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This time last week I was in Barcelona, tramping up hundreds of steps and working the dead dull escalators that sprawled up the hill like lazy alligators in the sun. Yeah, jaws not working, metal grind silenced. They didn’t warn us tourist trash as we emerged blinking from the station and began to trek up to Parc Guell (dot dot over u), squinting at the green signs that disregarded all common laws of distance. 100 metres spooled out like stretched gum as 50 was eaten in a taught twist round a corner. And the stairs. Countless. Or at least, not counted by us as we panted in the heat and stepped, driving kneed and heavy footed past gaudy souvenir shops and tapas shacks with grubby wooden tables and waxy coated cloth. We stood at the top, heads down, sweated brows, hands planted firmly on hips as we panted like dogs, dripping warmed water into our gasping mouths. Hands shadowing eyes as we peered over the cityscape, the cathedrals, the sprawling houses, the sea, the Catalan gherkin erect and solitary.
Slipping and sliding on the winding, shaley paths winding round the hill. We’d come to see Gaudi (the architecture, not the man). The sinuous jeweled mosaics and the fleshy, hollowed curves and the raw organic archways and the Hansel and Gretel gingerbread house and the grinning, sparkling dragon. We clicked away with our little cameras and bought the tacky postcards from the stand and ate our chorizo ‘n’ cheese sandwiched in the shadows, looking out. And it was beautiful and tactile and appealing and everything I’d imagined in the hot burn of the midday sun. Later we went to Casa Mila and swooped up the spires of the Sagrada Familia and wowed at the intricacies of the design and the sheer grandeur of scale. Big-eyed, gabbling, impressed.
However, I digress. I wanted to go to Barcelona to see the Gaudi, but as it turned out I was struck dumb (voluntary silence) by another cathedral, Cathedral La Seu. Again, there is the sheer impressive size, great vaulted (vaunted?) roofs and towering pillars, smooth and stained by smoke and time, and the rubbing of passing humanity. Scarlet votive candles flaring in droves by the friezes (I forget the word: sculpture, paintings, gilted modellings) of tens of Saints, the crucified Jesus, the Virgin. Filtered light heavy with motes of dust and the sigh of shushed visitors. The outside cloister still with palms and ferns and mossy grass, a lichened drinking fount and honking, lump-headed geese. Rows of dark wood pews and carved beasts and angels and the floating incantation a steady pulse vibrating in the ribcage with the heartbeat.
More than the architecture, it was the atmosphere. I’m not religious but the place filled me with a sense of contentment and stillness and, perhaps, awe. I felt like I could have stayed there for hours, breathing the incense and blocking out the shuffling tread and the flash of digital cameras. I tried to work out why, the sense of place, and self, and assurance, and respect, the quiet belief of centuries, the explicit trappings of faith. Or maybe just the age and scale of the place, soaring into arches peaked far above in the gloom. I thought, is this what religion feels like? A contentment? Peace in oneself? Or does it have to be inspired by the oppressive, impressive architecture of the holy (wholly) committed? Whatever. I was surprised by my reaction and intrigued as to what inspired it. I feel I have experienced a true definition of ‘awe-inspiring' (previously only sparked by natural structures, mountains, canyons, gushing waterfalls etc). I feel privileged, and strange. Perhaps this is why my (atheist/agnostic) parents sought out churches on our holidays and dragged us round, protesting. Although looking back I can remember the stillness, and have tried to recapture it. Who knows.
Anyhow! What structures (manmade or natural) have taken your breath away, or had some emotional impact on you? Favourite buildings? Nature of religion? Anything?
quote:Originally posted by philomel: What structures (manmade or natural) have taken your breath away, or had some emotional impact on you? Favourite buildings? Nature of religion? Anything?
A month or two ago, VP and i spent a day touring round the Hawksmoor churches in London, concluding with Christ's Church in Spitalfields. For some reason I never saw it coming. We just rounded a corner and VP goes "O, there it is", and it was right next to me, just there, all horrible and imposing. I felt like that bit in Alien where the guy goes down the ladder in the vent, shines his torch one way and then the other, and the alien is right next to him. It's a horrible building, no question, and you're first instinct is to just get away from it. It's kind of sick making, and chilling, too. Impressive.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: A month or two ago, VP and i spent a day touring round the Hawksmoor churches in London, concluding with Christ's Church in Spitalfields.
Is there something you're not telling us?
There is something in the water on TMO - its silly season I tells ya!
