Theory vs Practice

In recent years, the attention given to city infrastructure and “terrain vague” conditions has reached a boiling point. This has constituted a kind of worldwide panoply of freeway architecture- not only in theses but in the chic world of high-gloss car-commercial starchitecture. We have buildings next to the freeway, buildings under the freeway, buildings over the freeway, buildings for the freeway, and particularly, buildings that mimic the freeway. Programs that were never meant to be linear are stretched to the breaking point. Asphalt, as it was in Gehry’s house, is now not only a material but a critique.

It is astounding that, given this seemingly universal concentration in the profession, that none of the innovation has traveled into the realm of the lay city. Other infrastructure has been reclaimed readily—docks, piers, canals, warehouses, aqueducts, power plants—but these are not only usually scenic to begin with but almost always derelict. Freeways, on the other hand, not only lack the romantic quality of an industrial ruin, but are already occupied, and hostile or even deadly to occupation.

The actual practice of freeway architecture seems currently to be one of camouflage. Cities that can afford to simply put them under the ground. Cities that can’t have found ever-better ways to screen them away, from murals and sound-walls to new greenery. This vast divide between theory and practice deserves investigation. The vast majority of sub-freeway rehabilitations are borderline failures. If we do not codify and evaluate existing strategies, no real innovation will take place in 99% of the relevant urban conditions. Not every city can afford a “big dig”.

What if it has been all wrong? What if these spaces are not only habitable but pleasant? Why, in all of the bluster about reversing CIAM urbanism, has nobody made a case for the inclusion of infrastructure in mixed-use zoning? And why on earth can’t we reverse freeway tropes, and create a space that unifies and delights? Underpasses are high-traffic, well-known, pre-roofed areas that are owned out-right by the public. They exist in every city in the world. And they are the greatest fallow urban resource we have.

houston nesting pt2: application

Engineered infrastructure is not often designed for its aesthetic
qualities. In striving for a local efficiency, these structures' forms
are produced almost incidentally-- or at the very least not in
accordance with aesthetic demands.

For most systems, their effect is diffused by being difficult to
access or hidden behind screens (or under the ground), but in some
cases necessity or shee size demands that they be placed in a
relatively "open" space. If these systems are also linear, they
produce a pervasive, inevitable and some what uncontrollable effect
upon a city.

The traditional model for interfacing with infrastructure has been one
of separation and screening, leading often to a quixotic denial of
their urban presence. This also forces these linear systems into
boundary roles, dividing a city into distinct regions (fig 1).

However, given the long history of engineering and urbanism coexisting
or eveing being mutually catalytic (aqueducts trade routes canals
rail lines etc) a more inclusive method must exist.

:::Analogy:::

A tree's form is deterministic much as a freeway or bayou's is; the
various requirements of sunlight, water, soil and wind qualify the
locations of leaves, branches and roots. Despite this, forests form
less of a horizontal barrier than a verticial delimination of multiple
ecologies (fig 2), where canopy, sub canopy, and forest floor are made
into viable habitats through the intermediate form of a nest-- a
sub-assembly that corrects or augments the deficiencies of the
immediate environment to produce a viable home.

What would this nest be for humans be, if it was not in the forest but
under the freeway, and not for habitation but for recreation?

houston nesting pt1: a sense of place

This is output for a research project I've been working on with Katy and Jean. We were discussing with Clover Lee possibilites for creating a compendium of Houston ad-hoc urbanism and she told us we weren't allowed to use the phrase "sense of place" without defining what it mean, in Houston. This is what I came up with, in three parts:

1. Main Narrative

In Houston, place is not created out of a physical homogeneity or
dominant spatial characteristic; rather it emerges out of a shifting
array of collusions between program and what Lars Lerup calls
"megastructures"-- part infrastructure, part ecosystem. These
multivalent operators create space in ways more geological or
ecological than traditionally urban. In this way Houston can be viewed
as a landscape rather than as a city. Edges are blurred, as the
immediate situation is determined by the combination/collusion of
these megastructures: the freeways, plantings, vacant lots, and ad-hoc
use networks, along with even the prevalent humidity and drainage
problems-- a more elemental than sociological awareness.


