Eureka!

For whatever reason, I hadn’t looked through the house to see the window or through the window to see where I was headed before I got there. Once there and looking back, the row of now-classic mid-century modern furniture re-populated the bare house visible through the window in the gallery wall. Voila! I got it.

Well beyond halfway through the exhibit, closer to two-thirds, I still didn't fully grasp that I was watching the birth of modernism. I read the passages on the walls (well, most— ok, some of them). About artists making art for everyone in forms that could be brought into the home; revealing the extraordinary inside of simple objects by somehow simplifying them further. I learned to appreciate the depth of work, of ideas and of craftsmanship. Deep, but stark, uncomplicated. But, largely uneducated in design history, I didn't see this coming. 

After the lightbulb flicked on (Modernism!), my second thought turned to my travel partner, my husband, a studied designer and lover of the very work and ideas set out for us here. He must have seen all along where we’d end up. How thrilling, the anticipation. And yet, what skill, to lead me down this path, pushing me forward into this room, where I could look back through that long window and finally understand. “Une aventure moderne,” n’est-ce pas? 

Snip. I tried to capture the view with the small computer in my pocket, creating my chief memory of the museum visit, and moved on. 

Two months later, that same digital doodad sat quiet on a long high-top island table in the tasting room of a sizable regional brewery. About a foot away was the doodad of that brewery’s owner. So much in this world is so complicated; things we use every day, all the time are, theoretically speaking, out of reach, he told me, gesturing to our doodads. I’ll never understand the combination of programming and engineering required to make this thing work, he said. So few will. 

It’s not just phones, I agreed, taking a sip from the array of tiny glasses he put before me, a small sample of the couple-few dozen beers available at the time. So much of what we use daily feels so unknowable. We just brush the surface. 

That night, I’d lean against the door frame between a friend’s kitchen and living room as she leaned opposite me, on the threshold between the kitchen and bathroom, as we commiserated about how out of hand our own digital existences had gotten. My Facebook is a total shit-show, I remember telling her. I know if I organize it, file friends and choose favorites, it would work better for me. But who’s got time for all that once their digital histories become so tangled? 

At the tasting room table, the owner and I ticked off other things that felt too complicated to comprehend. Politics, obviously. At once endlessly, off-puttingly complex, endlessly, boundlessly impactful and endlessly, aggressively engrossing. Finances, both personal and global, feel sticky, I think flicking through Reddit each morning. No wonder there’s so much karma available to those who can Explain [the world to me] Like I’m 5. So much appreciation available to an insightful thread that weaves together an array of thoughts into a cohesive whole. That crystallizes, boils down and distills. That makes something infinitely complex easy and knowable. This crazy complicated thing may be ubiquitous, but I don’t have the time or energy to put in all the work needed to get my arms all the way around it. I wanna get it, I do. And I appreciate that in its totality there’s a lot more to it. But shrink it, won’t you? Quickly, basically: what’s happening here? 

The popularity of such posts reflects a desire to learn, I choose to think: a respect for those who work to parse the complexity and a humility too, an understanding of our own limitations, blind spots or biases. 

But I also fear the trap of craving that ease. And I fear the tools that satisfy those cravings, that invite me to settle into efficiency for its own sake. The doodads that put the world in my pocket and the hot takes that burn away the difficult details. “You have no hope of grasping this,” they whisper. A subtext that tells me to stop grasping, stop reaching, stop trying. Urges me into a dehumanizing shrug. “Je pense, donc je suis,” and all that.

More hope though: I don’t seem to be the only one drawn to particular r/ELI5 responses or Twitter threads that break that pattern. That don’t dumb down, don’t just knock off all the sharp edges or squeeze out juicy bits to make something vastly complex more digestible. We seek those instead that boil down, that provide a window back into the twists and turns that led us to where we are. 

Back in the brewery’s tasting room, its owner’s gesturing again reaches over the sampling of ales and lagers he set out for me, each subject to hours of planning and tinkering, boiling and bubbling. Visiting a small brewery can do this, he told me. By providing a glimpse at the process, quickly explaining the equipment used and the ingredients needed, brewery visits can flick on a lightbulb: Beer! I get it.

Maybe, in part at least, that’s what we’re seeking. And keep seeking: a window into the infinite complications that lead to something so simple and ubiquitous. Because it sets off a chain reaction of curiosity, a hunger not to simplify but to transform the infinite into the knowable. 

Maybe we’re just mesmerized by the twists and turns of the pipes and the packaging lines, visible through the window in the tasting room wall that reaches over our sampling of small glasses, lined up, one by one for our carefully framed Instagram posts. 

Not every time, but when I encounter a particularly exceptional example of mid-century modern furniture — where the grain of the wood slopes in an elegant curve, supported at just the right angle by the floor; or where strips of color slide unevenly across each other to form a vibrant, yet inviting array — I remember that view through the gallery wall on the top floor of that museum in Paris. And I think of the rich history and hours of investigation that must have led to that chair or that pattern. And I wonder about what else I don’t yet know. What other windows wait to reveal the world’s tangles?