The Chicago machine has four different outlets, cut across two axes:
Vertical
Internal + External
Horizontal
The internal and the external reflect each other as crystalline forms. The horizontal is the straight lines of the streets, placed in flat, symmetrical grids. The streets stretch forever, turning into wind tunnels. That's okay, because no one walks here anyway; the streets are not intended for pedestrians or loiterers. They are made for swift vehicular movement, for easy navigation. The streets connect neighborhoods of near-identical houses, seemingly randomly distributed in states of derelict or freshly refurbished. The buses stop at every block and the subway always makes a loop downtown. Only poor people use public transport.
As an echo to the external grids are people's internal horizons. This is the feeling of freedom that comes with end-point of any journey clearly visible, and the sensation of stretching towards it. Anything is within reach here, but you need to pick up speed.
Since we had no reason to refuse the driver wanting to listen to his tunes, he provides the soundtrack of the American streets. Every element of the music is almost completely drowned in traffic noise, except the trap snares. Despite the rattlesnake intensity, it produces a calm mood. The driver mumbles along to the rap-song, with impressive accuracy and a lulling effect. In the back seat some guy who is sharing the ride is on the phone. He keeps asking 'where you at where you at where you at, where you goin where you goin where you goin' for what seems like forever. The person(s) on the other side of the phone don't want to say, or don't know, or maybe they just don't have anything to say to each other but want to hear the other's voices.
The car always moves straight forward. It's dark here, in the shadow of skyscrapers that fade into heavy rain clouds. This is an ad for Uber or Lyft, I'm not sure which, showing its self-driving car (there is a self driving it). Or it's a scene from Batman Begins - a short, insignificant moment of tranquility before the real attraction: The car chase catches up on us, turning us into collateral. The high speed intensity of the pitch black Batmobile sends us flying through the air.
There are no levels here except the flat street level. The parks have only well-kept grass and some scattered trees. All this used to be prairie land, with oceans of flowers. Today only some of the graveyards are allowed to remain unkept, as if only the dead can be wild, any wildness must be killed. Chicago is named after shikaakwa, a native word for a wild onion. Where do the wild rabbits go to hide now? They bounce around in a lot with nothing but grass downtown, surrounded only by the vertical lines constructed in concrete, metal and glass. Blocking and reflecting the sun, these skyscrapers form straight lines into people's internal hierarchies. The promise of upward social mobility is always there, but it's not easy to climb up such smooth surfaces. Anything is within reach here, but you need to pick up speed.
There are a couple of necessary preconditions before being allowed the upward drift of indoor skydiving. First we fill out a form that absolves the company in case of injury or death. We also need to be weighed, to check that each of us are below 130 kg. 'Should I remove my coat? No, that's okay, there's no way you're anywhere close to that.' Still, rules are rules. And they must be followed without any reflection by all institutions here: 'You need an in-state ID to swim in the public pool', 'unaffiliated persons aren't legible for Library privileges'. Suddenly I understand the American desperation for the freedom that social mobility could bring, to lift one into the weightlessness of wealth. And I dream about participating in a reality show. I am all the characters, young and old, and each of us is tasked with spending $300k as quickly as possible. I wake up exhausted.
Among the clearest, crystalline states is the moral concern over others: On the subway, a man got in just before the doors closed, and I was wide-eyed enough to catch his gaze. If you smile at someone here, they seize the opportunity for interaction. He immediately started mumbling incoherently, and would not stop no matter how clear it became that I could only understand a fraction of what he was saying. He ate fried chicken thighs and dropped the bones on the floor, all the while staring intently at me. He had some important police work to do. He informed that there had been 20 police officers on board the subway earlier, that's why it was late. The police were heavily armed, and I couldn't make out if he actually knew who they were after or not, but he saw it fit to impart the important moral lesson upon me: never, ever, under any circumstance, tell the police anything.
The advice is of course impossible to follow, as the police are everywhere here, anyone here could be policing you. So a young radical, who explains that the new mayor is not to be trusted because she used to be a cop, also tells me: 'Now we're going to do something a bit illegal', and strays from the paved path onto the park grass.
There used to be great oceans of wild flowers here, have you ever smelled the wild flower summer breeze?
