essay – Page 4 – An Unused Frequency

Today we are going to continue where we left off, with a city or town. Full of rooms which, through complex norms, rules and social contracts, are considered homes. Homes that may be more or less yours.

Though these buildings make up so much of the actual city, their use and significance are rarely considered. Even less the apartments and lives within.

But leaving the apartment buildings behind, what else do we see? Homes yes, several, besides homes there are offices, stores, public buildings of different kinds, as well as industries and industrial complexes, we will return to these later.

For now, let us examine what lies in between these houses. Roads, paths and pavements. The grow, they shrink, they collide and they split up. They lead us towards our destinations, or away from them. At night, from above they spread out like glowing spider webs, like blood vessels they pump the traffic through the organism that is a city. Like so many things we will discuss in this series, they are simple, accepted, and almost invisible to us.

But what is a street? An area, or several, designated for transportation by car, bike, foot traffic etc. The speed, direction and phase, all dictated by abstract symbols and lights. These lines, and dots and arrows are each a message a symbol of a shared contract.

On these roads, our directions are predesignated by social and juridical norms and laws. We might walk on these roads, we might travel by bike or moped, we might travel by car. This journey might be spatially shared in a bus, in a car, or by foot traffic. Going towards something, going from something. But always with a goal, regardless if this goal is planned or not. But on all these occasions we are separate, in our own world, only these two places matter, and in a way only them exist. On our way there other travellers can seem like mere objects.

For example, you are in a car. You are travelling from your home to your job. It is rainy and cold outside, so you have your AC on. The radio plays the morning news. The car smells of home, and of you. This is your car, a several ton heavy machine, speeding along towards some-place else. But it’s not just a car, it’s your car, and it’s not just any destination, it’s yours.

Now consider the cars around you, imagine them with the same familiarity, as well as their goals, and a similar starting point. Continue with everyone on the same street, the same road, everyone from walking, to sitting half asleep on a bus. Continue to spread out through your city or town, the road full of, no longer traffic, but individuals, all from a starting point, to a goal, though not all of them planned.

Consider a city, as we consider the roads of said city.

This blog post was spell checked and edited for readability at 2021-06-07

Have you ever considered what makes up an apartment block? A cube of glass, stone, maybe wood that makes up so many towns, that so many people do and don’t call their home.

First of all is a physical thing. Big, imposing a brick. Man made, yet it seems almost natural, like a hill, or groups of threes. This is how we usually see apartment buildings, or at least, the ones we never enter.

But if we were to enter one, the become tangible, more real. It has an inside, we already knew that said inside exists. But now it’s more comprehensible for us. A hallway, a staircase or elevator, and of course the apartment itself.

The apartment as in a set of rooms that we, or someone we know, calls home is now a set point to us. The space becomes a tangled entity to us as we enter it, as we see, smell and feel it. The things in there, their concepts as well as the memories of these things, creates, together with the room they occupy, a home.

Though this apartment is not the only one on this floor. There are others, try and imagine them, just as real. Try to give them the same sense of physicality as the one you know. The same reality.

Now let’s go on to the same procedure on the next floors of said house. Not any-more a block of concrete, but a labyrinth of rooms, objects and consents that make up several individuals’ ideas of their own personal home.

Now stretch your view out the window, through the tens, maybe hundreds of similar apartment blocks outside. All of them are full of personal universes, coinciding without any conscious awareness of each other. All of them identical in purpose, yet, all of them unique.

Have you considered an apartment block?

This blog post was spell checked and edited for readability at 2021-06-07

Category: essay

Consider a city part 1

Apartment blocks