tang dynasty times

City Upon a Hill (Shahr-al-shura)

 
Asher J Kohn imagined his city, he said, "out of the realization that the law had no response to drone warfare.” And so he came up with his concept of Shura City, ostensibly in the hope that by rendering drones less efficient for "apprehending" targets, we would be forced to return to utilizing police and the law. 

It is a take on a "gated community" --and yet the gates are not to keep people out, but rather to render all the people living within its walls unidentifiable and anonymous. So in the same way that a medieval castle fortress was an architectural defence against 15th and 16th century artillery technology, so too does Shura City seek to use architecture as a defence.

This new-style defence, though, "is not defense-through-hardening, but defense-through-confusion."

His architctural plan has several features--all which are seen to enable this style of "defence-through-confusion." People dwell in Habitat '67-style stacked dwellings, which make mapping and the tracking of residents' movements difficult. There is a protective shared-roof covering to the community, which further protects against aerial tracking. The apartment-style dwellings make use of smart windows, which utilize technology to render the glass easy to see out but prevent peering in. Focusing on windows, which are, after all, one of the weak links in security against drones, he envisions something like the exquisitely intricate windows at the L’Institut du Monde Arabe, in Paris:

Patterned after amashrabiya, a feature of Arabic architecture that protects from glare and prying eyes. In Paris, the machines dilate and contract, forming new patterns and shut-ting down for closed exhibits. These are obviously good for keeping what’s inside from being known outside. 

An alternative to patterned windows is changing color glass, which would also serve to allow light in while preventing easy identification or tracking of the residents from above. The windows in effect are contributing to bringing peopk out of a siege mentality. We read every so often of how it feels to be on the ground in pakistan and Yemen, where the drones seem ever present. Th psychological effects are profound, and Kohn's imaginary city is designed to undermine the rationale of the technology.

Would it work?

All-in-all, Kohn's "drone-proof" city is reminiscent of Foster's famous project in the desert of Abu Dhabi. Also designed from scratch and planned to be the world's first zero-carbon city, Masdar City employs many of the same architectural elements of Shura. However, in Masdar's case, these similar architectual elements are not planned for reasons of aerial defence but rather for ecological reasons.

Like in Shura, in Masdar citizens also dwell in gorgous stacked housing units surrounding covered plazas. The roofs of Masdar enable the regulation of temperature. Along with the shade city, transportation takes place below ground to create a truly walking city. And, while Shura has a lattice style roof based on  NEY +Partner’s project for the Netherlands Maritime Museum, Masdar has gorgeous solar umbrella shades. Variations of towers (minarets) and wind-catchers (badgirs) are also used in both along the perimeters to both regulate temperature and undermine aerial heat-mapping.

++

Kohn's project just a proposal. Or a dazzling provocation. And, while it is bare-bones, still there are two things that I think could immediately be said about the implications of "defence-as-confusion."

First, it brings us back to a state where we are living with our fates tied together. Like in the ancient Chinese han (班) system, because an attacker would be forced to destroy the entire compound rather than only the militants, we would truly have to become our brother's keeper. This might be anathema to Libertarians and yet to those interested in getting back to more communitarian values, it is of interest--as it would theoretically encourage stronger communities. Whether for security or for ecology, it seems like we are just going to have to go back to a more community-oriented lifestyle.

Second, experts tell us (and indeed it is a no-brainer) that the arms race for this kind of cheap and low level technology will be such that it's only a matter of time before "everyone has drones." If this is the "next arms race," it will be a very different one fro the nuclear club --which so far has required governmental level initiation. Drones are a different kettle of fish;  for in the words of the Brookings Institution expert Peter Singer:

This is a robotics revolution, but it's not just an American revolution -- everyone's involved, from Hezbollah to paparazzi. 

It is, therefore, simply inevitable that we will have to alter the way we live, I think. Not just in terms of architecture but in terms of community and communal responsibility. If not for defence against drones, then for ecological reasons for sure.  

I can't help but think of Rene Girard's words that, History is a test. And Mankind is failing it.

That about sums it up I guess...

