RO ON SPACE & SOUND – 7

SOUNDS OF BRANDS

Being in advertising has always made me think about my relationship with brands through a given day. Now, writing about Space & Sound makes me more acutely aware of my relationship with brands – through sounds.

As the early morning light vignettes the western skies, the iPhone alarm goes off. The resonant “ageng-kogeng-kogeng-geng” sound of a padded wooden Gamelan gong-beater is stifled halfway through the ring.

The kettle gurgles like a freshwater brook as it makes me my Bru Instant Coffee. I place the rice milk back in the refrigerator and it suddenly lets out a contented hum; if it were human, I’m almost sure it would snuggle up to me. I sit down to write this piece with my Macbook’s soft-touch keypad soothing my senses. It’s reassuring to hear that all the letters are appearing on the screen – as they should – without invading my space.

My Sonicare toothbrush buzzes, leaving each tooth squeaky-clean. As my blow-dryer blows my hair out into soft black silk, I wish it would be soundless like my Conair flatiron, which sometimes hisses at the wet strands.

In his previous post, Guy observes that music can both fill and create space. At the gym, it’s my very own world of auditory space through my iPod and my Bose headphones. I start on Level 2 with “Frenzy at The Feeder” by Brooks Williams, his complicated acoustic licks vying with Dan Crary’s flatpickin’ fretwork on “Dill Pickle Rag”. Level 3 meets the svelteness of “Cocktail Swing”. (Heavens, whatever did I do before Paul Englishby?) My endorphins escalate to the next level with a super-tight scratch, a tangoey mix oozing with vinyl soul by Gotan Project. Then, some pure gangsta rap, by one of its purest exponents Dr Dre, pounds into my ears. I identify with the fury at Level 6; it’s a strange mix of his anger and my elation. Sugar Ray Norcia winds me down, personally conveying his woes, and I wonder at how the Blues make me feel both low and high.

At night, Vedant turns on his new buy – the Venta Humidifier. I secretly think he has developed a “relationship” with it – not only because it moistens the air, but also because “it laps at the water gently all night like a thirsty puppy”, warming the cockles of his paternal heart.

How do brands or objects define your auditory space? What do they therefore mean to you?

Should a brand try to arrogate this space?

GUY ON SPACE & SOUND – 3

MUSIC TO MY EARS

Music is a particular kind of sound that deserves its own thread. But thinking about sound and space as I have here has helped me to understand what music is—or really, what the difference is between music and the other kind of sound, noise.

When is music music and when is it noise? When is noise noise and when is it music? At first glance this seems so particular to the person and the personality. My grandpa always used to call rock ’n’ roll “that banging”—it was noise to him. And I’ve been to a concert or two where the “music” I was supposedly listening to really just seemed like noise.

Can we explain this without just saying that it’s all a matter of taste? I think we now can, when we think, as we have been, about how sound and space interact.

Two kinds of sound: noise and music. The difference between them is that, while noise can only fill space—banish it—music can both fill and create space. Or, I should say, music can do either. Depending on the sensibility of the listener, that is.

Rock ’n’ roll was noise to my grandpa because for him, it could only crowd him in. Deny him space. It was and is music to me because, if I love it, it creates a beautiful bubble of peace within and around me. This is how the iPod works on the crowded, noisy train. And the fiddle in the coal mine, for that matter. Music takes a suffocating environment and creates breathing room. But if you can’t appreciate the particular music, it has the opposite effect: it’s noise to you, and banishes your personal space.

RO ON SPACE & SOUND – 6

ASIAN SOUNDSCAPES

I wake to an early morning tropical thunderstorm cleansing the sky of pent-up emotions. A roar and a rumble, a growl and a grumble, a clap and a crash, a blam-bang-boom!

Ah, rain in Singapore! It’s an event unto itself. These drops, they are large and powerful, no drippy drizzle, no fickle trickle – just an instant connection to God via the tangible forces of Nature.

The rain stops abruptly. Sounds dawn like light, with many-hued bugs and little-kingdom creatures chirping and croaking and buzzing and whizzing and whirring and fluttering and twittering ... signs of such intense life.

At the Hindu Temple, the pealing of brass bells – gleaming with tamarind rub, no doubt – wakes the gods from their slumber. A Poojari blows a conch. Gongs clang. Drums roll. Cymbals clink. As these rhythmic sounds of worship come to a hushed halt, the gods are invoked with Sanskrit mantras accompanied by tiny hand bells that tinkle thinly. The sounds are intoxicating, like incense upon the ear.

Later, a piece of driftwood cups my body like a soft wooden spoon at the open-air home of my Aussie friend “Dive”, and I'm sacrificed to Indonesian painters and photographs of vast Australian landscape. Parrots screech goodbye on trees laden heavy with mangoes like full, green breasts, and cicadas mate unceasingly in my ears.

