It’s often said that you can’t be good at everything. Frankly, I don’t see why not. As immature as it may sound, I have always longed to be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of every single one. It’s fallen out of fashion. Once, a person would indulge themselves with pursuits that were many as they were varied. In the event that you were able to achieve a reasonable level of proficiency in these various fields of endeavour, you might receive the ultimate badge of honour of being labelled a ‘Renaissance Man’.
It’s often said that you can’t be good at everything. Frankly, I don’t see why not. As immature as it may sound, I have always longed to be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of every single one. It’s fallen out of fashion. Once, a person would indulge themselves with pursuits that were many as they were varied. In the event that you were able to achieve a reasonable level of proficiency in these various fields of endeavour, you might receive the ultimate badge of honour of being labelled a ‘Renaissance Man’.
For me, I’ve never really understood the term ‘Renaissance Man’. It’s supposed to suggest enlightenment, but given that it takes its name from a cultural movement that began in the fourteenth century it’s a term that’s long overdue for agood restumping. And if the term ‘Renaissance Man’ hasn’t lost its currency, then it has surely been downgraded by Standard and Poors with both default and junk status looming in the not so distant future. But in spite of the term’s limited relevance, I must face the fact that I can never be considered a Renaissance Man. At best, if I make a real effort, I might be described as mid-range Jacobean Man with a Tudor overlay. Like a decathlete who can run like a bullet but wouldn’t know his way around a shot put if it came with instructions, I have an Achilles Heel the size of the Statue of Liberty’s left foot. Indeed, were I a band, I would be The Red Hot Achilles Peppers, so pronounced is my condition. For whilst there are many fields in which I can not only hold my own but that of the person standing next to me, there is one area of human endeavour in which I am a Grade A certified dunce. That area is ‘craft’.
According to the internet, the term ‘craft’ is often used to describe ‘a group of artistic practices within the family of decorative arts that traditionally are defined by their relationship to functional or utilitarian products or by their use of such natural media as wood, clay, glass, textiles, and metal.’ But of course. I can’t help but notice that icy pole sticks and pipe cleaners are missing from the list. In spite of that obvious oversight, I will say that my own definition is simpler. For me, craft is something that is practiced by clog-wearing muesli-munching hippies that, for all intents and purposes, is about half a notch below witchcraft; so mysterious is it to me.
I grew up in the 1970s. This means that I, and everyone else in my unfortunate generation, had to suffer through the kind of adversity that would see off a weaker bunch of people. In the Renaissance, children had to contend with the likes of the Bubonic Plague. We, on the other hand, had to deal with flared trousers. It gets worse. We also had to endure music’s darkest era during which songs like Racey’s ‘Lay your Love on Me’ and ‘Afternoon Delight’ by the Starland Vocal Band were allowed to roam freely across the earth rather than being hunted down like the vermin they were. Scoff all you like, but today’s youngsters would probably reel at the news that in the last 1970s there was a real push to have ‘Afternoon Delight’ replace ‘God Save the Queen’ as our national anthem. Had the public failed to get behind ‘Advance Australia Fair’, there’s a good chance that we’d be singing ‘Afternoon Delight’ every time one of our athletes managed to secure a medal.
Aside from flared trousers and hideous music, we also had to endure the ultimate indignity that is craft. Pom poms, knitting nancys, the strange string-with-nail-on-a-plaque thing that every house seemed to have hanging from the wall – these were the various disciplines in which we were schooled on rainy afternoons. Craft, put simply, is what people did before the Internet. Without fail, afternoons spent doing craft were soul destroying experiences. This is partly attributable to the fact that I was absolutely useless. Suffice to say, I wasn’t even good enough to be considered mediocre. My rudimentary attempts to make things out of clay, wood, and material were disasters on a Hindenburg scale. Often was the time that my best efforts were greeted with cries of ‘oh the humanity!’
My shortcomings were all the more pronounced as a result of having a brother who was excellent at craft. When we both made pom poms, my efforts looked like something that had just been assaulted in an alley. Cam’s pom pom was everything that a pom pom ought to be. It was bright, it was springy and it was still intact a half hour after it had been made, unlike my own efforts. If we were each given a bunch of icy pole sticks, I would create something that looked like driftwood, whilst my brother would make a perfect replica of the Eiffel tower to scale. It made me feel intensely inadequate. At that moment, I swore off craft forever. However, things have a habit of coming, if not full circle then at least majority trapezoid and I now watch my nieces and nephews as they embark on various craft projects with Kate. I watch, quietly, politely declining offers to participate for fear that my chronic craftaphobia will be laid bare for all to see. So please; cut, paste and sew to your heart’s content. Just don’t ask me to join in. For, just like a poorly constructed icy pole stick sculpture, I just might come unglued.