Top art work comes from Biblioddysey's fabulous post: Feuerwerksbuch. 

More Photos of Masdar here. Teju Cole's A Reader's War here.

 

falling in love in hong kong

Not all that long ago, he told me about the time he had fallen in love in Hong Kong; described reading novels together with his lover in bed; and about feeding each other mango pudding with a red lacquer spoon. When they could, he said, they would steal away to his room where they would spend afternoons making love after swimming. Then happily talking and long dinners.

To say that his story drew me in would only be an under-statement. For you will agree Dear Readers, that it is rare today to hear stories of a love affair. I mean, we hear all manner of complaints and about filing suit; we hear reports of all kinds-- relationship reports, the usual cost-benefit analysis reports; what I did over the weekend reports. But how often do people really talk about the delights of a love affair?

To speak of delight....

And, to listen in delight...it was like falling into a bd of rose petals-- and I could taste the mango pudding on my tongue.

**

I too fell in love in Hong Kong. In my case, though, it was Hong Kong itself that I fell in love with. And, it was for me, love at first sight.

Sitting in the back of a taxi from the airport, we headed toward Wanchai. It was back in the late 90s. The bridges and the water reminded me of San Francisco, but only even more beautiful. And the way the light was filtered through mist reminded me of the small misty valley where I grew up in LA. Mountains and water-- and sunlight veiled softly in mist. That was before I saw the harbor. When I got my first glimpse of that-- well, that was it. This was it. 

Isn't true love not always like this, though?

Barthes describes this perception of perfection (of the Beloved) using the word "adorable!" The object of one's desire is loved in their entirety-- a state which no word can describe. And yet... for want of a better word, the philosopher calls this adorable! I call it perfection, which is only to say, I love you because I love you.

And just as I described here:

Perfection  somehow fits perfectly in your hands. It is something you long to touch the moment your eyes rest upon it. And no matter how many times you see it, you always seem to find something new about it; something else to fall in love with. It never ceases to delight you, in fact.

In Wanchai-- it was the traffic; drinking tea in Times Square; the Metro; the trams; the unending crowds of people. I loved to see them switch the blinding lights on at night over at the race track. 

And, in Happy Valley sometimes, waking up i the mornings there, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. In the mornings, if ever there was a break in the traffic or the jackhammers, I would always hear the sweetest sounds of birds singing (escaped songbirds someone told me living in the trees)... there was the fresh food market and the flower sellers just like in Japan-- but better.

For me, though, Mui Wo was perhaps as close to perfection as it gets. The food (don't you hate people who can't talk about food?) the Bay; hiking up to the temple for lunch. Adonis loved it there and the little piggy toddled his way from dimsum restaurant to seafood place. We spent hours on the beach playing. For him, the trams, the subway, the train out to that famous pigeon restaurant up on the hill by China University, the Peak Walk, the star ferry, hovercraft to Macao....it was all his vision of perfection just like it was mine.

**

People often seem surprised when they hear about my feelings for Hong Kong. Several of the Readers of these Pages, in fact, have written to ask me, Why Hong Kong?

Even my tea teacher was surprised. 

We were in her garden. It was May and the peonies were in bloom. Her famous, famous peonies. Brilliant magenta (in Japanese 牡丹色 peony color), each flower was larger than a small child's perfectly shaped little head. She had me holding the bamboo basket as she knelt down in an azure kimono to snip just one flower for the tokonoma.

"Hong Kong?" 

"Yes, Hong Kong."

"But, it's all about money, isn't it? And Peony, you love art and music. Culture. What could you possibly see in Hong Kong?"

I had never thouht of it before. (Does anyone ever think of reasons why they are in love?) And so I just said, "Well, opposites attract, I suppose."

**

The other day, though, I realized something else about the city. Isn't Hong Kong, after all, the silk road city par excellance? A vibrant trade city-- just prior to the Handover, they said it had one of the freest economies on earth.