It’s the weekend; I find myself upon a nearby island, where the meditative deep-breathing ocean inhales and exhales. It fringes the powdery white sands and kisses them with its frothy sea-saliva. The land within, braided thick and long as Rapunzel’s hair with tropical rainforest, is filled with magical, mysterious sounds.

The voodoo-chant of the Kecak dance makes my skin tremble like a cow's hide would, were it jabbed with a finger. Seventy men in black-and-white-check sarongs gather around a fire murmuring, “Chak-a-chak. A chak-a-chak-chak...” and the vocal symphony draws me into a trance.

Back in Singapore, it’s a goodbye cocktail at the Scarlet Hotel rooftop with Suzanne, who understands the crevices of my heart like none else can. We exchange confidences, her eloquence and expressiveness never failing to astonish me, and I leave with the sound of her dear voice echoing on my mind…

… until I am back again. Oh, February!

RO ON SPACE & SOUND – 5

“THE SOUND OF OM”

To most, Om is the hum of a yoga class as it congregates, the peace in the Yoga Teacher’s shuttered eyes. It’s a charismatic chant, a mystical mantra, a bottomless breath that emanates from the core of your being.

To me, Om is also the sound of the bluey-green Andaman Sea in Phuket expanding and exhaling – its very restiveness bringing rest to what seemed my troubles only a moment ago.

Om is also the rustle of fall leaves in Central Park when the wind pirouettes with them. Om is the silent hush of a tropical rainforest at McRitchie Reservoir in Singapore, contrasted only by the psychedelic screech of parrots. Om is the sound of the heater in my cold New York office, or the sound of the fog in San Francisco when it starts rolling in. Om is the contented purr of my wine cooler when it’s just been filled. Om is the sound in my inner ear when I’ve peeled away all the layers of sound and I’m not listening to anything.

In other words, Om is Omnipresent.

According to the Vedas, the oldest sacred texts of Hinduism, “Om” is a combination of three syllables: Aa. Au. Ma. “Aa” represents the state of being awake, “Ma” the state of deep sleep, and “Au” nestles snugly somewhere in-between the two that flank it like a spiritual sandwich. “Om” also represents Creation, Preservation and Dissolution. As well as Past, Present and Future.

And so the three sounds wafted in together like wispy feathers on the breath of the universe to blend in a chord of perfect harmony. So powerful was the accuracy of this sound, that the entire universe came to be.

The Upanishads (the Hindu Scriptures that teach the Vedanta) say that "Om" is “the original primordial creative sound”, the mother sound of the first word ever uttered by the human tongue. Which may also explain the similarity of the derivatives, “Mama”, “Maman”, “Amma”, “Ahm”, “Mëmë”, “Mére”, “Mãe”, “Madre”, when we call out to that sometimes endearing lady.

DIANE ON SPACE & SOUND

THE DELICATE WALL

[An encounter with sound and all that it evoked, by Diane Sinnott]

It was probably a typical day at the ER at Cal Pacific. Except that I was in it. Lying in a curtained-off room waiting for the morphine to kick in. I had something that was making my head explode. Something I was hoping was nothing; an annoying foreign flu that would leave as quickly as it came.

As the pain drifted away and the morphine worked its magic I could hear the comings of goings of other patients on the other side of the curtain. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them.

My first neighbor was a regular and greeted with affection by a long line of doctors and nurses. Lou was an old black man accompanied by his wife of many years. I could tell they were holding hands by the tenderness in their voices. These two were old pros at this medical business and took the waiting in stride. Eventually his doctor arrived. Lou had a bad ticker and wasn’t having the best day. They chatted amicably as he listened to Lou’s heart. It sounded good but the doctor was going take a couple of tests, just in case.

The x-rays were ordered. And now we just waited the wait of a hundred years. Lou’s wife asked him for a song. His sweet old voice drifted over the curtain and poured over me like honey. Lou sang the blues in the way only people who have lived it can. I drifted off imagining him as a young man on stage with his beautiful wife dancing in the background. I heard his heart beating to the music. Steady and strong. Good news came when I awoke.

Today was not the day Lou’s heart would have its last beat. He wasn’t finished crooning to his wife yet. He’d be back here I knew, in the land of white coats, but I hoped it wouldn’t be for a while.

My next neighbor was Sara. She and her husband lived up near Eureka. They were visiting their daughter for a few days. I was groggy but heard in hushed tones, cervical cancer. The husband and daughter were fussing over her. Sara told them to go run some errands. They left and the doctor soon came in. There was a long silence as he read her chart. I surmised that Sara already had the surgery and the chemo. And whatever else they could throw at a problem that wasn’t going away. She was done with all that now. “On a scale of 1 to 10 how is your pain?” “Eight,” she said and sounded shaky. She had the mean doctor, all morning I heard him being curt with patients and rude to nurses. But he was nice to her. “I’ll call your doctor and we’ll get you comfortable dear.”