2. Operators / Megastructures

LINEAR INFRASTRUCTURES
freeways (bridged and trenched) bayous main drags train right of ways
tunnels sewers

ECOLOGIES
swamps live oak canopies weeds cut lawns anthills city parks stray dogs

POINT LOADS
skyscrapers vacant lots megabuildings/complexes (stadiums + churches)
parking lots

USE DISTRICTS
museums tattoo parlors coffee shops business districts entertainment
shopping education civic

WEATHER
rain haze flood smoke heat chill/damp



3. Subsequent Definition: the Manipulation of Accessible Space

Nearly all space in Houston can be defined as private. However, there
are allowances. These range from the open (Menil) to the highly
perscriptive (the Galleria). However, there are always backwaters
within these systems of access, urban liminal zones with an ambiguous
sense of ownership-- someone is surely watching, but do they care? The
characterization of space by its mode of survallience and control has
replaced the notion of civic discourse through open public spaces.
This is not only in Houston. Even in more traditionally urban cities
such as New York, city parks and streets are policed and controlled
more tightly and delicately than ever before, reducing the idea of the
"public" to another nuance of access control. The traditional notion
of a "free space," in our fearful and litigious society, may have
become totally apocryphal.


Up next: pulling apart a moment?

post-nuptials

So there have been no posts to this website since july. I'm going to go ahead and cop out and say this is because I was planning and carrying out a wedding for the last six months, but I'm sure my own inertia had quite a bit do do with that. So before I digress, a few words on marriage:

1. The phrase "emotional roller-coaster" is redundant. Honestly, what you are buying when you get a ticket for a roller-coaster is emotion. Boredom, anticipation, fear, excitment and nostalgic depression, in about that order. So really, what I experienced over the last few months leading up to the Big Day was simply a non-kinetic roller coaster-- an expensive one, but one that lasted for a very long time (and had a pretty awesome giant hill and loop-de-loop at the end.) And the first thing you want to do after it's done? Do it again, of course.

2. I didn't really feel Sunday Post, family-sitcom married for a little while after the actual wedding. The moment when it finally settled in was, in retrospect, typical. Like lots of people that are fairly picky and nerdy about pop music, I'm a sucker for a sappy love song. I'm convinced that people can't really get obsessed with an art from unless it has a somewhat primal, uncontrollable lock on their emotional state. Movies can't really make me cry. Otis Redding can. The song in question here was quite possibly the most red-faced, snot-on-your sleeve blubbering piece of guitar-and-vocals that exists on this planet. I'm not going to invoke the name, but suffice it to say that it was written by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. I'm pretty sure this guy cries putting his socks on in the morning. We (my wife and I) were picking appropriately emotional music for our wedding video. We settled on half Ray Charles, half Death Cab, figuring that if people didn't get it out of one of those barrels, the other one would have them covered. The trifecta was finished by a Willie Nelson coda. The combined emotion of all of these songs, picked out whilst sharing a desk chair with my new wife, my dog at my side, lights low, was about as close as I will get to Norman Rockwell subject matter. It was unabashedly wholesome, and while I am putting a somewhat snide tone on it now, at the time I am proud to say I felt no irony whatsoever. Right then I knew I was married, and that it was a good thing.

what they like about LA

My move to Los Angeles was initially isolated and singular. The universe shrank quickly to a loose network of home improvement and furnishing stores, with the house in the center, a house that took up at least ninety of my first hundred hours in the city. The only smells were of the floor finish and new upholstery and bleach, the sounds of passing traffic, clattering diesel delivery trucks and the clamor of the elementary school across the street. Los Angeles was not a location as much as a field across which we foraged to find the necessary items to complete our move. The city was undifferentiated save for traffic and the point locations of easy left turns. I abandoned strategic understanding for a tactical knowledge, always what was coming next and how to expedite my immediate needs. I became almost feral, if domesticity can be feral.

