Tomorrow: Beauty and Death 1

Somewhere before this post, I 'postulated' that a great many works of contemporary architecture seem rather impotent due to its inability to handle theological realities. I had a nocturnal epiphany a couple of nights ago, which helped me understand this more by 'enlightening' me to what great depths man's heart longs for beauty.

Death, the fear and admiration for it was a muse to me.

Needless to say, this is not something new. Death too, is not something new, nor something we can speak too much of. But there is nonetheless a resistance to its mystery. Constant, it is in the human heart. It knows us, but we know it not. The more we speak concerning it, the greater the premonition of isolation and this abyss anchors our minds deeper and deeper since we know not the depth of an inverted sky.

If it were only always this simple, the two polarities in view of eternity are as such, those who fight against eternity and those who fight for eternity. The notion that eternity does not exist, does not arise here since those who do not labour for an 'after-life' which they disbelieve in, do after all wish nothing else but to save themselves before death. This implies a race against time, a race against what surely comes which is already the now - the eternity which 'is' ongoing.

The 'thread' that fights against eternity preserves not for a tomorrow but for a now. In a sense, it is truly living in a tomb whose tombstone is not designed to be removed. It is concerned with the immediate and identifies himself and his environment as mere commodity and resource. This does not mean that there are no emotional and spiritual connections between these bodies but that in the 'reality' of his viewpoint, his fears suffice to comprehend these as such.

Conversely, those who embrace eternity, let not their temporary pleasures, rich as they seem cloud their vision of their true destiny. Sacrifices come to them as a type of necessary hurdle for a better, a fuller person. As a result, while this is common to both traits, people of this category are not content with the present, not out of greed but because the ultimate 'reality' is a place they believe can only exist on the other wing of death. Thus, there is an incessant longing for another, an Other, but that attainment of it does not come out of an original effort, rather a compelling force like a magnet which tugs its servant to that One whereby all that is false is carved out from the interior of its soul.

Carving a cave inside out (...next)

Muse: Ought nots

Once upon a time...
There was a time,
we ought not love,
the things...

Some things,
I mean people,
we ought not love.

...since,
we may then cease being lovely,
after all...
and what a fall 'for' Love, that would be.

Love's bitter pain. (to paraphrase George Herbert)

Muse: Being watched

She walks,
no...she crawls,
under shades of green.

Like being watched,
like beheld by a constant eye,
as Love who beholds His Beloved.

And somehow,
under dark canopies,
some tangible, others sublime,
the need to be loved is satiated.

(walking under leaves at Frim)

Muse on Draft 4: On this road

Take me on a route,
to purpose-driven places,
...spaces

I mean places,
where life is not,
always on transit.

A home whose stilts,
rest not on networks...
in betweens we can't live in...

This time..walking home, enough of the wheels.

Tomorrow: Architectural "Services"

Following my last post concerning the plagued world of current architecture, I'd also opine that while not the only, the notion that architects provide architectural 'services' is very damaging.

Yes, we do work with aims and objectives, Yes, we ought to keep clients at the least, reasonably happy. But no, (and this is thanks to the commercialized structure of modern relationships) I do not think that we can create something beautiful if we just meet 'your' goals.

The most 'truthful' indicator of the meta-physical and ethical health of society is through the kind of music it listens to. There is no art 'form' that 'strikes a chord' so persistently, persuasively with a magnanimous moral force as music. And by that I honestly mean 'good' music. While we pride ourselves (architects) of being 'producers' of the more responsible art form, I think there is more harm that can be done to the human psyche through bad music than through a horrible building. This tells us a lot about our auditory diet. It is why Holy Mother Church also declares, "The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art". (Art 112, Sacrosanctum Concillium, Second Vatican Council)

As architects we ought to sometimes ponder on the development of acceptable 'norms' now creeping into our profession. It will do us great justice to rid ourselves from a lot of jargon that pervades the entire retail world as it stands today.

We need to think more like musical composers, I feel. A work is commissioned, it isn't requested. A work is not complete until it is so. It should rise above the dictates of 'value for money', customer satisfaction or 'modern contemporary living'. The work that we do ought to be something that is compelling and that which emanates and animates in us the desire of sacrifice for its' sake.

And dare I say, it has to be both conciously and subliminally beautiful, beautiful insofar as it is merely a type of the Divine.

Muse: My Love

Come my Love,
where there is pain and sorrow,
I shall be that dew...

To welcome Love's pain,
and to hide my Beloved
from the hurt she inflicts on herself

My beloved,
A little while,
is all I ask...

Tomorrow: Architecture

More and more, it occurs to me, that the greatest problem concerning architecture today, is not it's crises of ideas or concepts. This malaise, this alienation from places that we feel stem from the inability and inadequate desire of architects to handle theological realities.