Vertical
Internal + External
Horizontal
The internal and the external reflect each other as crystalline forms. The horizontal is the straight lines of the streets, placed in flat, symmetrical grids. The streets stretch forever, turning into wind tunnels. That's okay, because no one walks here anyway; the streets are not intended for pedestrians or loiterers. They are made for swift vehicular movement, for easy navigation. The streets connect neighborhoods of near-identical houses, seemingly randomly distributed in states of derelict or freshly refurbished. The buses stop at every block and the subway always makes a loop downtown. Only poor people use public transport.
As an echo to the external grids are people's internal horizons. This is the feeling of freedom that comes with end-point of any journey clearly visible, and the sensation of stretching towards it. Anything is within reach here, but you need to pick up speed.
Since we had no reason to refuse the driver wanting to listen to his tunes, he provides the soundtrack of the American streets. Every element of the music is almost completely drowned in traffic noise, except the trap snares. Despite the rattlesnake intensity, it produces a calm mood. The driver mumbles along to the rap-song, with impressive accuracy and a lulling effect. In the back seat some guy who is sharing the ride is on the phone. He keeps asking 'where you at where you at where you at, where you goin where you goin where you goin' for what seems like forever. The person(s) on the other side of the phone don't want to say, or don't know, or maybe they just don't have anything to say to each other but want to hear the other's voices.
The car always moves straight forward. It's dark here, in the shadow of skyscrapers that fade into heavy rain clouds. This is an ad for Uber or Lyft, I'm not sure which, showing its self-driving car (there is a self driving it). Or it's a scene from Batman Begins - a short, insignificant moment of tranquility before the real attraction: The car chase catches up on us, turning us into collateral. The high speed intensity of the pitch black Batmobile sends us flying through the air.
There are no levels here except the flat street level. The parks have only well-kept grass and some scattered trees. All this used to be prairie land, with oceans of flowers. Today only some of the graveyards are allowed to remain unkept, as if only the dead can be wild, any wildness must be killed. Chicago is named after shikaakwa, a native word for a wild onion. Where do the wild rabbits go to hide now? They bounce around in a lot with nothing but grass downtown, surrounded only by the vertical lines constructed in concrete, metal and glass. Blocking and reflecting the sun, these skyscrapers form straight lines into people's internal hierarchies. The promise of upward social mobility is always there, but it's not easy to climb up such smooth surfaces. Anything is within reach here, but you need to pick up speed.
There are a couple of necessary preconditions before being allowed the upward drift of indoor skydiving. First we fill out a form that absolves the company in case of injury or death. We also need to be weighed, to check that each of us are below 130 kg. 'Should I remove my coat? No, that's okay, there's no way you're anywhere close to that.' Still, rules are rules. And they must be followed without any reflection by all institutions here: 'You need an in-state ID to swim in the public pool', 'unaffiliated persons aren't legible for Library privileges'. Suddenly I understand the American desperation for the freedom that social mobility could bring, to lift one into the weightlessness of wealth. And I dream about participating in a reality show. I am all the characters, young and old, and each of us is tasked with spending $300k as quickly as possible. I wake up exhausted.
Among the clearest, crystalline states is the moral concern over others: On the subway, a man got in just before the doors closed, and I was wide-eyed enough to catch his gaze. If you smile at someone here, they seize the opportunity for interaction. He immediately started mumbling incoherently, and would not stop no matter how clear it became that I could only understand a fraction of what he was saying. He ate fried chicken thighs and dropped the bones on the floor, all the while staring intently at me. He had some important police work to do. He informed that there had been 20 police officers on board the subway earlier, that's why it was late. The police were heavily armed, and I couldn't make out if he actually knew who they were after or not, but he saw it fit to impart the important moral lesson upon me: never, ever, under any circumstance, tell the police anything.
The advice is of course impossible to follow, as the police are everywhere here, anyone here could be policing you. So a young radical, who explains that the new mayor is not to be trusted because she used to be a cop, also tells me: 'Now we're going to do something a bit illegal', and strays from the paved path onto the park grass.
There used to be great oceans of wild flowers here, have you ever smelled the wild flower summer breeze?
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