Yes, Definitely, Maybe.
I take the turn at 83rd street, cross the Riverside Drive and find my way into the Riverside Park. Left of the road here, a group of men and women cause a noticeable disturbance. They have their extra large coffees along with some pastry, gathered around a bench and are in a heated conversation about Trump. Across the middle of the sidewalk, which I found as a matter of fact quite beautiful and lovely, lays a dog. Somehow it fills me with a fiery love. In fact, he lives in my building with an elderly gentleman and we keep ending up waiting for the elevator together but taking it in turns of course.
In my bright green dress, purchased from a vintage boutique in Galata, Istanbul, I really seem like an Upper West Side version of -my fair lady-. In recognition of this, I am honestly ashamed of how my hands smell. They are totally soaked in sanitizer at least three times —once when I got off the elevator, once after pushing the two massive doors of the entrance vestibule, and once more when the wind blew in the rather dusty porte cochère and I needed to scratch my eye… The terrible thought that a clumsy act might ruin my world constantly in my head, I had to reach out for the tiny bottle again yet grabbing my ruby red lipstick instead. Here once again, I remember, I must take fresh bearings —just put the sanitizer in your bag and leave the lipstick at home.
The vestibule that leads into an attractive lobby, the brass handles — soft rounded into art deco curves I find delicate and entertaining, and the silky smooth marbles I used to take the delight of appreciating at least a couple minutes each time I walked by, are all disregarded now...
In passing, the doorman calls to me -”It looks like you are out for a walk again”. “Yeah yeah..I just need to get the … out” I mumble, second part of the sentence almost in a whisper.
To people ignoring the built world I always present an austere face. For I never will understand how it can be called pleasure to rush past all the images and objects, surfaces, textures, smells, facades/buildings and art as if one had gone mad and had to accelerate for fear of despair. In fact, I love all reposes, especially when it comes to architecture, to an encounter with an attractive person or a painting at the museum, or a nice cocktail with a beloved friend...I rather elongate those moments, they are keeping me alive.
Beauty as the height of aesthetic achievement and the act of slowness to fully experience it have fallen out of favor. The Covid has changed the way we think about and live in the world. Might I confess that I have recently come to the conclusion that I stupidly reverted to a -classic modernist version- of myself walking almost in a grid-based world where there are lots of white spaces ignored. I fast-track the interiors, fast-track the people on the street, I even fast-track the Emery Roth buildings like the San Remo or the Beresford that I adore almost like a lady in a blustering car, and I utterly hate this.
While all this is like a horror story for an architect as myself that is used to over-enjoy the designed world, maybe it is not bad for the built environment. In fact, from another point of view, we can say that people can not sleepwalk their way through the world anymore. Unless an interior is strikingly different or lavish or unusual, most people are unaware of it. But now, Covid is forcing all to be aware of every tiny surface surrounding us in an apartment-building-city and dictates how we experience the world and each other...So, maybe there is some good in it after all???
It is evening here and I am at the beginning of a quite pretty path that runs under the trees.
As now a splendid scene comes most pleasantly to my notice, where two small children are practicing the violin out on the green instead of their -most likely tiny- rooms in an upper-west side apartment. I feel the desire to stop and bestow upon it a nice standing ovation at the end.. The children smile, their mothers smile, my dog is kind of excited and I carry on. Nowadays, the talk of the town is the “new urban” —one that favors isolated experiences over collective, segregation over permeability. I have to disagree… On the far-wandering walk, while I am passing by others’ secondary (meaning outdoor) living rooms, kitchens, music studios and even training studios on the wide green, a thousand usable thoughts occur to me. This walk provides me with amusement, it comforts, delights and refreshes me, as there is a community sense about it, maybe even more than it used to be. So maybe the further exploration of urban life and the utilization of outdoors is a revolution in the capacity to be human and inhuman and it might turn out to be positive.
Yet, one could not help but wonder…
Are we ever going to be able to get back to our normal lives?
Looking ahead, the mist is still there, and we are trying to move to a new normal. But, what do we mean with normal? Were our pre-Covid days normal? “A world ruled by stupidity, fear and greed ” as Einstein once stated… A world that normalized all these three forces to reign, was it ever -normal-?
I will go further and quote Chomsky here— “Possibly, a good side of the coronavirus, is it might bring people to think about what kind of world do we want”.
Everything in that past-normal was out there to dazzle, to be glitteringly elegant, it was practically scandalous. Now behind the masks and in sanitizer smells everything seems almost surgical, all glitters terrifying… But, time will perhaps come again when things will be different, at least I would like to think so. Maybe, we may get back to the essence of everything; start with humility, design with humility and as architects we will reconsider our roles as the agents of the society of spectacle…
While thinking all these on my way back home, in the way of shops: the eyewear store, the lovely Zabars with the long long waiting-line, the shoe store, Madame Sinclair’s hat shop, the bakery, bookstore, the wine boutique, were all enjoying the noise of people back in, with the delicious evening sun. If one were to count every single excitement and murmur the names on the storefronts on their way, one would never be able to stop, the city is limitless as our minds are; people with insight feel and observe this fact. You can not just easily walk out of the city nor leave the boundaries of your mind, but you can find reconciliation of some sort during a walk, the city is a great healer…
Now at the end of my walk, as I observe earth and air and sky, the melancholy sets fully in but I still have hope for an architecture that keeps including, that is permeable at the street level that promotes diversity more and that makes you feel like you belong to the city, to its history and to its possibilities of happy encounters —all adding up to something more bigger than yourself; something like -life.
But, are we ever gonna get back to normal?
Yes, definitely, maybe.
OEE