When he left, she broke down. Her sobs were long and deep. She must have been holding them in for a long time. I wanted to reach out to her but I respected the thin curtain. After a while she was quiet. By then the husband and daughter had returned and she was cheery. “Yes, I feel much better now.” She lied well. “Now tell me where you have been.” They told her about the endless search for a parking space. The pretty blocks they had traveled, the purse-size dogs they had seen, no detail was too small. The outing also included a trip to the drugstore. We got aisle-by-aisle coverage. I was a castaway on their story and eager to hear it all.

Eventually my test results came back. I had an annoying foreign flu that would leave as quickly as it came. Grateful, I bundled up the mess of me and quietly said goodbye to the fallen comrades I would never meet, Lou and Sara and the ones that would follow. I touched the hem of the delicate wall between us, a humble human blessing that wished them well.

LORRAINE ON SPACE & SOUND

SOUND IN FILM – MY FILM.

It was a four-story house frozen in time, like Flannan Isle by Wilfrid Gibson, in which you imagine the residents had been just seconds ago. Everywhere you looked, there were still-lifes – an apricot with a bite taken out, a pipe filled with tobacco ready to smoke. And in the attic, the rag tag belongings of Dickensian waifs who slept head to toe like sardines in a can. And each space had its own sound. The tick of a grandfather clock in the drawing room. The drip of a tap in the kitchen. The creak on a tread as if someone had just walked up the stairs. At the sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestones, I looked out the window and, seeing modern day London, caught myself.

Yes, sound is important. In fact, it’s half of the movie experience.

The fact is, getting good sound during production can be tough. We battled on numerous occasions against planes, helicopters, sirens, church bells, the ubiquitous roaring motorbike – and on one occasion – with a Mexican Christian radio show that randomly appeared and just as randomly disappeared.

Listening through headphones, Gino would call for a pause in ‘action” and we’d all freeze in place, practically holding our breath, the actors their emotions, until the intrusion had passed. Then we would again go through my most favorite procedure in the world, “roll tape”… “we have speed”… “action!”

The curious thing is that you don’t notice good sound while watching a movie. You are more likely to notice it when it’s bad or completely missing. You might not be able to identify exactly what is lacking – could be the buzz of passengers on a bus or diners in a restaurant – but you’ll know how it feels. Empty.

Ambient sound creates dimension and adds depth, while the score enhances emotion. Sometimes it’s subtle like the heartbeat that underscores the entire Sixth Sense. Or not so subtle, like the herald of the shark in Jaws, or the screech in Psycho, which I remember from forty years ago.

In the scenes for which we did ADR, our characters are now more intimate, effectively reducing the physical and psychic space between the audience and big screen. Now they’re in a better position for you to like them or at least sympathize with them.

Thanks to our very talented sound guy, our film is becoming multi-dimensional. Next step is a full session with our composer. I can’t wait to hear the music make the film come alive.

[This piece is a contribution by Lorraine Flett, inspired by her Indie, “Mismo”. ]

ADAM K ON SPACE & SOUND

THE POETICS OF SPACE

I have a fuzzy recollection of a summer school course I took as a college student, entitled, “Architecture As Archetype”. It was taught by a young visiting teacher named Jeff Orberdorfer. I have no idea where Jeff went off to after his “visitation”, but I do know that he grew up in a place called Levittown – one of the first post-war planned communities in America. He made it a point to tell us where he hailed from on the first day of class. Was this a matter of pride or pity (more about Levittown below) or simply part of the prelude to the course’s core subject matter: “Space”?

In some academic circles, as well as in the boardrooms of some new homebuilders, Levittown has an archetypical status of its own. It’s the master of all master-planned communities, and is often billed as the ideal American suburb. A series of similarly designed cost-engineered “spaces” repeated over and over, producing a checkerboard grid-like space as seen from the heavens. I believe Jeff used the term “rectilinear” to describe the full spatial effect. From Jeff’s humanistic point of view, Levittown’s architectural style was as “American as apple pie”, but without any “taste”, whatsoever. Thinking back on it all, I wonder if this lack of “aesthetic space” in Jeff’s Levittonian childhood was what compelled him to take up the study and teaching of Architecture? It certainly produced a critical frame of reference for him – and for all of his students.

One of the required readings in Jeff’s course was a book by Gaston Bachelard called, “The Poetics of Space”. Now, here’s where my memory really starts to fail. I can’t remember anything about the book that matched the alluring and quite frankly, brilliance of its title.