It's a funny thing about Hong Kong. Yes, like Japan, people are very brand-oriented. They like to show off-- fancy cars or designer clothes-- Hong Kong's infamous tai tais in head-to-toe Prada and Chanel. Vacationing in Japan. One could never keep track of the fashionable bar of the week. Hip restaurant of the month. And yet, I would not say that Hong Kong is about spending money. Nope. To me, Hong Kong was always about making money. Trade. Free trade. Trade without ideology. I also heard that a huge portion of the world's exports passed through its harbor.

Up the escalator in mid-levels, there is a beautiful synagogue. One of the oldest and most thriving Jewish communities in Asia was a part of Hong Kong's history. The Sassoons and the Kadoories-- you know. It is the stuff of fortune-amassing legend.

Vibrant neighborhoods which for the most part are mutually-tolerant--African, Indian, Expat ("We've been here 25 years and still don't know how to say goodbye in Cantonese...." they said on their last day before heading Home). Chungking mansions, Discovery Bay-- need I say more?

Old World cosmopolitanism that is never a melting pot so much as a huge bazaar with two-way trade serving as the main conduit between people. Like Leh, like Venice, like Ithaka,- Hong Kong too stands a city of dreams--positioned smack in the middle of pilgrims paths and trade routes that first crisscrossed mountains and then crossed oceans.  

It is a city which is an end in itself.

And, it was for me, love at first sight.

**

See building a drone-proof City Upon a Hill here.

Photos by Michael Wolf/ Hong Kong as a video game here!

shanghai--and the lady from shu (bedhaya hagoromo)

Just back from Shanghai, it was part dream journey (臥遊) and part time travel (タイムスリップ)--            →　like this.

It was also a trip down memory lane.

On the plane on the way over, I sat next to a Lady from the Kingdom of Shu (蜀國). The women of Shu have always been renown for their beauty, and she was no different with her flawless pale skin (like moonlight), beautiful eyes and feather robes of exqusite shu brocade (蜀锦).

Her name was Hagoromo.

And, Hagoromo never stopped talking (and it was a 14 hour flight!) Luckily, women from the city of angels can also be quite chatty...

++

Named after her feather robe (羽衣), the noh play, Hagoromo, is thought to be one of the earliest noh plays. The story of a moon goddess descended to earth; a fisherman comes across her exquisite feather robe hanging from a pinetree (maybe she was bathing in the sea?). So entranced by the robe is he that he seeks to take it home with him. Before he can get very far, however, the beautiful goddess appears before him and tells him that without her robe, she cannot return to heaven. The fisherman is, of course, swayed by her obvious agitation and agrees to return it-- if only she will dance for him. She agrees, but then the man begins to waiver. Won't she ignore her part of the bargain as soon as she gets her feather robe back...?

                    But she tells him: “Doubt is for mortals. In heaven, there is no deceit.”  

Ezra Pound was also fascinated by Hagoromo, the moon goddess. He wrote his version of the play after the great Orientalist Ernest Fenollosa's widow had provided him with a translation. William Butler Yeats then wrote the introduction. Pound produced the play in 1916, but would re-visit it again many years later when he was jailed in Pisa. Imprisoned for treason, he was only allowed access to a few books in his cell. And this play of his own creation was one of them. He would write in his Pisan Cantos:

and the nymph of the Hagoromo came to me, as a corona of angels one day were clouds banked on Taishan or in glory of sunset and tovarish blessed without

He was a crackpot and poet to the dictator and yet one can only marvel at the incredible number of allusions--from Homer to Zeami-- in the Pisan cantos; seemingly all dredged up from memory, with notes scribbled on toilet paper!

Was it cultural theft or cultural exchange?

Scholars will argue but for me, I somehow understand his life-long fascination and appropriation of Hagoromo (among a million other images and imaginings in which he would delight). As one of the earliest plays in the noh theater repertoire, this play illuminates the relation noh had to the God dance. In this way, noh theater has always reminded me of the spiritually transportive qualities of Javanese dance--especially the story of Hagoromo. This feeling is also part, I suppose, of my own personal narrative as it was Javanese dance that was the start of my story; a story that began in Java and ending in Tokyo was then told last week in Shanghai. Like I said, it was a walk down memory lane.