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Hawksmoor is intrinsically linked (in my head) with the Peter Ackroyd novel of the same name and that's a pretty disturbing book. I haven't been to see the churches but if they're anything like as described in the text, I would imagine the atmosphere would be fairly uncanny. Although perhaps (undoubtedly) I've already been influenced by my reading.
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Well, if you liked that book, I suggest you take the time to have a look at the churches in real life. They're pretty intimidating, especially when you've got Ackroyd's psychogeographic musings swilling round in your head.
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if i pop it in an untimely fashion i will probably have my funeral in a hawksmoor church, cos my mum has made friends with the vicar at st alfeges. i think they make better funeral churches than wedding churches, unquestionably. christ's church fucking rocks! it really does make you feel ill. my stepdad gays out over that building. you cant like that church but you can think its the dogs bollocks. some churches are places where you were meant to worship nice fluffy god-version, but at christ's church you are worshipping SCARY GOD. SCARY DOMESTOS GOD who SMITES ALLKNOWN SINNERS DEAD. hes an evil medieval motherfucker god.
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The one place I've been to in recent memory that just took my breath away in the manner you describe Philomel, is the Cordoba Mosque, I'm by no means a religious man, far from it, and I'm not even one for spending much time marvelling at architecture and the like, but this place is just stunning. I literally spent most of the time I was in there just open-mouthed in astonishment that anything man made could be quite so beautiful and awe inspiring, in fact Ringo can probably testify to my no doubt gormless looking slack-jawed reaction. If anyone gets the opportunity to go there I can't recommend it highly enough, it's one of those rare experiences which will stay with me for life - the contrasting styles borne of its Arabian origins, the Califal style in which it was originally built, and its subsequent consecration as a church, all softly lit and all beautifully preserved.
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I'm very glad Christ's Church is structurally sound again, now it just needs to absorb some grime so it's the right colour. Next time anyone goes to Barcelona don't bother with the boring, bastardised SF, check out Le Corb's cool little box of light and shadow church over by the graveyard in Barceloneta. If you can't get in knock next door and a monk will come to your assistance.
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I'm not being funny, Philomel, but every thread you start is a showboating, writer's-workshop-style journal entry with a question tacked on at the end as an afterthought. It does occupy a niche on the board and not many people write threads like that so it's at least an individual quirk, but I do feel you're doing it to get a piece of prose out of your head (and perhaps in front of a readership) rather than to genuinely ask anyone else what they think on a topic.
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Also, almost every thread in question features lines like "slick-sliding on crusty autumn leaves. Huddle of grinning girlfriends clutching slip-shiny bottles of Aftershock, lips glossed giggling as we clit-clatter to the nearest tube. Startle of a squirrel skim-skurrying across moonpale midnight streets."
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Even if that's the case is it really a problem when the subject matter is as potentially interesting as this thread? Surely if Philomels's posts inspire an interesting discussion or debate then they serve a purpose other than for Philomel to post prose. And even if Philomel is posting prose for prose's sake, she'd hardly be the first person on here to make essentially self-indulgent posts.
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tbh, i hadnt noticed philomel being any more guilty of this than anyone else, in fact that up there looks far more like "this building impressed me enough to write a not extravagent little bit about it" rather than an exercise in any particular creative writing...and the fact people have responded to it as such seems to suggest its fulfilled its function. its a good question.
beh.
ANYWAY.
I used to think the local library was the best bmx track ever, when it rained I'd go sloshing through on my red bmxer and round the back, out of the safety of my parents and pretend i was racing. It was dead good, i went back the other day, it was just a library, and a horrible one at that.
Im going to see that new ferriss wheel in manchester tommorow, i expect that to awe me.
I was about to give up with a <curse you> when I discovered this, Emperor's New Clothes, which is, conveniently, exactly what I was talking about:
quote:Flat pockets and a single shiny black button. Wide leg trousers that swish and hang. Pointy toes. Spread out baby-pink shirt collar with chocolate stripes and hints of seethrough and silver thread... I clop with my back straight and my head high, rather than the characteristic Saturday morning skulk-shuffle. I went into my meeting breezy and confident, armed with flimsy files and frankly unsuitable facts
Unfortunately for my assertion above, this is one thread out of the four Philomel threads I could find. I can only suggest that either I was dreaming it up or that the "evidence" is lost in whatever backwater holds the drifting wreck of TMO before the last crash.
You will have to rely on your own memories to judge whether I was entirely or partly mistaken (or indeed had a point.) Nothing personal anyway.