Four days later Katy’s brother stopped by to see the place and eat dinner. Dinner was eaten out, lending a new possible use for these streets and intersections—enjoyment. I had not even considered the possibility that we could go anywhere else but back home when Chris suggested we drive around and get a feel for the neighborhood. Thus, in the backseat and four days late, I got to see a little bit of L.A.

We took the PCH to Topanga canyon drive, cutting the luminous dark where the coast meets the asphalt. Viewing Venice from Malibu was like seeing it from space—a slowly revolving and changing collection of disembodied lights, sliding without reference. A single right turn reversed my existence, and now the entire world was a set of taillights, and whatever shreds of foliage and stucco was visible in the penumbra of our headlights. This was slow going, as we were stuck behind an aging Jeep Grand Cherokee, but abruptly we crested the hill and I was treated, unexpecting, to one of the great stereotypes of Los Angeles Driving: a panoramic grid of lights, extending into the horizon.

My first thoughts were of Spielberg movies, with golden retrievers and Eucalyptus, but I got over that quickly. By now we were descending, and after another quick right we were on the 405, and then we were back in the city. Things were moving faster than I could process them, and things seemed suddenly, comfortably, out of control. The complexity of things around me became apparent, as an extension of the complexity of the drive, with the traffic, billboards, and multiplying exits. This expanding awareness of multiplicity made other cities seem cartoonish, simple, and old. In thirty seconds, I had been introduced to the center of what people like about this city.

my image is on my head

I've needed a haircut for weeks now. I was calculating in my delay, as I wanted to appear older for my first day at work and perhaps gain more responsibility, but this backfired. My new office, despite the surf club and lax dress code, decidedly favors spiky bedhead, buzzcuts, and even the occasional faux-hawk. Hair on some appears fastidiously arranged, perhaps for reasons loosely grounded in zen or feng-shui. Always self-conscious, I have decided to mend my head.

Like many people, I find haircuts to be uniquely and acutely traumatic. For me, this has little to do with appearence, although the language associated with describing a particular coiffure still evades me and causes the same kind of anxiety that others must experience with car mechanics and computer helpline personnel. I attempt to request the same thing every time, but I have never managed the same result twice. The most stress-free haircut I ever recieved was in Paris, where an almost total language barrier meant forced me to select my haircut from a matrix of male heads printed on a laminated card. I pointed to the one that looked most like the french me. "That one," I said slowly, "cette personne."

However, the true reason I experienced no anxiety that afternoon had nothing to do with results. I was perfectly calm not because I had managed to request something legibly, but that I knew that the next fifteen minutes could be nothing be silent. I was right, save for a single exchange, which I took to be a question about my origin. "Americain," I replied, and she nodded. My theory, from an empathetic standpoint, is that hairdressers are given immediate and intimate access to a client. For fifteen minutes they are given almost complete dominion over a stranger's head, running hands through their hair, pointing the face every which way, even occasionally peeking behind the ears or cleaning cuttings from a nostril. This kind of power, combined with sheer boredom, is what I suppose gives rise to the quick, surgical investigation into my human situation every time I sit in a hydraulic chair. At the dentist, one can hide behind unintelligability, but at the salon you must respond in kind. I find this instant comraderie to be universally nerve-wracking.

This time was no different. Simple observations on the thickness and length of my hair gave way to questions about my day, and suddenly I was being asked "so, have you been to the fair?" By this, she meant the Del Mar Fair, which I had not been to because I live in Los Angeles, and was merely in the area visiting Katy's parents. No, I said, and in response she asked me if my friends had all gone without me. In the interest of brevity I agreed. Yes, I said, they had all gone because I was out of town, and I didn't want to go by myself. This half lie then led to others, such as what I had been doing instead of going to the fair (visting relatives) and if my friends would go back (I was sure they would before it closed). We finished this almost entirely false conversation by discussing my favorite parts of the fair, which were apparently cotton candy and the music.

