Order vs. Chaos

I don't always know what style of rope I am most drawn to. Sometimes I admire clean, spare lines and ties. They craft elegance out of simplicity. But these are the ones that frustrate me the most, eluding my understanding despite how straightforward they seem.

On the other end, I adore messy, chaotic ties, twisting bodies into grotesque dolls thrown about in a storm of rope. Webs and tangles, yet a sense underlying all of it. I marvel at seemingly sloppy ties that coalesce into function. My messiness, on the other hand, falls apart without form to guide it.

All I can do is study and practice both. It is not enough to tie (not that I tie enough, at all), but I think I need to study, the same way any artist or craftsman would: by looking at their inspirations and analyzing them.

So, one rigger or video a week. Take an hour or two to pick through their Fetlife, take notes, really look at what's happening in their pictures. I want to watch performances so I can analyze transitions as they happen (since so many performances are suspensions). Observe, annotate, maybe imitate, and somewhere along the way, my own style will come forward a little more.

Current goals:

-- Transitions. Want to do a facedown-torsion-inversion transition, possibly ending with a futo tsuri.
--Work on suspendable lotus tie.
-- Experiment with unusual positions in partials for play -- where the weight is, the pressure, the tension, how to play with their balance for effect.
-- Go out and play!