HOW IS A CITY LIKE A ROOM?
I was taught to draw the space of the sky by comprehending it via the flight of birds. A rope flung around openness. Why a room — why not a house, or a town, a city, a universe? And why stop there (or anywhere?) Why not inwards — a cell, and its apparatus, each form in its turn composed of yet more forms, creating their spaces within us. A room, because I am searching for limits, always, this searching for limits. The possibility of being, or seeming full; the possibility of being able to say anything at all. You might call it taking a position. A room can be replete with itself, can malfunction with its own inadequacies (like a world, like a cell, like a thought, like a room). How is a city like a room? In that we all live in it. How is a room like a relationship? In that the space is drawn between us. How is a room like itself? Why, by its edges of course! A room is the opening of space from zero to one in a journey going onwards. That journey gets filled with space, and words, and time, and you get toppled by the thought of every single room in each tall city. Cities are a swell of breath, I thought, reeling on Cambie Bridge. The argument goes on, but lets get on with it.