The funny thing about this is that inventing an alternate self in front of another person was actually kind of enjoyable. I am a bad liar, but the immediate need to answer these questions allowed me, for reasons of expediency, to order up a different past and personality along with my new hairdo. I was now local. I had lots of (perhaps uncaring) friends, and I was a huge fan of the dusty sweatstorm that is the Del Mar Fair. And, falsity intact, I paid and left. I tipped well, but couldn't, for reasons of tact, explain exactly why. I just left it unsaid that I had gotten an excellent haircut.

Eulogy 3: For Jessica Elisabeth DeWarner, as told by Jeffery Montovia

Hi. You don’t know me. My name is Jeff Montovia. Accent’s on the toe, not the vi-a. Three syllables, not like the preacher said it.

I was in the crash with Jessica. She was in 21C. I was 34F. There were 56 people on flight 488, and 34 of us survived. After everything calmed down, we, the survivors, got together and kinda drew straws to get 22 people, to send one to each funeral. To let them know what it was like in the end, you know, in case there were any questions. Like tying up loose ends.

I don’t really want to say that stuff up here, it’s pretty traumatic, I don’t want to get anybody crying. It’s pretty awkward, actually. I mean, I don’t even know if I saw Jessica on the plane. I don’t really know what to say. I’m a lot older than her, we don’t have that much in common. I mean, most of the pictures show her in her car or skiing. I walk to work and I’ve never seen snow, so…

Wait a second, let me start over.

I’m sure she was a great person. Or maybe not, I don’t know, I never met her. Maybe all you people hated Jessica. I dunno. I can’t say her life was “cut tragi-cally short” either, or any of that stuff in the paper. Maybe she woulda had a big skiing accident or crashed her car next month or something. I can’t see the future.

Now, wait a second here. Wait a second. Calm down, lady. I’m just gettin’ to the good part, here. Calm down.

Yeah? So what if I had a drink this morning? This is tough stuff here, lady. It’s tough. Y’ dunno …

Oh, yeah? Do you know what it’s like, what happened? Do you know? I’ll tell ya.

That stuff about your life flashing before your eyes, thass’ all bullshit anyways. This is what it’s like. Everything’s moving around, bouncing, and you got that thing, that orange cup thing? With the bag onnit? It’s strapped to your face. You can’t see anything. You donn’ wanna see anything. Nobody looks out the window. Butcha can hear it, right before it happens. It’s like right before god claps his hands, it’s like waiting, ya know? Right there. And you kinda hunch over, like this, see? And you close your eyes. Everyone does it. And get quiet, no praying, or anything. And it’s like right before you sleep, and you can’t tell how big anything is? Like your head’s a balloon and it’s inflating? And your eyes are closed, and you can feel them. Everyone. An’ they know you’re there, too. An’ everyone’s the same. All the same. Thass’ why I’m here. Not for Jessica whassername. Thass’ me in there. That’s me.

I don’t care what you wish, lady. Thass’ it. I’m gone.

Eulogy 2: For Richard Horner IV, as told by Richard Horner V.

As I am but one in many who want to say something here, I will keep this short. My father was a well-known and influential person, and I am sure that most of you here knew his public face very well. Others who are here can tell you more about his political and business life; everyone in town knows Richard the upstanding citizen and keen businessman. I don’t feel the need to expound on his gifts as a father; bromides about little league games and post-graduation advice are not a fitting way to memorialize this great man. It will suffice to say that he was old fashioned, strict, and generous in love and advice. I stand up here in awe of what my father has accomplished in his life. He died as he lived, a gentleman of business, passing away in his leather armchair as he read what must have been the fiftieth draft of his last will and testament.

I feel a need to augment his public image, however, as it’s difficult to grieve in more than a generic way for my father as Richard Horner IV, lawyer and senator for the great state of Iowa. The small booklet distributed at the door seems to be more effective in understanding his civic contributions than in conveying his essential humanity. Until a few days ago I was actually at a loss to find some anecdote or fact that would add to this public face without seeming maudlin or trite. However, examination of his estate revealed one startling secret that I will now share with you, as I am sure it reveals some hidden aspect of his character, even if that aspect is as yet enigmatic.

