ecstatic truth (the city is over)

'looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however

commonplace the sight may be. like a piece of architecture, the

city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing

perceived only in the course of long spans of time. city design

is therefore a temporal art, but it can rarely use the controlled

and limited sequences of other temporal arts like music. on

different occasions and for different people, the sequences are

reversed, interrupted, abandoned, cut across. it is seen in all

lights and all weathers.

at every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more

than the ear can hear...' 

- kevin lynch, the image of the city.

in the morning horsemouth went for a walk upon the common, in the afternoon he worked. 

later he watched a variety of things on youtube. a basil rathbone era sherlock holmes, a documentary that purported to explain the work of werner herzog, and strangely enough following on from that a long review of a video game (see how archaic the terminology is) that was already into part 2 the painful art of empathy - deconstructing 'the last of us'. 

this featured lots of rendered environments of nature invading the ruined city (in this case seattle). one of the great pleasures of the post-apocalypse is seeing this happen, from whence the reference to kevin lynch's the image of the city (the city as paths, as barriers, as sightlines, as play). 

of course the current ruin/ reformation of the city is nothing like this (and what's worse horsemouth is not there to see it). the city that has so many workers travelling to work in the morning it is literally choking, it is literally a miracle every day that it does not grind to a halt, the city that breaths in and out a million people every day, this city is not just temporarily suspended, it is over. 

of course cities have fallow periods. londoners will tell you how it quietens down at christmas or the middle of the summer holidays, people from porto how the town is sad over winter. 

it is the haunted city: we can no longer go there. the ghosts have thrown us out. 

arguably for horsemouth's generation they wanted to be in the city. what did they want? more life (fucker!) but how do you deal with an equation of the virus where life = death.

is it just a big over-reaction? or a deliberate plan by capitalism? horsemouth thinks not. but certainly a moment has come, a change in the patterns of work. horsemouth will try and avoid its implications for a while longer.

he thinks london the unsanitary will rise again, the city of big dirty nocturnal fun. that people (the young) will want to be there. 

the sherlock holmes takes us to dr. samuel johnson's house (horsemouth has been there, up that alley off fleet street), there on the third shelf behind the books the stolen printing plates for five pound notes (strangely not subsequently changed by the bank of england as it would be too much trouble), the thief locked up in dartmoor prison making musical boxes each with a variation of the theme where the notes of the piano are letters. his accomplices miss their sale at auction and then have to recover them from the buyers. 

we are indebted to the bumbling idiot dr. watson for these breakthroughs (dr.s..., the notes on the piano) as he tells us whatever is on his mind, the little he knows that might relate to the matter just for something to say.