When I make things with my hands a difference kind of sense gets made.  It is not 'better than' just 'different to'. People who do not make things don't really understand how difficult it can be, making things is sometimes taken for granted.  At other times when people really need something making it gets valued. Yet we in the first, developed, global South, would rather pay children to sweat and assemble our throw away ephemera. Unless of course if it's artisan cheese carving, crafted by bearded-bald-hipsters and sold from a 1970's caravan.

There is a craft to writing and a craft to making, words and wood are cut and hewn to shapes that fit together and support structures, pirate ships and texts.  My brain works in modes, the space between my ears that cannot remember where I fitted the support beam, so every time  I walk to my car I bang my head, has to switch between modes or both writing and making feel clumsy.  That's why I haven't written here for a while, because the craft of writing requires an attention and a spirit.  It's probably more important that I concentrate on making for a while as if this writing has holes in it nobody except me will care, the pirate ship however will need to be water tight and ship shape.

This is my favorite quote from Heidegger.  I say balls to all your New Materialism and Carnal Knowledge.  Heidegger is described by Hanna Ardent (his former partner) as a child when it comes to totalitarian regimes but he captures making and thinking well here;

Building and thinking are, each in its own way, inescapable for dwelling.  The two, however, are also insufficient for dwelling so long as each busies its self with its own affairs in separation, instead of listening to the other.  They are able to listen if both...belong to dwelling, if they remain within their limits and realise that the one as much as the other comes from the long workshop of long experience and incessant practice.

(Heidegger 1962: p. 362; see also Latimer and Munro 2009).