Father was not a reader of fiction. However, he knew the value of being informed, so the pile of work on his desk was more often than not crowned with some small volume about investing or managing or communication. When his fathers’ health was failing, these books were augmented with a few pamphlets and softcovers on Parkinson’s disease and cardiovascular health; after the funeral there was a small book on grieving properly. I once joked with my father that he should be writing books of advice rather than reading them. He just gave a small toothless smile and submitted something along the lines of “no man is an island.”

One of the more interesting items revealed in the audit of my fathers’ estate was an air-conditioned self-storage unit outside of town that contained several thousand self-help books and pamphlets. All of this literature has some evidence of use; some books are dog-eared while other books just have a few pages folded over for bookmarks.

Some of the choices, such as “Unnatural Leadership” and “Business Secrets of the Ivy League” seem fitting, if not a little bit odd. “Tax This! An Insider’s Guide To Standing Up To The IRS” is perhaps out of character, but at least fits into my expected bibliography. However, I cannot imagine my father reading “Power Eating: A Guide” or “Automotive Upholstery for Dummies,” let alone “How To Draw: Sexy Manga.” The entire gambit of the do-it-yourself industry appears to have been covered, from “Internal Cleansing: Revised 2nd Edition” to “Small Engine Repair.” Every imaginable hobby is described, from “Beginner’s Stamp Collecting” to “Fishing On the Edge.” There is also surprisingly little overlap. “Poker: Bad Beats & Lucky Draws” is the only book on that particular card game, but is right next to “Baccarat Secrets” and “Beat Her at Bridge.” There are about a dozen books on gardening, such as “The Rose Bible” and “No Rabbits NOW.” There is, however, only one book on computer programming, “PERL in a Nutshell.”

In addition to technical manuals, business secrets, and how-tos, there is also an entire wall devoted to the more traditional self-esteem and life choices kind of literature. This ranges from “The Hookup Handbook” to “Intuitive Thinking: a Sacred Faith,” to “Coaching the Artist Within.” This one-room personal library appears to have covered very nearly the entire realm of the self-help book. It can be seen, in a way, as a library of basic advice; nearly every hobby or problem or repair could be facilitated through a perusal of this collection.

I cannot for the life of me imagine these books helping my father in any regular fashion. He never, to my knowledge, utilized or conducted any process information he obtained from reading this library. I never saw him weeding or golfing or drawing cartoons. He was worthless at home repair, and was unfortunately cold as a father and husband.

I have one tentative explication. My father was a successful man, in part, because he figured out the rules to his particular world of law and politics, and learned how to exploit and then change them. He saw the entire world, in a way, as an extension of the laws and bills he helped create and interpret. Surrounded by talk of relativism and the deconstruction of literary and social code, it may have comforted him to own a library of basic rules and guidelines, organized by topic and recorded for posterity.

For those interested, this book collection will soon be removed from storage to a more permanent location at 233 E. 31st Street. As it was not provided for in my father’s otherwise impeccable will and testament, several private donors have been procured to endow the Richard Horner IV Library of Basic Truth and ensure its growth and protection. Access is by appointment only; there is no fee for admission. The reading room is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9am to 4pm. Thank you.

Eulogy 1: For Edward Kolski, as told by James Brander

I am not sure why I, of the six of us here, am speaking for Eddie. I am not one of Eddie’s parents. I am not his brother. I didn’t know him before the age of twenty three. I have not seen him for twelve years, since an ill-remembered alumni event in which we did not speak. Eddie and I have not spoken, in person or on the phone, since graduation, over two decades ago. I don’t remember what his voice sounds like. I only know his face by looking in the casket to my left.

Earlier today, I was told quietly that not many of you liked Eddie very much. He was reclusive, rude and cold. He did not go to his father’s funeral or his brother’s wedding. I am glad that you showed up for his solitary event, and I can understand why you are all reticent to speak for him. I didn’t really like him either. But I am up here. I am speaking because, unlike all of you, I knew him very well.

