Our house is a very, very, very fine house, as the first line goes in a song by Crosby Stills Nash and Young. It appeared in an era when stability in thought and behaviour was being swept away. 1970 was when the counterculture of the sixties had already matured. And to sing about a house with two cats in the yard was a strange thing. How could anyone sing about certainty and stability in the face of the chaos in the minds of a generation. The idea of singing that life used to be so hard and now everything is easy ’cause of you. Well, it seemed impossible.
Houses West And East
A man told me once that the Moorish attitude to homes was to make the outside modest. The door to the street would be small and inconspicuous. Just one of many similar doors along a street. On entering there would be a quadrangle, perhaps with a fountain, and a covered walkway around the rooms. The luxury would be on the inside.
He said the European or Western style was for a house to shout out how big and grand and important it was. A very fine house on the outside but not inside where life is lived.
I don’t know whether I buy that entirely, but it touches a nerve. It says that the real life is inside in the small things that make up the day. The interior life is what makes a very find house.
A Very Fine House
I’ll light the fire, you place the flowers
In the vase that you bought today
Staring at the fire for hours and hours
While I listen to you play your love songs
All night long for me, only for me
Driveway
Driveway (the card featured here) is a card for every day featuring a grand stone building against a solid blue sky with overhanging trees and a driveway flanked by shrubs. The driveway says it all – a house that commands its own entrance.