05/07/2025
Emma from .the.manor again! When I was eating a little breakfast orange this morning it occurred to me that I should tell you an aspect of how I *think* when I am curating the elements of what we make.
I get a lot of inspiration from things that are ubiquitous or ordinary. A fruit in the morning. A plastic chair. A glass block window. When I engage with the ordinary, I open myself to romance, always. I approach romance with object and substance the same way I would with people, mainly by questions. I do not ask of things “is this beautiful?” I ask “HOW is this beautiful, in what ways am I attracted to it, how am I connected to it and how is it connected to me?”
Oranges are inherently romantic, erotic even, in their weight, shape, touch-ability, their natural inclination to be something that is shared. I can push myself further by changing how I eat it. Have you ever put an orange in the fridge about a half hour before taking a shower, and then bringing it with you and eating the cold orange in a steamy hot shower? You should. You can rip into it, you can ignore the segments and let it explode in your hands and drip down your wrists, you can let the smell whirl around you and you can let the peel drop to the floor, the heat expressing the oils until you and the orange are layered— you are inside and outside of it. Romance is easy with an orange.
The ordinary is romantic once you expand your language and strategies for love. I’m pulled toward things like the Herman Miller Eames chairs that so many of us grew up sitting on in elementary school, or the monobloc chairs that leave deep grooves in our bare thighs in summertime. The romance for me lies in its ubiquity, probably because every single object we touch contains a human element, but the human element is so humble that it has allowed itself to shrink over time for the sake of utility. How beautiful.
…continued in comments.
