toward an architecture...[1st draft, fr. 200A seminar]

There is a struggle in contemporary architectural practice between a desire for and claims of authenticity, as against a strong sense of the arbitrary nature of most design proposals. Everything we do as architects falls between varied readings of what is (and what is relevant) and how it came to be so, and an ever expanding realm of possibility in structural, material, and cultural (or referential) expression.

To win projects and inspire confidence in clients, we have to argue that our proposal is the right one, the best solution; but in truth we are not so naive, schooled as we are in problematics. Sustainability advocats' tightest calculus has physical phenomena as denominator, but Greenough/Sullivan's dictum becomes unsolvable when we try to expand the already elaborated triple bottom line to include subjective aesthetic notions. We are left with the nagging sense that every proposal is a not a true thing-in-itself but rather (unless we fall into self-deception) an academically sheepish 'toward an...'

Quantum Tango

Two solid objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Indeed, when the objects touch, they exert repulsive normal forces on each other, as well as frictional forces that resist their slipping relative to each other. These contact forces arise from a complex interplay between the electrostatic forces between the electrons and ions in the objects and the laws of quantum mechanics. As two surfaces are pushed together these forces increase exponentially over an atomic distance scale, easily becoming strong enough to distort the bulk material in the objects if they approach too close. In everyday experience, contact forces are limited by the deformation or acceleration of the objects, rather than by the fundamental inter-atomic forces.

(from ‘masteringphysics.com’ online exam)

Mark Heard

Back around 1993, in my last years in high school, a buddy of mine turned me onto a musician by the name of Mark Heard, a singer/songwriter versed in a range of genres, playing and singing heartfelt, insistent, sometimes gut-wrenching, authentic rock/country/newfolk (how do you categorize these things?) music. I bought three of the albums: Dry Bones Dance, Second Hand, and Sattelite Sky (1990,'91, '92 respectively). That Bruce Cockburn was a friend and fan gave him even that much more standing with me.

A mutual friend of ours, whom late in my senior year I began to date, quickly grew tired of hearing us talk about this musician. Although I don't remember the exact words she used, the gist was something like "I don't like his music, and I shouldn't have to." It never stopped us from trying to convince her, however. He and I would quote song lyrics to each other, singing out the verses and refrains in the hallways, classrooms, and afterschool; on weekends...we were relentless; we were in love.

His music represented a complex middle ground, between the Panglossian simplicity of overtly 'Christian' artists and their primarily 'worship' or 'praise' oriented music, and the flatness of the secular remainder, which made no mention of any higher force, or calling; took no stand on the causes of 'the duality of our everyday existence' (as stated in link above). He sang of self-doubt, failure, the long ground between reality and our greatest hopes for it.

Mark Heard died in July of 1992, at the age of 40, from a heart attack; literally heart broken, though cholerserol and cigarrettes were the physiological cause. Although the lyrics on his later albums might be post-read as foreshadowing that event, it is no stretch to say that he was, at the age of 40, with a wife and a young child and little commercial success, grappling with issues of mortality; not only his own, but that of our entire culture: "They will dig up these ruins/make flutes of our bones/blow a hymn to the memory/of the orphans of God." In parallel, his lyrics struggle with both questions of self-doubt and his own legacy, and that of his generation.

That his music might appeal to only a small cross-section of the population is no surprise; that it would appeal so powerfully to two boys of roughly 17 years of age is far more so. I didn't listen to those albums for a long time following a tapering off period in the first years of college. It wasn't until I moved from the house I had been renting in Aspen, Colorado for four years (during which I had 13 roommates), to a cool basement one-bedroom down valley in Basalt that they emerged from the dust and clutter.

I should be more honest. They did not emerge passively, but were pulled out, on two occassions, and for two reasons. The first is that my move was precluded on my being there only a short time before leaving my job and the valley completely, and moving to South America. I had already been through the better part of a year of what might be termed an 'existential' (though perhaps it was more existentiell), 'early mid-life' or '1/3 life' crisis; unhappy with the job, recently separated (not for the first, or last, time) from my then girlfriend, and suddenly feeling time rushing by - what Mark sang of as 'the curse of the second hand - as my 29th birthday loomed before me. In the churn of the move I came back, literally, in touch with pieces of my own history - jounals, photos, yearbooks, and music - which I had not considered in a very long time. So I pulled the albums out and slipped them into the player; listened to a voice that seemed to come from very far away.

