Architecture of Cities: Two-Lane Blacktop

Architect: Tadao Ando: Pulitzer Arts Foundation: St Louis

Imagine for thirteen seconds or thereabouts: Debussy’s Clair de lune: Miles Davis’ first three chords from Sketches of Spain: Led Zeppelin’s first chord from Stairway to Heaven: The musical overlay teases the reverberating echos in my ears: The virgin Screech Owls’ wings free fall amid the hurricanes’ ascension:

I recalled my introduction to Chaïm Soutine: He had sold multiple paintings to Alfred Barnes: He needed validation for his past and what lie ahead: He ran dressed as if the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia from Paris to Cap d’antibes: I imagined:

Arriving at the white sands: Soutine’s enervating journey flatlined: He caught sight of his benefactor and begged for something Barnes could not give him: Soutine wanted more: Soutine wanted creative answers that Barnes was not equipt to offer: Soutine accepted a non descript suggestion from Barnes: Soutine ran breathlessly back to Paris with nothing: Nothing that might matter:

Architect: Arata Isozaki: Sant Jordi Palace: Barcelona

Eleven elephants: Nine white albino pigmy orangutans: Seventeen Black Birds with white beaks: The other animals of equatorial jungles and seas follow: There was a hut at the end of the road: All of the above stepped inside delicately:

When my eyes have to think, I am consumed by voices: I dream of many: Sometimes my mind imagines: Something deductive scientific: Something compulsive: Something sweet and dreamy: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George Simenon and Beatrix Potter play appropriate roles: Absurd and abstract? Then imagine standing alone on a two lane black top going nowhere and anywhere you would like it to: My eyes sit on a road: The road is a two lane highway facing in the directions of east and west: Maybe: Not sure if it matters as every road leads to discovery:

Most days I hear my breathing pause: An extremely invasive inhale signifies a pause: My mind never has a pause: I collect myself: I beg for anything sweet, prophetic and poetic: Michael Caine’s recitation of my Kipling’s “If” is heard somewhere: My mirrored reflection is seen almost naked as I recite T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land: Wrestling with every last moment of light: I see that I have lived an entire life in poetic reconnaissance: I have for more decades… been on a mission to see.

Architect: Arata Isozaki: MOCA Los Angeles

It is only a moment to remember: I pause:

The essence of most moments appear in held hands: Arata Isozaki saw the Guggenheim Rotunda as a place to commune with architectural adventure: We talked.

We greeted each other with held hands: His Tokyo studio library was room for a communing of two: Two minds of separate ages and unique identity shared what matters in architecture: I hardly remember what he shared: I do remember everything: Most of my decades live in some corner of my mind: My thirty seconds with Arata Isozaki seem like forever:

I stood with Tadao in my New York studio for a mere hour: I stood with Tadao in front of his International Library of Children’s Literature,Tokyo: Did the improbable experiences from thirty seconds or three days collectively become a forever moment: Certainly two great aesthetic minds have enhanced my vision beyond recognition:

Soutine’s breathless, enervating, flailing flatline is consuming: I prefer to follow my eyes as they prance like mice and deer along my streets and strides: My every direction: My life framed in analog or digital is my tomorrow.

Cinema’s Two-Lane Blacktop is not great art: It does though remind me that the emptiness evident in horizons: The din of claustrophobia that may live in cities are among thousand of film moments and movements film movements that emphatically influence my moments: My eyes: Never has an entire film been remembered: But imagine from an entire two or four hours of film, remains a purpose. Embossed across my eyes is something breathless: My purpose: My voyage across somewhere.