bricolage |brēkōˈläZH|: construction or creation from a diverse range of available things
It’s a French word that means tinkering. Bricolage is applied to fields as diverse as business and art. Also? architecture, computer sciences, fashion, music, social sciences, and theater.
Think punk rock: a triumvirate of experimentation, rejection of formal training, and an impulse toward individuality (i.e. creativity always trumps accuracy). Think of bricolage as a kind of improv — you use whatever happens to be onstage to create a world.
The bricoleur works by arranging and rearranging a set of familiar materials, forging her works by trial and error. Mistakes aren’t missteps; they’re opportunities to learn and change and build something singular out of everything else, a.k.a., life and love and work as a conversation rather than a monologue.
In other words, a pretty good general philosophy.
I’ve made and unmade several topical weblogs since the aughts, when I discovered that there was a blogosphere to invade. I killed my darlings with such remorseless cheer because they began to bore me. When it comes to topics, I can only sustain the kind of fervid interest that’s required to write a single-subject ‘blog for so long (not so long, as it turns out). To be single-mindedly obsessed with one very specific thing in real life would mark you a weirdo, a fanatic, and/or, okay, also an expert or a genius; but this is how I justify writing a blog, not about one thing, but about everything. My specific interests may wax and wane, but I will always want to write about them.
Bricolage is the process of playing, testing, succeeding, failing, flailing, and trying again & again with whatever’s at hand.
This is my little bricolagerie, the place I’ll be doing all of that ^
a few of my sources for your reading pleasure
- Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete (1992) Sherry Turkle & Seymour Papert
- Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) Dick Hebidge
- Popular Music Culture: The Key Concepts (2012, 3rd edition) Roy Shuker
Bricolagerie 