AIDAN LARNED
Aidan Larned is a creative strategist and designer based in New York City.
At Hugo & Marie, his work spans brand design research and insights, brand positioning, brand architecture, tone of voice, naming, copy and scriptwriting, art direction, and campaign concepting.
Aidan also writes, edits, designs, and prints a series of zines and small publications, independently and with collaborators. He recently completed the Shillington Academy design course.
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Green Thumb
And what might I do?
The possibilities closed for business when the sun sank, but my heart rose knowing that soon tomorrow’s horizon would be revealed. There is more on the other side of sleep and even more after that, time’s expanse in front of me is overwhelming, unfathomable, and glorious. My body hurts, my brain knows my feelings better than my heart, and the sky’s ink bleeds into my chest, squeezes past my ribs and fills my lungs.
I breathe in and out.
I may tend to the garden if the weather is brighter tomorrow, but I don’t know what that would entail. The possibility of planting a garden is perfect in the evening, as the light dissolves into warm blues. When I imagine my future, my course of action is serenely opaque, just clear enough for me to know that it’s there, thank God. There are so many passions that I don’t even know if I have yet. Like gardening.
My time extends beyond me, unlimited, a continuous line. A dot gone for a walk.
A small bird will die without having felt sorry for itself, and I will wallow with wondrous defiance. Self-pity is the antidote to the time which stretches imposingly and ecstatically before me, begging for interpretation, embrace, and use. And one can use it in all kinds of ways. To wallow is to forget everything except how you feel right now. Just that.
My garden would grow slower than I’d like it to and I’d forget about it, so I’ll watch a film tonight and ask myself what it means. That information, a sequence of 0s and 1s, will tell me what I need to know, what I need to have learned while living, what a life is. I do not understand computer programming beyond the birds-eye evaluation that it is a series of logics. Programs are comprehensive logics, but I’m sure they can be artful in their arrangement. Do programmers introduce flourishes? Or is beautiful programming an international style—as clear as a Glass House.
A bird lands on a yearning branch outside of my kitchen window, and I wonder what the bird chooses to look at. What does it see inside of my hovel? Does it realize that I’m learning? And I can enact that knowledge in the morning, when the horizon is new and life has added “day to day”. The sun may be hot; the inky night waylaid.
Cumulus clouds were named as such because they look like piles, which is the meaning of the Latin cumulus. These flat-bottomed, puffy-topped accumulations (accumulation, like cumulus, like pile, like heap) are the precursors to other kinds of clouds. When the cumulus cloud transforms, sometimes its new state is less stable. Something wicked this way comes, or something glorious. The anticipation of the rain seeps into the corners and cracks of a life. Shall I bring an umbrella? Yes, I’ll have my coffee black.
Reminded of Mark Boyle, of The Boyle Family, I told myself last week that I want to feel everything. In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Mark Boyle said that he remembers being young and wanting to feel everything because that’s what life was. I decided that I felt the same way. “This is all part of it”, he would remind himself. But push came to shove! I’d rather feel nothing at all, I think. To hell with all of these feelings chaining me to a hazy ocean floor. The cinder block is under the sand. I’d rather watch a film and learn about sadness in 0s and 1s than suffer through this oppression. When the sand is swept away, I can still learn. Seeing and studying.
The garden isn’t ready yet in the backyard. There’s no soil and we don't have any pots.
The horizon is hopeful and instructive. The day ends and here I am. Tomorrow I will be once again, and I’ll have more strength, more energy.
Originally appeared in “ACCOMPANIMENT”, a publication designed and edited by Aidan Larned for CROWDED SPACE Theatre Company’s debut production of “ENGLAND” by Tim Crouch.