Anyway, by chance, I stumbled upon this amazing youtube video (below) of Rick Emmert (whom I am a huge fan) performing Hagoromo to Javanese gamelan with Javanese dancers. The collaborative dance is so unusual not just because of its Javanese-Japanese collaboration but also it is the Javanese dancers who wear the masks and Rick (the shite) is mask-less. The chanting is classical Javanese court style and yet... I would say it is the noh play that really creates the mood and atmosphere of this.

I only wish I could have been there.  

                                                                                                    蜀男へ

The Noh play Hagoromo    ♥　 Hagoromo Photo Story

 

 

dante sighs (and a medieval theory of 氣)

 

Remember when Dante sighed?

Out to buy figs, young Dante was in a rush to get to the market. As he walked, he imagined the smell of Sicilian lemons; of sweet sugar from Egypt; of perfumed vinegars and syrups made from grapes.  Cherries, endives, oranges, spicy sausage; dried fruit, figs, dried fish, mint, orange blossoms and roses---cumin, peppers and of course Laura's saffron. Just thinking about the perfume of these things caused him to quicken his pace. And, turning the corner to the lively street that followed the great River Arno, he spotted her. Beatrice. It had been precisely nine years since the first time he had caught glimpse of her, at a time when they had both still been only children. But he recognized her in an instant.

And as a thousand birds took flight in his heart, the man stood there barely breathing. Time stopped. Breath quickened and he let out an amorous sigh (溜息→感嘆).

Too quickly, however, Beatrice's friend, with whom she had been walking arm-in-arm, urged her to continue walking. And so Dante's Lady walks away. Likened to Jesus' epiphany as he walked through the streets of Jerusalem, blessings are dispensed in her wake. And in this way, sighing deeply he knew he would never be the same again.

It was a sigh--make no mistake about it--that originated in the Body of Beatrice. For the vision of her created a

...sweetness to the heart

and

A suave spirit full of love

That straight to the soul,

Saying:  “Sigh”  (Tanto Gentile)

 

Seeing the world anew→ La Vita Nuova.

**

 

In an article from last year in the New York Review of Books,  Robert Harrison, reviews Slavitt's new translation of La Vita Nuova.

Saved by the Vision of Beatrice, he says,

What appears to the eyes then becomes spiritualized and, as spirit, enters the onlooker's inner being, inspiring the soul to emit a sigh. From this sigh of inspiration--this culminating intake and exhalation of breath--the poem we are reading is born.

 

氣象.

Nowadays we think of mood, spirit, dreams, love and behavior in terms of internal psychological states of being. But in medieval times, things were different, I think. Love and the spirits (其鬼不神), human destiny and the destiny of cities (the spirit of cities)--- all these things were inter-twined via shared moods and a "breathing and porous Medieval human heart.

Francois Jullien talking about daoist physiology brings up "breath phenomenon 氣象" and says that through one's in-haling and ex-haling, one breathes in landscape, atmosphere and social context and breathes out character, heart and correct behavior. It is not unlike a Confucian scholar whose meticulous actions-- perfectly attuned to the situation-- are guided by a Confucian sensibility, or sensitive negotiating of shared mood. It is the explanation for everything from falling in love, charisma and the heart's fascination to correct deportment and the Rites.

The ancients--East and West-- told us that it was the heart/mind (心）that mattered. The seat of spiritual power, it was equated with life itself. Thinking too much, they warned, will only give you a headache, and this fact was backed up by the finest research of Medieval physicians and theologians. Aristotelian philosophy had imparted to the Medievals that the heart was hot and dry-- often times burning hot; and that intelligence, emotion, passion and sensations all originated there, in that heat. Ibn Arabi further refined this by adding that, if the mind thinks (考）, the heart imagines （思・想）.

We find ourselves, therefore, back in a time when heart and imagination took center stage.

In addition to its heat, the Medieval heart was also believed to be extremely porous--something which inextricably connected inner with outer (and outer and inner). Heather Webb explains it thus:

 It was thought that the air we breathed mixed with the blood in our hearts to form generative spirits that, sent back into the world, connected us to one another and to the greater circulating universe. According to the Aristotelian and Aquinian theory, the heart should imperfectly mimic the circulations of the heavens"

Through our breath, then, and our persistently beating hearts, we are connected to those around us and to the turning of the universe itself. (and yes, the heart does not make checklists).

