(interlude in A-minor)

lwblog-interlude

(notes from a hermitage)

Alone and not,

in the space shared

by disallowed,

forgotten

voices.

Lucid lines or lies

predict a just decay

of time. Marks wander

freely on presences’

dazzled terrain.

One, two, six, eight

four. The signals rest.

The eye of God numbers

all steps to Orthogany.

Get, get it straight.

Rooms without

boundaries so frail

as significant waking,

residues of originality

forgiven, ignored.

Sentiment fades;

Rationalized actions

and affectations fade;

Memories fade last

in vagrant noise.

How long it has been!

Paths unnumbered,

confused or free,

steps counted,

unerringly.

A boy or a girl,

or a cat, or a bird,

or the swift lizard,

fooling the mole–

find a home.

Steel is cold

because it drains

the body’s heat,

better, say,

than air.

On the bed of steel,

my body must get hotter,

racing against the death

of the Universe. So all

depends now on dreams.

Rain at a zenith softens

more than confuses edges,

making space palpably bare,

limiting some probabilities

as assurance expires.

Architecture, I heard, is near.

The third voice said so, and I,

distracted by memories of you,

pretended to hear, imagine,

and begin to believe.

Is that, I asked,

the promised storm?

Or, more indifferent rain

dulling the open sky,

our frail horizons–

Is that, I cried,

an equation of one?

with no solution,

unbalanced,

effete.

Yes, and no.

Yes, no,

are halves

of a struggle

resolving nothing.

Geometry endangers,

Abstract thought is a threat.

Color my desires with sense

and sentiment and limits

to what can be seen.

Hours limit, unless

others intrude, obsessed,

demanding and secure,

like monks who scold,

extending all of time.

Above your street,

emptiness of movement

confirms or conforms,

enforcing the datum

commonly known.

My blood passes

across and through,

flooding the chamber

wherein passions

promise more.

lwblog-interlude2

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You’re currently reading “(interlude in A-minor),” an entry on LEBBEUS WOODS

Published:: December 10, 2008 / 4:21 am

Category:: LW

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Bill M 12.10.08 / 6am

a stirring read during the late night / early morning. it would go well with some minimal organ muffled behind doors & sounds of weather.
I ran across this today. it’s difficult to find texts that embrace architecture in full awareness, but minifesto comes close to many ideas I appreciate from your writings. it won me over early with the mention of ‘pataphysical clinamen, but I would love to hear your reaction to their attempts to understand architecture through this notion of “plectics”.

Marc K 12.11.08 / 1am

I wanted to question the existence of “Abstract thought is a threat” and “Architecture is near” in the poem. It seems odd, being that Mr. woods is a man of abstractivity, and being that he has stated in the past that Architecture is the most abstract of the arts, does the threat of the abstract mean the threat of Architecture?

Clearly, this work explores the idea of a person that exists within specific material and spatial conditions, and it seems that the nature of this poem is abstract and representational in itself. To communicate that “Architecture is near” seems to communicate to me that the struggle this person finds him or herself in is one of distinct narrative experience, and that the idea of a coming event- and that there exists some architecture or device that responds specifically to this event and this event only.

lebbeuswoods 12.11.08 / 3am

Marc K: I like your interpretations. This is apparently a hermit who wants to be alone in public—-already a paradoxical condition.

Further: abstract thought, embodied in architecture’s mathematical ‘coolness’ is not very comforting–hence the desire for sense and sentiment which—because they are limiting—can comfort, even though they also bring pain.

Marc K 12.11.08 / 5am

This pain, does it relate to the narrative of the person? To me it becomes an emotion invested within the spaces that this man exists. Is this pain existential? I feel as if the idea of this man within a position of pain is somehow a vision into the spaces he finds himself. That the conditions of these spces become his own conditions.

I feel that “My blood passes across and through, flooding the chamber wherein passions promise more” speaks to an experiential force that embodies this room. However, this pain that you speak of also fits in with this idea of a datum: “Above your street, emptiness of movement confirms or conforms, enforcing the datum commonly known.” I think that the force that exists in this space causes pain, and its absence is a sign of relief.

Hypothetically, how would an architecture be constructed that not only embodies this paradox, but also talks about these present spatial conditions?

LEBBEUS WOODS

(interlude in A-minor)

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