad drawing. The crafts a limp off shoot of the arts.

Taming the Mind : A Conversation with Dan Harris : Sam Harris

Taming the Mind : A Conversation with Dan Harris : Sam Harris

The Final Year

Having spent over 15 years trying to make the furniture business work and despite having constant flow of work, I find myself in a financially neutral position. So, after giving it much thought, I'm going to give up furniture making professionally. I have this last year for my client and a year on the workshop, it seems like a logical place to do something else. I've always promised myself I'd write something of significance. It was before my brother did his doctorate that I first started planning my phd. So all the ideas of the last twenty years can come together to form a whole. There came a point, perhaps five years back when I lost any feeling that what I was doing was of any significance. Since then I have just made more of the same.

The Jogger

I shall write this one up whilst its fresh on the memory. Our usual morning walk takes us through a clover field where a young woman walks two vicious, snarling whipetty things. Today they corner red Dook and he's not a fighter. Seeing an exit route, he slipped through and accidentally knocked over this jogger. What followed was a performance followers of football will be familiar with. "Are you alright?" I asked him, meaning any serious injury. "Of course I'm not bloody alright!" . His self piteous performance brought over the woman with the vicious dogs over. He continued to play to the crowd. I thought it best I remove myself from the situation before I told some truths.
After his audience had left he got up and ran a quater of a mile down the hill. A passerby laughingly informed me he had experience of the jaggers character before. When I reached the road he was again on the ground having found a fresh audience. I suggested he was making mountains out of molehills and left them to it. A pathetic characterit me in a sour mood for the morning.

Endings

All Emotional

We knew it was coming from the start. The land our workshop stands on is valuable building land and the landlord said from the start he would be selling it in a couple of years and our humble rent can't compare so we've got a years warning to find somewhere new. After my breakdown two or three years ago I sold my kit to the guy I share with so really I just own my hand tools.
He's struggling for work. Has a family to provide for. He'd been doing a teaching course but has had to pack it in because teachers don't get paid enough for how he lives.
It struck me when i was 21 that you spend way more time with your work colleagues than you do with your wife and kids. You're on work for eight or nine, with your workmates till 5 or 6, then a quick couple of hours with your family before bed. In many ways you're closer, well, you know each other better.
What I will do I don't know. If this years debt pay offs done perhaps ill do that PHD I've always wanted to do. Or go share space with Fred again. Though I guess he wants passionate youth rather than half mad old woodsy. I spoke to him today, we made an elliptical table together some 15 years back. We made two. One is now in the House of Lords or Houses of Parliament, I forget which. It was a good one and I'd like to bet reference of the elliptical top because a beautiful ellipse and an ok one are far apart. He was breaking down from a festival in north wales but by chance is off to London to the House of Lords tomorrow so hes so he's taking a tape to get me the sizes. We're off to gareth Neals fourtyth birthday party together. 40 eh? Can you believe it? When I met him I was 27 and a full decade older than his 17. Now he's a proper man. It was sad when I left Fred's for to set up my own place nearer frome. Shortly after gareth went to London. Those Pewsey days were fun.
Now this current workshop in frome is running its last year I feel sad.
After leaving Fred's I was going to share with Clive dinmore, may raving partner. But it turned out I shared with Magnus for the next 15 years and a better man you couldn't meet. Sadly it looks like we'll be going off our seperate ways. I've had two periods of serious mental health problems these last two years. I am unreliable. With our current cheap workshop he can sustain a period of my madnlastbut a bigger, better, more expensive unit, well I'd really drop him in it if I had another bad spell. He's had two workshop share offers. These have been a great 15 years and I'll miss him. My best freind, I suppose. But I understand. Just makes me really sad.
Maybe its time to put down the tools. You get slower and weaker as you age and focus on the writing and photography. Surprised he put up with me so long really. Sad day today.