The second occassion was shortly after the move, when the same mutual friend came to visit me with her sister, who was going to work in Rocky Mountain National park that summer. Her sister wanted to know if I had some of the albums from that part of our lives - maybe The 77's; I don't think it was Mark Heard - that she could copy to her computer. So I dug through the CD's again, and went back briefly to that place.


I think she had it right, our mutual friend.

What sense did it make that two teenagers from New Jersey should have such an affinity for the internal struggles of a middle-aged man? And why should a girl of sixteen be subjected to that wailing and gnashing of teeth? Why were he and I so anxious to be ahead of our own teenage zeitgeist? Not content to be kids, we thought that we understood what he was singing about; his pain, the heartache, and the hope; but I'm not sure that I understand it, even now. It's problematic for me, this christian (in the direct sense of 'being christ-like') taking upon yourself the weight of the world; it seems almost arrogant, and I can't help but think of the Grand Inquisitor's criticism of Ivan Karamazov's Jesus, or that hurled at Kazantzakis' Christ.

Of course, it does make a certain sense. All three of us have preachers for fathers ('pastors', from the greek 'poimen', shepherd), and though I don't know their fathers well enough to make a definitive case, my own father has certainly been an example of the burden that comes with the self-chosen responsibility of leading others through a dangerous world. My friend's experience in south america (he was from Peru), and the experience of all of us growing up in northern New Jersey meant we were certainly not blind to the existence of good and evil - however simplistic that seems to me now - woven together in the fabric of our civilization. And in any ways (a phrase she used to use), you don't have to understand something to recognize it, if not as truth, at least as pointing toward it, asking relevant questions.

My life crisis passed, not because I solved the riddle, but because life quickly became again too full to carry the 'kaliedescope of brain-freight' Mark sang of. I recently found out that during my time in South America, the two of them got back together, after I sent him her e-mail address. Neither she nor I had talked to him during a long middle period, though I began to come out of it a bit sooner. I asked her just recently, through my surprise, what it was like, the two of them; she said "It feels like home."

Perhaps I should go upstairs and put on one of those albums, sit with a cup of tea, an early mid-fall cold, and my aching bones, and watch the waxing moon mark time as I spin backward through space. I'll think back to what it was I felt, we all felt, then; dig through pictures until I find that one of the three of us, standing on the corner where the sidewalk ended, the summer before I went away to college. As Mark sang, 'A thug who wins a kiss and misses finer things': face to face with my inablity to understand, explain, or carry the burden of the world, I can only steal the kiss Alyosha stole from his brother's Christ, before I walk away. There is no perfect tale, just the one story that is.



"I see you now and then in my dreams/Your voice sounds just like it used to/I know you better than I knew you then/All I can say is I love you/I thought our days were common place/Thought they would number in millions/Now there's only the aftertaste/Of circumstance that can't pass this way again...' Mark Heard, "Treasure of the Broken Land" - Final Track, Satellite Sky, 1992

Street Fight

Yesterday I was in a street fight.

Actually, more like an appetizer after which you hope to avoid the meal.

It went down like this:

I work in the studio all day Tuesday until 5:30 AM Wednesday morning, before bicycling home to get an hour of sleep before my 8am physics lab. Just as I am leaving, I obsessively check my e-mail and find a note that my term bill payment bounced; unknown account problems. So I make a mental note to go to the bank and billing/payment services in the morning.

8:50 am. Wake up 50 minutes late for lab, jump on the bike, pedal hard...flat tire on Telegraph. Now I'm 90 minutes late.

I have to make up the lab in the next session, so my day just went from starting errands at 10 to starting at noon. And I'm walking, so it all will take even longer.

I decide to not fight it; enjoy the walk, down through campus, and down center street across into town. I am always in a rush on my bike, and never here at this time of day. It is lunch time, and everyone is out on the street; college kids, high schoolers, suits and punks and beggars, guys who wear socks with their sandals, enjoying the sun. I am hungry and eating an apple as I walk.

On the south side of the street, in front of the burrito place, by top dog, a group of guys is hanging out; youngish, probably highschool, dressed in baggy pants, FUBU gear, caps on sideways; racially mixed but darker than not. They're just kickin' it, talking low, throwing jokes. I think to myself that they seem overdressed in the hoodies, day like this.

Just after I pass them, two break away from the group and brush past me, one saying 'yo yo, there he is...'; start dodging through the crowd, not running, but moving quick, as if to catch up with someone but maintain surprise.

