Wednesday location: Seven || 7:50 am – 8:50 pm
- Design: Last two days for Seven Cycles’ 2013 brochure. Wrapping up bios, some design details, final text editing. Final proofing tomorrow and Friday. Too many words – nearly all of them really good.
- Production Management: Working on flow leveling at Seven Cycles. So few people I know are interested – or understand – the importance of flow leveling. At Seven it’s particularly tricky because every single frameset is completely unique; this tends to defy the directive of flow leveling. Examples: we’ll build a titanium/carbon ‘cross frame and then a titanium tandem and then a belt drive steel mountain 650b, and then a tri-specific Diamas SLX and then a… All of these bikes wreak havoc on systems that prefers consistency; nearly any system prefers consistency – that’s embedded in the definition of a system, in some ways. Endless variables for which to account:
- How many hours each step in the process takes?
- What are the material requirements?
- What features and options?
- Paint?
- Who’s working on the frameset?
- And on, and on
- Note: This morning we – some people at Seven Cycles – discussed history and it’s misrepresentation. Winston Churchill said, “History is written by the victors.” I used to believe this because it was very 1984, and, well, seems reasonably logical. I now know that history is written by those that write. This sounds stupid but I see that all the time in the bike industry. Who did what first, and who designed what. So often that rewriting of history has nothing to do with what really happened. I saw something written about Merlin Metalworks recently by someone that wasn’t there, and was completely wrong, and now it’s “true history” for some people, somewhere. The irony is that life is short; no one likes a correcter – particularly when self-interest may be in play. So, history becomes that which is written by those that wanna write something interesting – whether the idea of fact checking is too daunting or not.
- Question: What’s wrong with using ellipsis? I must consult the Chicago Manual of Style. That’s what John L. uses so that’s what I’m ‘using’ now.
- Note: I need to look at good pictures for a while. Visuals pull me back into the work.
Post title: from Martin Klimas.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Although I agree on your simple phrase that “History is written by those who write” let’s put a social-critical lens on this statement.
History is written by those with power. Those with power are educated, wealthy, and therefore have the time, space, and energy to write. Hence why history, along with all that encompasses it (art, literature, war) has historically been written and twisted by white men within a pro-capitalist, westernized context. What do histories look like from the eyes of those that fall outside of this category? The “not-so-victorious” if you will.
A feminist objective worldwide is to unearth, write and celebrate “her-stories” that go unnoticed.
I find “history” and the ease and speed at which we can eradicate and change it fascinating. There is no truth, only different perspectives.
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