The Hammock

I started writing this at least a year ago. It’s taken this long not just because of unspeakable incompetence, but it’s maybe, just maybe, that important.

Whilst I consider writing about a bunch of string that holds my fat ass off the ground roughly four times a year and generally by the seaside to be an honourable challenge, once the school year starts again and any possibility of joy or rest is squeezed out of the already dead husk of my life, I stop thinking about these things. This is a brutally seasonal item and one intimately associated with quiet and rest. So basically the opposite of my life. Outside of those rare, reclined moments, I’ve generally been inclined to say, “fuck hammocks.”

This was all until two years ago when I started working with this dude who was in a hammock on every video call I was on with him. There he lay somewhere in rural Ecuador suspended likely by an intricately hand woven lattice made from some awesome jungle fibre made from a combination of really big spiders and some plant that can kill you and is stronger than steel. This having video calls with ultra-deep tech people from said hammock endlessly fascinated me. That is because he was actually working from the hammock. This is antithetical to what the hammock stands for and against everything a hammock is. It’s positively, morally wrong. The hammock is a leisure device and this should be enforced with violence or at least public chiding. Maybe a vulgar, ironic pun or something. There needs to be lines that rope-based furniture does not cross.

From afar, meaning on the other side of a window from outside, a hammock always looks like a good idea. It curves down and draws the eye to the pile of empties. The affordances are majestic to say the least. To say its generous in function for the economy of form would belittle this chilling machine. We have some shitty one we got for like €32 at Decathlon which I hate and which’s default form is an annoying twist no matter how long you mess with it. Yet, I still want to rest my weary soul in this cradle of forceful relaxation. This is what grates me about working from one of these. It should be illegal.

Hammocks are awkward, yet still so inviting. The hammock demands that you throw tons of empty cans of beer from it. The gracious, default position is reclining and not having to do shit, because you are essentially trapped in its warm embrace. It’s not a bed which is easy to get in and out of. The ergonomics laugh at you. You’re squished. But it insists on drinks and its design forces throwing the empties because you’re not getting out of that thing to be all neat and tidy. I’m pretty sure Dieter Rams wrote about this at length.