To speak in daoist terms, our hero-pilgrim Dante Alighieri walks through a landscape. Florence is engulfed in shared sighs as the Lover sees his beloved- and in that moment, Dante breathes her in deeply in to his heart. Then, ex-haling in a sigh, the world is forever changed. Our man goes with the flow. He sighs and a poem is born.

In a dream later that night, The God of Love (恋神) commands Dante: 'Vide Cor Meum': Look upon your heart. 

It all happens in the heart and like that of the ancient daoists, Dante's world was one largely un-interested in Nirvana or Enlightenment-- or any other project which saw our human lives as a resource to be shaped, utilized, improved and perfected. People didn't really seek to be the "best me they could be." Nor did they go to elaborate lengths to avoid pain. For those in Dante's world, one needn't empty oneself or seek to detach oneself from emotions as their world was not a world of independent self-enclosed brains. Dwelling in a world that itself was bleeding and wounded (wounded Christ heart), poets and philosophers considered that the best one could do was to bravely and vigiliantly, shape one's self around the recognition of necessity and keep an open heart-- a generous heart (Sacred Heart).

And from out of one's own heart's wounds art can be created; in sighs we are inspired and in dreams and visions we are re-born ～into la vita nuova and la dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life.)

 Recommended: Alain Badiou: A Life in Writing

**

A classic word comes from the body, which expresses the emotion of absence (to sigh 溜息→感嘆 ): "to sigh for the bodily presence": the two halves of the androgyne sigh for each other, as if each breath, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other: the image of the embrace 色 in that melts the two images into a single one: in amorous absence, I am, sadly, an unglued image that dries, yellows, shrivels--Barthes

city of transience (東京物語）

A city known for its earthquakes and fires, Tokyo --says British scholar Paul Waley-- is the city of perpetual destroy and rebuild.

Wasn't it also the city Godzilla terrorized again and again?

Even way back when, Edo was called the "city of fires." Famously referred to as Edo no hana (the “flowers of Edo;” from 火事と喧嘩は江戸の花); people suggested that the all too frequent fires of the city resembled “the autumn leaves.”

From fires to earthquakes, a vulnerability to natural (and man-made) disasters remains one of the most enduring tropes or moods of the city. Just recently, in fact, The Guardian had an article which quoted Tokyo University researchers as predicting a 50% chance of Tokyo being struck by a major earthquake in the next four years. They predict about 10,000 fatalities.

飛花落葉

This historical fact has become the way the city imagines itself and given this narrative of the city, it is probably not surprising that the people of Tokyo are known for their celebration of transience and pleasure (pleasure in the face of vulnerability).

浮世

The floating world: to float (浮) signifies sadness in the face of life’s many hardships and pain. From the Heian period it has been used as a metaphor for the suffering of our world. It later became associated with the Buddhist notion of “this transient world” (無常や仮の世) .

In China, I think the term is more traditionally associated with a life of retreat from the world. Alex Kerr mentions the old Chinese novel called 「浮生六記録」"Six Records of a Floating Life," which is a romantic true story of an impoverished scholar and his beloved wife Yun who lived in early 19th century Suzhou. Although poor they tried to live a life of elegance with nature and poetry in a little cottage. This is not unlike Tao Yuanming’s ideal of plucking  chrysanthemums by the eastern fence (採菊東籬下) or Lady Li’s sobriquet: "the inhabitant who is easily contented" (易安居士). See here.

In Edo, though, this notion was turned on its head. Rather than seeing it in the pessimistic light of Buddhist philosophy, transience was held up as liberating: “If this moment is all we have, we had better live and love with gusto!” And, so in Edo, the floating world took on the meaning of love affairs and play→遊 For me, this will always be the "spirit of Tokyo."

Natsumi Hayashi Levitates 浮遊！！

Below, my favorite scene from Tokyo Monogatari.