Steampunk Skills

In my heart, I still really prefer a steampunk that is a lot more "punk" than "steam."


Available here.

I don't think that things need to be dripping in gears (or octopi) to be steampunk.  The "purist" view is that it's not steampunk unless it's functional; I'm not sure I ascribe to that either.  I like the William Morris standpoint on the technology vs. aesthetic thing: "Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or feel to be beautiful."  To me, it naturally follows that either is good but both is best.

Nor is steampunk just a "look" to me, though there's definitely some level of know-it-when-I-see-it going on here with the clothing and accessories.  As an iteration of punk, it's a mindset and an aesthetic.

Primarily, the mindset is characterized by the oft-calligraphied Japanese phrase "onkochishin": "Honor the past to create the new."  It's a looking backwards to solve the evils of now and recreate the present; it's looking at the world and saying, "You know?  We don't have to break this to remake it.  We can have science and responsibility and wonder.  They can become the same thing again.  We can save the world by changing our ways, not by eschewing them."

(Please allow me a moment to be a Lord of the Rings fanatic: "He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of reason," Gandalf advised us.  And while Papa Tolkien is no doubt revolving in his grave to have me say it:  That applies to the technological lifestyle too.  We don't have to destroy either the ways of the past or the ways of now to understand them, nor to improve them.)

The steampunk culture looks to the past and incorporates it in order to celebrate it  -- which is almost universal; the only reason it's settled on neo-Victorian is because that's where/when our society's cultural memory says, "This is when science and beauty and romance and heroism and practicality could all be realistic concepts at the same time."  It's really not about a particular time period.  It's about recreating the useful and the beautiful in one another's image to create a world that both looks and works well.

This isn't to say there isn't harsh, gritty steampunk alongside the elegant gleam.  The wisdom of the culture lies not in its settings but in its meanings -- in what it takes as its heroes.

Consequently, while I can't mod my technology and I don't drive a steam-powered hovercraft, these are the things I consider my "steampunk skills":

1. I can use a number of hand tools.  My adeptness with pliers and wirework allows me to modify things to suit the situation, which I consider the simple and simplistic basis of technological skill.
2. I can make my own bread.  I'm no expert, but I have a basic understanding of how, scientifically, leavening works.  Not only do I use unbleached flours, I can also tell you exactly how bleaching works and what compound I object to in bleached flours.  I think it's important to be skilled in a few of the things which technology makes obsolete.
3. I attempt to follow the businessman's etiquette of the turn of the century, because these are rules old enough to read as elegant manners but recent enough to be relevant -- and relatively unchanged.  Though ladies' behavior until very, very recently was all about maintaining the appearance of chastity and submission, the gentleman's code of behavior is about -- in the words of the Sting song: modesty, propriety, tenderness, sobriety -- and making one's interactions with others both smooth and pleasurable for them.  An archaic concept if there ever was one, I'm afraid.
4. I dress carefully.  I also shop at thrift stores and delight in clearance racks.  And I do both of these things at once.  I believe that reuse and thrift, "make do and mend," are among those skills of the past that should be used to improve the present and ensure the future; I also believe that fit, suitability and appropriateness are meaningful even when one is dressing to stand out.  Careful choices make for an air of respect and maturity.
5. I always wear shoes in which I can be functional.  On weekends, this might mean waterproof, mudproof, scuffable combat boots; at work, this might mean heels of four inches or less with round toes.  It's all situational.
6. When I need a lightbulb changed or the dishwasher rack set back on its track, I damn well change or adjust it myself.  Dependency upon others for these tasks is one of the things that I feel we must part with.

I now feel like I'm listing my qualifications for a nonexistent job, with that same vague embarrassment.  But the point is -- this is how I choose to live by the principles of steampunk even when the only gear in sight is glued to a Hello Kitty gumpaste on Regretsy.