Читать книгу Understories - Tim Horvath - Страница 7

Welcome! Please stop at the desk for a moment to sign this waiver. Though we wish you to enjoy the architectural apotheosis that surrounds you, since you are a mere pedestrian onlooker (henceforth “voyeur”) rather than a lessee (henceforth “resident”), you are subject thereby to certain restrictions and provisions. Continued presence in this lobby constitutes tacit acceptance of the following terms and conditions:

Management cannot be held responsible for any physical or psychological damage pursuant to the perceptual intake of this lobby, including but not limited to hyperventilation, fainting, seizures (epileptic or non), hives, acid reflux, anomie, ennui, generalized anxiety, mania, lethargy, manic lethargy, chromosomal ambivalence, rugburn (psychosomatic or otherwise), stiffarm, etc.

Note that any form of recording, photographic, videographic, sketch pad doodling, or representation in any traditional or untraditional mode of painting, whether in vogue or otherwise (this includes Impressionist, Postimpressionist, Rococo, pre-Raphaelite, prelapsarian, Expressionist, neo-Expressionist, neo-Lascauxian, agitprop, Dadaist and Surrealist, Mamaist and hyperrealist, Futurist, installation, uninstallation, Pointillist, smudgist, etc.) is strictly prohibited. Failure on the part of this document to anticipate new developments and/or movements in the arts not covered by the aforementioned does not exonerate voyeur from attempted portrayal.

Note that remembering is strictly prohibited, current research being staunchly ambivalent on the representationality of memory.

At the request of residents, no description of their habitation shall be given in ink, sound waves transmitted from vocal launching apparatus to aural landing pad, sign/gesture, semaphore, biophysical reenactment, encoded encapsulation, or telekinetic approximation. Failure on the part of this document to anticipate unprecedented forms of signification not covered by the aforementioned (else they’d hardly be “unprecedented”) does not exonerate voyeur from attempted description. Additionally, metaphorical and literal depictions of lobby are interchangeable, and from a legal standpoint, any such distinction is entirely moot. Blood-ethanol level exceeding threshold of diminished inhibitory mechanisms in voyeur also does not excuse voyeur from blabbing about the astonishing visual properties of the lobby of this building.

(If you want a bar, incidentally, I’d recommend Errol’s around the corner.)

Note that voyeur is not even capable of fully appreciating the lobby, since architect’s express mission was “to create a transitional venue to be absorbed molecularly in daily passage, subordinating ocular experience to a dopaminergic rush and overcoming the perils of habit(u)ation.” Note that even we have only a partial clue of what the fuck the architect was talking about; hence, to pretend that you, a mere pedestrian onlooker (henceforth “voyeur”), will “get it” in some fell swoop like some mathematical savant bypassing all the dirty little scratch pad pencil and eraser work is just plain ludicrous.

Dos?

Do wallow in silent appreciation. Bask, even. Marvel at how the lintels, by way of fractal tilework, suggest the expansion and eventual contraction of the universe. Ooh and aah at the way the right angles ooze and the curves flatten. Twitter at the use of barklike textures. Gape at the juxtaposition of so-called choosy mirrors that resolve age-old paradoxes of regress through their tasteful editing of visual ephemera. Revel in the inimitable touches—the portrait of the yeti hung mischievously aslant, the coquettish positioning of the mailboxes.

Then, at some point, exit, returning to your (henceforth “your”) existence as pedestrian, free to merge into the anonymous tumult of human transit, speaking nil of what you’ve seen today, abiding no scar of it in the retention orifices of your mind, for to recall it thusly will entail your having become part of the lobby; hence, according to the provisions set forth above, prohibited from speaking of oneself, crippled, I tell you, as one who must fall silent and expressionless each time I walk through those heart-rendingly simple doors.

Those, there.