It is the escapism- the fleeing away from confronting the aesthetics of Truth and existence that forces architecture to recoil on itself, a sort of self-idolatry which I have often lamented.

Man, by his very existence, through the proper orders of perception does not reveal flesh alone, but the divine. It is the divine... this is where art tends to.

Forget about notions of high and low art, all artists were called to do 'ere before time began was to open the veil to the other side.

The architect-mystic must be ushered in. The clocks have swung back.

Draft 3: Where the streets have no name

The alarm clock falls with a 'ding' and a 'crack' on the dark floor. 3:47 am it reads.

She sighs in usual anticipation of a sleepless night. Only 3 hours of sleep and apparently the house tells her it's enough. A slight whispering breeze floats in, feeling like some kind of soundless chime, echoing some distant meaning.

It beckons her to her window. No stars. Just streetlights, and little boxes of light from other sleepless rooms. While cars of big proportions seem to sleep so soundly under porches. The envy.

All of a sudden, she can't remember if she's been living here for long. There's a certain familiarity with the unfamiliar. "The consistency of the manufactured," she calls it. It's always been here in a way, and yet it takes no colour from our presence.

How is it so empty, when it's so full of our things, our precious things? With her head hung low, she tries to ponder on a window jamb. No moon to light the darkness of silhouettes even.

Draft 2: Where the streets have no name

"Run, run, run" , said the house.

"Run, from the haste of making dreams out of lies. Run, from the desire to shrink and shirk histories from the grains of your heart. Run from me, for I am but a one in a thousand, just some 'concept' derived from man's greed for purpose."

"For I am alone, and those who dwell in me become aliens to their own sinews, their very own hearts."

And the streets, they ran around her in a spiral, not so centred after all but on a trail, still...to a vacuous continent we call, space.

The papers call them homes with a green lawn.

Draft: Where the streets have no name

What windows have we?
those without curtains of dreams,
those devoid of mystery,
or the crumbs of history...

...and...
one wonders if the world looks in,
instead of us looking out through them,
if indeed the world gazes,
into the abyss of our hollow spirits.

Under roof lines,
these windows,
one and all...the same,
under the guise of some manic desire
to control meaning.

Muse: Drops

The night sky,
collects rain from the stars,
into pockets of hope,
we call light.

And light eternal,
guides boats drifting on dreams,
always too fast,
ending too soon.

Goodbye,
today ends,
tonight begins,
the veil drops.

Muse: Only the sun knows

Did you not see?
The clouds sailing on high?
Suspended by hopes unbegotten...

Only the sun knows now...
That moment...
God composed a scene for me...
As blood trickles from His wounds to the ground.

Muse: Super flumina Babylonis?

and...
When you think of it,
after a while,
we don't have to say goodbye's,
it's places that have to.

By the rivers of Babylon,
I waited, waited for goodbyes
but realized i didn't need to.

I needn't because,
I can't say goodbye to myself.

These were my memories
and the others never held it.

Ghosts, everywhere...

Prose: The sun of my heart

How do you capture an entire phrase...spoken? What did you see? Where did you go? In one blink of an eye, where were we? A glass of water, it sits by the window, and the ripples echo, memories still leaving, trying to leave the prison of water, we call it life.

Escaping, trying to escape... like my words. I can't tell you how intense the heat or the rain is, if you keep standing in the shade. But if you could leap with me into a pit, where could those dreams take us?

What I mean to say is...Do you see, what I see?
The sun...the sun.

Muse: The day listens

Listen, listen.
What I am trying to say,
is...
that when doves fly,
the sun sets twice on that day,
the day turns into night,
and the clouds come out to dream.

Muse: Perhaps

Perhaps,
the desert we call depression,
is a luxury we'd like to have,
when dreams can't hold enough,
of our hopes...
perhaps.

Muse: Every

The thought of you,
makes every colour in the sky,
every drop of sweat,
every tear from the clouds,
seem distant, yet so present,
in the vain hope...

you feel it ... too ...

Prose: I hide myself

He hides in a corner, with a lamp by his side. To guide him, no doubt, to and through the abyss of his imagination. Cracks on the wall appear to him as he ponders upon blank stares. Perhaps there is a tear he can escape to, a crevice to hide, a place where the unknown is met and kept secret...

Under the roof, under the mighty sky, under the weight of dreams, floating on the sea of hope. He hides himself.

Muse: You (now asleep)

Stars lit the darkness,
in the recesses of space,
counting the days and nights,
when I still think of you.

My heart grows weary,
from tiring, trying, tying,
myself to the world,
that is you.

Prose: Sarah

Sarah... keep knocking,
Sarah... keep knocking on the door.

The light lasts, but a while,
but the door needs one to open.

Quick!

Muse: By the rivers

Where in lies the heart,
the object of my desire,
is clinging without spree,
and on gentle waters,
murmur the distant shores,
too distant to keep.