done with studio.
postmortem to come, but my crit went wonderfully surprisingly well. everything seemed to cohere together in the last twelve hours, and I could visualize the converging lines of my project coming towards a singular point of further coherence, solidity, and resolution that would be days, weeks, months away.
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earlier today I fell asleep on the subway, again, and missed the express train, went all the way local downtown. later, at 11:55pm, the 2/3 stopped running to brooklyn, and so I got off at south ferry, walked to the 4/5 bowling green stop. and for a moment there, I walked up from the underground into the cold air, statue of liberty's somewhere in the distance, around me are tall buildings with lush lobbies with marble floors used to the click of $300 shoes, there's a strangely opulent mcdonalds and a few yellow taxis here and there idling for someone working late. just over there is sixteen beaver, I think, and smile. strangely abandoned streets, as always, and suddenly it feels as if the characters of the buildings themselves become more human, that the dialogue here is between building and building, not person and person, that I'm witnessing some sort of secret whispering discussion between the buildings simply because these streets are so eerily empty. when are streets this empty? or rather, what other streets in the city feel so empty as the streets in the financial district, at night?
and then I dip back into the subway and wait for the train, out, up, over, down, and in, like a little stitch I've made in the fabric of the city, poke the needle out one side, over, and down back other other side, a little taste of lower manhattan.
and then later I get out and I bike home and it's freezing and it's really freezing and I shiver and hum to myself and I jump off the bike when I'm there and open the gate and lean the bike against a door and take off my gloves and jacket and undo my hair. casper mrkgnaos from upstairs, and suddenly I'm home.
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buildings, buildings, buildings. I keep on thinking about my project. to what extent did it go over so well because of the presence of the core metaphor? there is the building that best lives in flat representation, the building that best lives in imagery, the building that best lives in experience, the building that best lives in a hope for decay, and the building that best lives in hearsay, anecdote, exchange. "hey, I heard about this building that..." and there are some buildings that live as a haunting image, like the purplish glow-trails you get in your vision when you stare at a bright light for too long, and I am acutely aware with which the extent that metaphors, and diagrams, and images can generate these glow-trails, these central images. this is the building that you will hear described, and then you will go home, unable to shake the idea from your head, and you will dream about it until you fall asleep from exhaustion. and then it will appear in your head, years later. this building should never be built, but should only haunt you, and it's one kind of architecture that is valuable, but only one kind.