I follow suit.

There is a feeling they give me, that their intentions aren't good; I pick up the pace and am soon almost behind them where they have slowed down, pushing up hard on two other kids, white dudes, thinner, bookish. Maybe I identify? They are talking, harrassing; the two guys in front seem to slow down, as if to not show fear by running away; neither do they turn around to confront the situation. I am trying to see what is going to happen, if they are going for a wallet, or what...

I am three steps behind and gaining when time shears. The black kid in front of me, on the right, drops down fast and wraps his arms around the legs of the kid in front of him, tripping the kid and throwing him down on the ground. I think I hear the hit, a smack of skin on pavement. My momentum carries me toward the four of them and my left hand goes out to grab the tripper, pull him back; in the same instant he is rising up to turn and run, smiling, laughing. My hand on his shoulder and his rotation merge; together we turn first into each other as I step back, absorb his flight; then together around my pivot, chest to chest, until he is falling backwards toward the storefronts, my left arm then entire body following him down as I come to a kneeling position, left foot grounded, right knee bent, shin pinning down over his thighs.

His look is of complete disbelief.

We hang there, suspended for a second, two, three; he regains his breath enough to sputter 'wha tha f***!...hey..!'. His friend has already run up the street; the two kids that were in front must be somewhere behind me, the tripped kid back on his feet.

I stare at his face, into his eyes, mixed with anger, fear, embarrassment; and say 'you alright, then?' - a retorical question; not about whether he is unhurt, but a command, imperative that he get all right, corrected, clear on how his position has changed. He is moving under me, perhaps trying to take a swing; I hold, above his squirming, a moment, then rise up and stand back.

He scrambles to his feet and takes off up the street, a bouncing sideways run through the opening that has formed in the crowd; but he is still looking back at me, gauging. He turns and comes back at me from 20 feet off, like a boxer, bouncing and light on his feet; my left arm is still extended, full but not locked, open hand. We connect.

I don't move. At least not much. A shift of the feet, rebalance, open angle; palm against his chest. He is saying something that means he will hurt me; I know that what it really means is that he is embarrassed. He is throwing his weight forward, shoulders, arms, hands, but not quite throwing punches. I say something that means, 'Well?'

His friends call him back; 'yo, let's get outta here!', and he hesitates, steps back, forward, and then slips away up the street; turns, and from a distance of thirty feet stops again to hurl more words.

I stand with my arms open, hanging low. 'My name's David Gregory. Who are you, huh?' More words from him, them; then I ask, 'alright then?': is it over or is there more they want to add?

Holding my position, I watch them disappear into the crowd, before turning to continue on my errand. The two kids who were being harrassed are there, walk with me a moment; the tripped kid thanks me, says something about 'what did they think, I can't kick back from there?'; he is wearing what seem to be new shoes, but nothing I would consider hot commodities. Was that what this was about?

I ask if they knew those kids, and they mutter a no, which seems to say yes but not too well; in any case they don't want to say. I tell them to be careful, and they murmur another thanks, turn the corner and continue down the block. I stop to wait for the light before crossing, notice the apple, still held between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand.

I take a bite.

Knots

Some time ago, while speaking with a friend on the phone, I had the idea that we might write to eachother letters, each from the other's perspective: I would mail her a letter, written by me, but as if written by her to me. She would respond with a letter from me back to her...and so we would proceed, ad infinitum (or nauseum, whichever came first)...

The goals were never clearly worked through (nor the pitfalls), but the idea centered on digging into simultaneously how we see ourselves and how we see eachother, crossing multiple viewpoint orders, using writing from the even-orders to reveal the odd:

1. How we see ourselves
2. How the other sees themself
3. How we see the other
4. How the other sees us
5. How we feel the other sees us
6. How the other feels we see them
7. How we feel others feel we see them
8. How others feel we feel that they feel that we see them

We never went ahead with the idea; perhaps it's obvious why.

But I almost wish we had, at least started the process. Because when I found out second hand through a mutual friend that she was dating another old mutual friend (all of us with complex shared histories), a ripple drove through all of my perceptions, pushing the old framework out of shape: anomaly.

We had scheduled a phone date that weekend, but I neither heard from her nor reached her when I called. Today when I heard the news I e-mailed her to let her know I knew, and called: no response.

In the float space, between what you thought and what you will think: probing the odd numbers for answers, the even for questions.