Sometimes when I’m riding or walking through a neighborhood, especially at night, and even floating through it on Google Earth, I’m suddenly flooded with imagined stories of the people who live there. Not usually people visible on the streets, but the countless unseen ones living inside their homes and apartments, each with rich and complicated lives. The stories are mostly assumptions, so I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask them. How many live there? What are your interiors like? What objects do you surround yourself with? What sorts of crafts, entertainment, and activities do you enjoy? Who do you spend holidays with? How do you make a living? Are you happy? How can you possibly live with the amount of overhead fluorescent light flooding your space? Occasional views through a parted curtain reveals a bright opening to the inside which enhances whether it feels inviting or uncomfortable—incandescent or florescent. It dawned on me recently that most of this is triggered by the feeling the architecture gives me and how it shapes what I imagine.
I remember experiencing this more frequently when I lived in Providence and explored neighborhoods new to me like College Hill, Fox Point, Smith Hill, and Olneyville. I spent most of my time near Benefit Street though—a street that witnessed the middle of the 18th Century, the American Revolution, and the Claus von Bülow appeal trial. Occasionally I’d join friends at a bar on nearby Main Street and more rarely attend a party somewhere. On this night two professors had a house party, and students were invited. Most were undergraduates who I was just beginning to know. Two of the professors were married to each other and the third was a good friend of theirs. One of them oversaw the photo lab because she taught the photo-graphics class. A fellow classmate and I maintained the photo lab to earn our work study checks so I knew her the best. The party was at the married professor’s house. It was set back from Benefit Street a half block up a slight incline all the way to their front door. It felt familiar and welcoming because it was yellow and white and looked like a simple farmhouse with a front porch like ones I’d visited or lived in growing up.
I arrived after eleven and shoved my bike into some thick bushes on the side of their house—thick enough that it remained upright. The party had been going for hours before I arrived. After I greeted some of the students I knew, I looked for the professors hosting the party. I found them standing around a drafting table in a dark corner of their studio adjacent to the living room. They were looking at printed posters that reflected the light and illuminated their faces because the task lamp was so bright. They were always friendly, but I was still intimidated because they were serious people, and I was unsure of myself. I chatted with them for a little while and agreed that Univers was the perfect typeface for most projects.
After a cocktail or two, I was swept into the crowd that danced to a variety of music including the B-52’s. The song Rock Lobster stood out because we all sang in unison and synchronized our dance moves, which eventually found us lying on our backs with legs and arms in the air. After hours of dancing and talking I was tired and needed to head home. I said my goodbyes and a friend followed me out to talk where it was quiet. He asked me if I was OK to ride as I disappeared into the bushes to grab my bike. I said I was, and we headed down their front lawn to the sidewalk on Benefit Street. We walked through the thick leaves which slowly grew louder than the music we’d left behind. We chatted for a few more minutes on the sidewalk, and he confirmed that I was OK one last time. If not, he suggested I could leave my bike, and he’d drive me home. “No, that’s alright, thanks though… but I do need you to point me north.”
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“Therefore, the places in which we have experienced day dreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling-places are relived as day-dreams and these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all time.”
Gaston Bachelard
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Songs :: Time Capsule album by The B-52’s, Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan, Snowflake by Kate Bush, All My Days by Alexi Murdoch, and Flamenco Sketches by Miles Davis
© C. Davidson