Architecture of Cities: Voices: Oracles: Oscar Niemeyer, Roberto Burle Marx


Oscar Niemeyer.

I imagine I can see the world in picoseconds: I imagine my captive captures may be seen through gigayears: I stand naked atop an entire seven seas of whales begging to be captured:

For five millenniums past since before today I have imagined Egyptian Blue: The first known dye from pigments: I Imagine the first fifteenth century morning when Albrecht Dürer toiled to meet Martin Schongauer: Everything in picoseconds, everything in gigayears everything to be discovered: Egyptians and Germans coming to gather as one wave of of cerebrospinal fluid delivering nutrients of ideas to one single digital snap of my arrival to make a single capture.

I allow myself to fantasize about my light touching people and places: I have compiled an army of historical occurrences, sciences and discoveries in my heart’s eyes:

Roberto Burle Marx at NYC Botanical Gardens.

One minute minute to explore what was before all of us: Now I can compose my focus, my lens to become: The moments’ memory lives in a real imagined galaxy of captures hear on earth:

I revel about what has vanished in my dreams and realities: Places and people who are lens perfect in my captures reminds me of what I have yet to see:

“Words are our servants, not our masters.” (Richard Dawkins, 1986, The Blind Watchmaker).

I have followed Dürer, Schongauer and Egyptian Blue not to mimic/imitate: Not to revisit history and sciences from before me: I have followed the above to wildly imagine how I may see what becomes:

I have stood toe to toe with most of the famous and more architects from the past half century:

They at one time knew little about me: I knew not enough about them:

I did know as I have traveled for their work and to capture their architecture my eyes needed to be armed with history and presence: The colors of space and time needed to be articulated: Again, I drift back among the gigayears in picseconds to see what I can see: I think many moments would be appropriate to explore and share:

Roberto Burle Marx at NYC Botanical Gardens.

Maybe one of the more astounding engagements was with the real Oscar Niemeyer: I have written about Niemeyer before: My moments with him were a  gift that keeps on giving: A gift of words: A gift for my eyes: He shared thoughts and ideas: He shared stories as in friendships with Roberto Burle Marx: We adored and admired what Marx left for us: We gazed hand in hand across Ipanema: I was the impressionable: Oscar merely admired his own history: He had seen the entire planet in his imaginative designs: I was feeling still in my infancy:The collective impressions and expressions our conversation shared remain: It was as if we grew and evolved as one: Oh such naive and impressionable dreams make for such fantasies:

I feel that we powered  forward together: Me imagining a future; he straddling 90 years and then some: Two souls melding as if by all osmosis: I was able to  dance upon tomorrow’s tomorrow: My feet pedaled atop the enormity of a thousand verdant lotus leaves.

Oscar transcends the centuries in my lifetimes: He is my Egyptian Blue: He was my fellow traveler in gigayears: We shared a whispering renaissance of time with fellow Brazilian Burle Marx: Brazil in the most minute way was mine as well as theirs:

Few have stamped their mark on a conversation as Oscar and Marx had for me: The vivid captures in my mind are equal tribute and homage to the art of another time, the captures in times today.

A Norman Foster Design for JP Morgan: But the eyes I borrowed for this image are Oscar Niemeyer’s: Oh to be set free by Oscar!

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Richard Schulman.