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Ha. I had make an effort to stop doing this but slipped at this hurdle. I really should have cut the first two paragraphs but I was quite enjoying myself (self-indulgent). But, I did really want to discuss inspiring buildings/how they can prompt emotional reactions. I am also interested in the nature of faith, and how it's influenced by/influenced by these structures. Would it have read differently if it had been sliced down to the latter half?
I don't get involved with the long debate-type threads in general unless I feel I've got something new and constructive to add (also, time factors). However, I feel I want to contribute something and this appears to be how I do it.
Generally I do have an idea I want to discuss and feel the urge to flesh it out with personal experience (<cough> rambling prose). Surely what I'm doing is just the PF thing in reverse: instead of asking the question first and then posting reams of reply, I'm doing it the other way round. Feel free to disagree, of course.
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quote:Originally posted by kovacs: I'm not being funny, Philomel, but every thread you start is a showboating, writer's-workshop-style journal entry with a question tacked on at the end as an afterthought. It does occupy a niche on the board and not many people write threads like that so it's at least an individual quirk, but I do feel you're doing it to get a piece of prose out of your head (and perhaps in front of a readership) rather than to genuinely ask anyone else what they think on a topic.
In fairness, I do this pretty often. Perhaps your attack was a projection onto Feel-o-Meal of the resentment you feel for me?
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As kovacian Biannual Random Venom Splurges go, that was pretty limp. He must be getting soft in his dotage.
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My criticisms are never random -- just because I had to be reasonable and seek support for my own argument doesn't make me weak. Anyway, I shouldn't disrupt Philomel's thread any more.
scrawny
One Mojito, two Gin and Tonics, Three Bacardi Lime Sodas, and a couple of pints of Stella please.
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quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Also, almost every thread in question features lines like "slick-sliding on crusty autumn leaves. Huddle of grinning girlfriends clutching slip-shiny bottles of Aftershock, lips glossed giggling as we clit-clatter to the nearest tube. Startle of a squirrel skim-skurrying across moonpale midnight streets."
This made me laugh almost as much as when Kovacs got drunk whilst writing an essay on Battleship Potemkin.
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I actually like squirrels. The funniest thing I ever wrote on here, according to Teflon (I think he said it was the only funny thing I ever wrote) was about squirrels.
eta: I did realise above that Aftershock doesn't come in bottles... it is a shot, isn't it.
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: My criticisms are never random -- just because I had to be reasonable and seek support for my own argument doesn't make me weak. Anyway, I shouldn't disrupt Philomel's thread any more.
Its your targets that usually appear random.
Anyway, my fave buildings =
Natural History Museum, London for the carved animals on the walls, pink bricks and general Victorian OTT.
Palace of Culture, Warsaw for its fabulous, shameless monstrosity.
Malbork Castle, Poland for being the bestest castle in the world.
Paddy's Wigwam, Liverpool for the contrast between ugly-outside/beautiful-inside, and for being next to the Students Union.
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scrawny
One Mojito, two Gin and Tonics, Three Bacardi Lime Sodas, and a couple of pints of Stella please.
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quote:Originally posted by kovacs: I actually like squirrels. The funniest thing I ever wrote on here, according to Teflon (I think he said it was the only funny thing I ever wrote) was about squirrels.
Where's that?
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I couldn't find the thread but I tihnk Kovacs is referring to the time he blurted out "Aww! Look at the Quirrels!" on a bus in a voice he normally reserves for talking to Modge. Is that right?
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: I couldn't find the thread but I tihnk Kovacs is referring to the time he blurted out "Aww! Look at the Quirrels!" on a bus in a voice he normally reserves for talking to Modge. Is that right?
Oh yes! But wasn't he in a car with important work colleagues or something though? Kovacs?
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Yes I was being driven from Kensington to Richmond by some senior colleagues and at cruising speed, spotted some of the creatures in question -- from the front passenger seat I blurted without thinking "aw!! look at the quirrels!"
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Yes I was being driven from Kensington to Richmond by some senior colleagues and at cruising speed, spotted some of the creatures in question -- from the front passenger seat I blurted without thinking "aw!! look at the quirrels!"
I am gratified that you all remember it so well.
Actually, I think I missed the story the first time, so I'm happy for the clarification now.
Hopefully your colleagues were senior enough that they didn't remember the incident? Or have you been unable to play down the reputation of being that squirrel-cooing fellow?
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