It has always fas­ci­nated me how seem­ingly triv­ial things can trig­ger one’s mem­ory on a dime and trans­port you to another time or place in an instant– hid­den snap­shots of one’s life pep­pered through­out our daily com­ings and goings.

This morn­ing, pay­ing bills at my desk and watch­ing the rain pour down, iTunes sur­prised me with a mem­ory jolt– a musi­cal time machine back to col­lege:

This song always pro­pels me back in time to a rainy night in Pitts­burgh– bib­li­cal rain, soak­ing you to the bone and wait­ing on Car­son Street for the 54C back to Oak­land. The expe­ri­ence or night holds no sig­nif­i­cance to my present life, no new char­ac­ters came into my life that night, no pro­found obser­va­tions were made on that day, the rain did not cat­alyze any­thing other than hail­ing a taxi and yet it remains as a warm and vivid mem­ory: Crum­pled up in an old leather jacket, wait­ing beneath a street light flip­ping through sketch­books with the other reg­u­lar from my cof­feeshop (who was also wait­ing for the over­due bus), wet licorice streets, head­lights exag­ger­ated by raindrops…

It seems strange to me that such an insignif­i­cant moment in my life remains so firmly imprinted upon my mem­ory and yet it does.

What ran­dom moments are firmly implanted in your mem­ory, dear readers?

When I was an under­grad in design school , I was one of the weak­est draw­ing stu­dents among my peers our fresh­man year. My pro­fes­sors, patient and inspir­ing though they were, seemed to remain con­cerned about my weak­nesses in the fields of draw­ing and craft; it was the final pin-up dis­cus­sions at which I shone.

When the sec­ond semes­ter of my fresh­man year came along and my draw­ing skills still fell short of my peers, one of my pro­fes­sors, who held a master’s in draw­ing, pulled me aside and gave me some advice. He gave me a few tips on how to improve the qual­ity of my work, but above all advo­cated sim­ply for prac­tice. One of the exer­cises he rec­om­mended was to draw sim­ple shapes over and over again– to draw until they were com­ing out of my ears. By so doing, I would be train­ing my hands to be more skilled at qual­ity of line and form. So for weeks I drew obses­sively– cir­cles, squares, cones, pyra­mids, tri­an­gles, lines, lines, lines; it was the mad hatter’s geom­e­try and it was explod­ing inside my sketchbooks.

By the time I grad­u­ated with my BFA, I was selected as the designer of the year, so some­thing must have clicked along the way; the mad hatter’s geom­e­try had pushed me fur­ther. Today, sim­ple forms like those from my professor’s exer­cise tend to creep into the mar­gins of my sketch­books and meet­ing notes– an uncon­scious habit, it now seems.

When I came across the above video from the Design Coun­cil, one of the first things that came to mind was that exer­cise of draw­ing sim­ple shapes over and over and over.

Why be good when you can be bet­ter? What do you wish you could do bet­ter, dear read­ers? And how do you plan on get­ting there?

Recently, I’ve been on the prowl for new music. An odd side tan­gent to this exer­cise, has been an ongo­ing game with an old friend from col­lege wherein he quotes a song lyric, and I’m sup­posed to pick-up the song from that line or two. It’s fun, but what’s fun­nier is that we spent years together as col­leagues, lost touch after school but stayed friends like every­one from our under­grad­u­ate stu­dio group (a group of peo­ple who are more fam­ily than just a bunch of kids in a work room) and have never really talked much since school. Now all these years later we’re trad­ing lyrics, songs and mixes.

In my semi-High Fidelity state of mind, weav­ing musi­cal mixes in the back of my head, I’m left won­der­ing what untasted sound morsels (or bites if you pre­fer puns) are out there– what am I miss­ing? Tell me, dear read­ers, what sort of music have you been lis­ten­ing to lately? What are your favorite finds of the past year? And what are your obscure favorites?

Build­ing on an ear­lier theme of friends and for­mer class­mates, today I thought I’d share the fab­u­lous work of another buddy from my col­lege days at Carnegie Mel­lon. When I think about it, the CMU con­nec­tion theme could eas­ily become a fea­ture unto itself on Aman­daMuses, but we’ll just see, I guess…

Any­way, Josh Urso, another prod­uct of the Carnegie Mel­lon Design pro­gram, pro­duces stun­ning fur­ni­ture in his New Jer­sey stu­dio. Since the open­ing of his design stu­dio in 2002, Josh con­tin­ues to pro­duce items that explore the lim­i­ta­tions of mate­r­ial and struc­ture. His work, inspired by mechan­i­cal processes and new mate­ri­als, inspires curios­ity and a play­ful enjoy­ment of daily life.

I love his Ant Farm lights and Knoop tables, and of course the incred­i­ble Specter chair– I remem­ber Josh’s pro­to­type senior year in col­lege watch­ing the evo­lu­tion of this amaz­ing object come to life. He took limp cloth and made it live with resin and sheer inven­tive brilliance.

It has been many years since I have been in touch with Josh, but from the look of his Web site, he is doing splendidly.

Images: Josh Urso Design

Recently, my dear friend, Wendy, pointed me in the direc­tion of a mutual friend from col­lege. We stud­ied together at Carnegie Mel­lon with far too many tal­ented peo­ple to count in a sin­gle post. Among those tal­ented folks who I call friends and class­mates is Ms. Laura Wet­zel, the designer behind Cerca Jew­elry.

Work­ing with mod­ern mate­ri­als like cop­per, glass, rub­ber, and sil­ver Laura’s work catches the eye with a crisp design edge that can only be described as con­tem­po­rary. Here is a peek at some of her beau­ti­ful pieces:

Punc­tu­a­tion Pen­dant by Cerca Jewelry

Sicura cuff by Cerca Jewelry

Flash­back ban­gle by Cerca Jewelry

Con­tra bracelet by Cerca Jewelry

Her work is avail­able online through Etsy.com, go check out her shop!

Images: Cerca Jew­elry