Eddie, after college, acted as if I did not exist, save for one thing. Every Tuesday for twenty two years Eddie has sent me a letter. He sent me mail even in the two years when I lived six doors down from him. Each letter is between three and ten pages long, handwritten on yellow legal pad. There is no date and no return address. He does not include a greeting, and does not sign his letters. He has not acknowledged the content of my replies, save my perennial changes of address. I first kept them in a shoebox under my bed. Within a year, Eddie had a filing cabinet. He now occupies a closet in my front hallway, eight drawers of handwritten yellow legal paper. They weigh one hundred and sixty-seven pounds—my wife and I put them on the bathroom scale before I came down here. I am an accountant. I like to know how things add up. I would like to imagine that Eddie, at the time of his attack, weighed one hundred and sixty-seven pounds.

Eddie was an editor. He edited television shows for a living. He did two years of Jump Street Blues, fifteen episodes of Miami Vice, and sixty three episodes of Friends. He did dozens of pilots. He edited the award winning PBS documentary Bottles of Blood: Prohibition Chicago. He put together hundreds of fifteen- and thirty-second spots for movies and household cleaning products by Lysol, and also an infomercial for vitamin pills.

Editing is, as I understand it, a creative act: ordering and cutting hours of footage into the tightest, most meaningful package. The finished product is very different from the raw input. Hugo Farthing, Eddie’s boss, told me last night that Eddie was almost preternaturally good at this work. He knew instinctively when to cut away from a glance, how to build a narrative through different angles of the same scene, how to change the meaning of scenery or character by selection and order and rhythm. To Eddie, perhaps, the raw material did not matter—it was the framework of the edit that gave life to what you saw.

Eddie’s letters contain memories. These memories are a paragraph or two apiece. Each letter has between five and twenty-five separate events in Eddie’s life, told in first person, narrated in present tense and ordered seemingly at random. While there does appear to be some relationship between adjacent events, in no letter have I found a dominant theme or any chronological continuity. These letters have not changed in tone or nature over the course of the last twenty-two years. While there may seem to be no reasoning behind the content of these letters, the nature of Eddie’s job, to me, demands that these events were placed in a specific order, in a specific letter, on a specific day.

The following is one of those letters. I received it on August 23^rd, 1988. This was a hot late summer day when my wife and I first found out that we were going to have a baby girl.

new stories

Well, I'm still not entirely sure of these but it's not looking like tons of progess will be made, so I'm going to serialize them. These are three eulogies. They bear no purposeful resemblence to any person, real or fictional.

I was drinking a designer root beer the other day that ties its product to wellbeing and a generally sunny outlook. I looked under the bottlecap and found some text. This was a statement that, according to the small print, was "swiped from actual fortune cookies." I'm not sure what kind of authenticity this is supposed to imply.

The bottlecap/cookie said "You will be successful in your work."

While kind of trite sounding in a cookie fortune, it actually seemed to make sense in the context presented to me. Any person willing to spend $1.75 on a soft drink is probably already on top. I'm guessing that in the wider view of things, I'll probably come out above average.

life after memory

In Killing Yourself to Live Chuck Klosterman makes exactly one comment about architecture, but it's kind of interesting. He says this:

"...I have no interest whatsoever in looking at any of the tourist attractions in [Washington D.C.]. I guess I don't understand what such things are supposed to teach us. For example... the Washington Monument is big, and I suppose it could be classified as impressive or noble... but what is the 550-foot masonry structure supposed to tell me? What is it supposed to make me understand? Am I supposed to spacifically think about George Washington? Because I didn't. Am I supposed to be reminded that I am in the nation's capital? Because I already knew that. Am I supposed to feel patriotic? Because I don't understand how an inanimate object has any relationship to how I feel about living in my country... what does the Washington Monument speak to? Man's potential to master concrete? Man's desire to overcome gravity? I really don't get it. It's just . . . tall."

