STOP

2001 WARNING

STOP

You are about to join a REVOLUTION -- if you have the courage . . .

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

--Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken," 1916 [the same year as Le Corbusier's Villa Schwob, Matisse's Piano Lesson, and Mondrian's Composition 1916 (oil on canvas with wood strip on bottom edge)--the only painting he made that year...]

Hey, what's a millennium for if not to STOP and make you think...and reexamine all your assumptions. And so my parting shot as we exit this 2000 and enter the next 1000 is to challenge you to redefine architecture. REDEFINE your career in architecture!!!!! If you don't, you will end up 24/7/365 strapped and stymied.

Oh, what? So you're gonna be the ONE, the next Steven Holl or Zaha Hadid or Koolhaas or Meier or Eisenman or Gehry or Frank Lloyd Wright???? You're gonna make it big time artistically and financially???? Great. Hope you do. And by the way, I've got a bridge for sale. But for the rest of us dreamer-realists who don't have our heads in the sand we've gotta figure out a different plan. We've got to take the OTHER ROAD, the one less traveled by. The one NOBODY'S traveled yet. Like Yogi said, "When there's a fork in the road take it." There IS a fork in the road. And I'm gonna take it. I don't know where it's gonna go. I don't care. All I know is, I'm going. You?

Know 3 things:

1. The present system doesn't work.

2. The present system doesn't work.

3. The present system doesn't work.

Now, it works of course if you want to be a drone. Underpaid, overworked, unfulfilled artistically. I mean, if you want to make insignificant artistically corrupted or intellectually bankrupted buildings full of ridiculous compromises by working your tail off and make diddlysquat dough, well then sure enough this is the field for you. And my guess is that it really IS the field for a large percentage of architects for whom a middle 5-figure income job (at best) with lots of frustration, angst, and endless overtime is happiness because they like just being a "team" player on ho-hum stuff, maybe even kind-of-cool-but-still-not-really-big-time stuff.

But I want something more. Don't you? To be one of the MYTH-MAKERS of our day, to set the world ablaze with imagination, means charting a new course. Setting sail on brand new oceans. Reinventing yourself like crazy. And opening your ears to what Joseph Campbell called the "music of the universe." "There's a whole new realm of the imagination to open out and realize its forms," said Campbell.

THIS IS THE FIRST BREATH OF FIRE AND IMAGINATION ACROSS THE THRESHOLD OF ADVENTURE INTO A NEW WORLD.

Check back with me in 7 years.

(What will YOU be doing in the year 2009? Yeah, yeah, I can count.)

e-mail MadisonGray@thearchitectpainter.com

_1.1.2001