The first crisis I thought of here was one of representation-- how are images from a dead past supposed to speak to someone who derives all symbolic meaning from rock music lyrics? And in any case, what was so Egyptian about GW in the first place? D.C. is already an anomoly, an "American" monument designed by a Frenchman in a strict reimagined Roman classicism. The obleisk is, to Klosterman, kind of like the background to that awful Will Smith Song "wild wild west"-- a sample of a cover of a standard for a movie that was a paraphrase of a television show.

But if anything, this is liberating. The obelisk, so ruthlessly torn from context, is now a kind of primal form. Yes, it is tall. Yes, it is white. Yes, it has two red lights on top of it. Ultimately the Washington Monument is a symbol of itself, instantly recognisable and a powerful organiser of space.

In fact, the true crisis here is not one of symbolic meaning but the purpose of monuments themselves. Klosterman believes that a monument has to be didactic in order to be useful-- in another part of the book he says

"[A friend] always wants me to visit him in Arizona so that he can show me the Grand Canyon, but I know I'll never go. . . I have no desire to see the physical manifestation of erosion. The Grand Canyon is just an attractive accident; it has no inherent meaning. I'd be far more impressed if a collection of civil engineers used dynamite and laser beams to construct a perfect replication of the Grand Canyon on a one-to-one scale; that would show mankind's potential to master nature. . . would speak to man's desire to overcome 5 million years of adversity."

"Inherent meaning" to Klosterman is thus tied to a specific implied history that is not subject to debate. This may very well be true. But inherent meaning is very difficult to fabricate; a monument like the one described is really just a monument to itself. No convential monument, save perhaps ancient battlefields and great works of civil engineering, have any inherent meaning. What Klosterman is actually talking about is the failure of monuments to specifially direct an understanding of their form.

I think this is misguided. In its early history any monument will serve its purpose, but successful monuments always act as a conduit for the healing processes of history-- they are supposed to aid in understanding and reevaluation. Thus any good monument will hasten its own obselesence. And the real afterlife of a monument is not only to remind people of its namesake, but to act as an urban fragment, a magnet for the production of new memory. The Washington Monument is only nominally about our first president; it's also about people's trips to the mall, senators jogging by, and views from the top. The point where it becomes mute is the point at which it is reborn.

this may be a strange thing to say from a blog but

I'm calling for a general ceasing of self-awareness. From here on out, we're going to stop navel gazing and everyone is going to find something, latch on to it, and follow it to the end without pausing to be critical of the path. When we talk about our progress, there will be no snickering or admittance of how trite or hackneyed our actions have been, only agreement or disagreement. Apologies will only be said to other people, and only for things we are truly sorry for. Nothing will be implied.

The problem with kicking the ass of postmodernism is that one is not allowed to be aware that they are doing it. This makes it hard to gloat.

It remains difficult to figure out which side is having more fun.

willy ronis à paris

I recently went to the Willy Ronis show at the Hotel de Ville in Paris. He's a photojournalist that had been working in that city since the 1930's until just a few years ago. I entered the packed exhibit with a cynical attitude-- in a city that is essentially a museum of itself, what could be more popular than photographs of the real thing? It seemed that everyone in there was 50 or 60 years old, desperately searching for images to recollect the city life that they knew.

In reality, however, what was proven to me was slightly different. Since the photographs presented a continuous history of the last 70 years, what was emphasized was more the continuity and similarity of urban life. It was difficult at times to tell the difference between 1950 and 1980. And the early color work he did immediately postwar has the effect of recontextualizing the late 40's as today, without really straining.

So maybe the quai d'Austurlitz and Bercy are not quite so dirty and industrial. Belleville is more sterile and less rustic, and Les Halles is a hellish supermall instead of graceful ironwork markets. What was suggested in these photographs was not that urban life has been fragmented, but that it was always so-- moments of real life always exist in pockets; that's why they're so intimate and immediate. The true enemy of this life is not modernity or ubiquity, it's ennui and fear-- as long as people are out, interested in their city and actively claiming pieces of it, photo opportunities will abound.