If not altogether empty, my recollection of Bachelard’s work is that of a dry, barren, pedagogical space. Perhaps something was lost in translation? French was Bachalard’s mother tongue. More likely though, I was simply a student at a loss – meaning the book was beyond my level of comprehension. Anyway, today his book on space is packed in a box that’s stored in the bowels of my garage. (A case of poetic justice?)

Enter Ro’s On Space & Sound – 2 “Soundscapes”. Here (for me) is the beginning of a book that’s worthy of the title, “The Poetics of Space”. Ro takes sound, memory and other stimuli, and creates a space where life’s richness unfolds, collides, dovetails and blends into a beautiful aesthetic. The pastiche is an ode to how space can be experienced, as well as how it can be thought about. As a result, I not only want to read more from Rohini the “sonic-flaneur”, but also want to re-read Bachelard’s book. If for no other reason than to possibly clear up some of the fuzziness that now exists in the space between by ears.

GUY ON SPACE & SOUND – 2

THERE’S NO SOUND IN SPACE …

Sound is the captive animal of space. It will only consent to propagate when space is absent to at least some degree, and the less space there is, the more sound can multiply.

I say this as a kind of a scientist. Right? Sound does not propagate in a vacuum; it can’t, because a vacuum has no medium with which to transmit the vibrations that constitute sound. So the less of a vacuum a given region is, the more at ease sound will be, and the better it will propagate.

But actually, this is completely untrue. And discovering why it’s untrue helps us understand space even better, and what “space” means … because don’t we say, as I did in my earlier post, that sound actually fills space? That sound banishes space? That it crosses the lines dividing the senses by filling a visual void with aural matter?

Now, you could dismiss these musings as sophistry or mere semantics. “Space” in the scientific context doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in the humanistic context. You’d be half-right; but this sophistry of mine is justified because it lets us look at space in a new way, a meaningful one.

Because just as the contemplation of sound and space lets us throw down the barriers between the senses, also it lets us see in a new way that the concept of “space” encompasses both emptiness and its opposite. Think about this statement:

The more compressed or filled a given space, the better sound can propagate within it.*

Not an entirely accurate statement, but accurate enough to show that “space” can actually mean anti-space. In two ways:

1. A compressed space is a small space … so an infinitely compressed space would actually not be space at all.
2. A filled space contains no emptiness (if it’s fully filled), and thus no space.

All this just leads me to believe that, when perceiving space in any context whatsoever, we actually aren’t perceiving either the enclosure or the enclosed, but rather the border between the two. A hovering sphere would be a space of fullness within the emptiness of its surroundings.

* A smaller space, or a space more dense with matter, transmits sound more effectively.

PARIT ON SPACE & SOUND

"NIJO CASTLE"

Sensuous sussurations of scarcely sensed sound saturate this sublime space. She surveys the serenity and slips unbeknownst even unto herself, into the saga. And I am there too, sneaking into the mise-en-scène.

Silent, solemn, sombre it might be but with a looming sense that the Samurai's stealth will soon overcome the shifty Shogun, shattering the serenity to shards. She knows, suggests it but won't say it.

The picture is perfect and yet perched perilously. Precariously. Push one pixel out of place and perhaps the protagonist might be in peril.

What if the shoulder had not been squeezed?

Would the sepulchral silences have splintered?

[This piece is a contribution from Paritosh Joshi.]

RO ON SPACE & SOUND – 4

“NIJO CASTLE”

The Shinden-style structure stood serene, surrounded by walls of stone slab; it was silhouetted against a sooty sky, which was lit only by a sickle-shaped sliver of silver.

We stepped upon the stretch of slats with silken tread. But soft-footed though we were, a sound startled us when our soles sunk onto the strips. The sound was wispy, sibilant, like a soulful strain streaming from a flute.

Perhaps it sprung from the slightest slits between the slats? The more surreptitious our stalk, the more strident it seemed, shadowing our every step. Step: squeak. Step: squeak. Step-step: squeak-squeak. A sonnet by a spirited bird of song no doubt – the Nightingale.

So the sweet soprano sang to signal those who dwelt within – to warn them of a sly and stealthy Samurai, who came scheming to slay the Shogun with shining sword in hand.

The Shogun’s soldiers were stationed in strategic spots in the subsidiary halls, which surrounded the inner Shinden, or the sanctum – safe within which was the Sovereign. They stood stalwart but silent in these secret spaces, ready to stave off the shifty Samurai, seize him and strike him senseless when the songbird gave so much as the slightest sign.

Spellbound with this saga and the song of the floors swelling like a sea into my auditory senses, I’d stepped into the seventeenth century. So much so that when my sweetheart placed his hand upon my shoulder to give it a little squeeze, I sprung out of my skin with a start.

[This encounter with Sound in the Space of Nijo Castle in Kyoto, and the impact of its nightingale floors upon me has been described with figures of sound.]

RO ON SPACE & SOUND – 3

DO SOUNDS HAVE A COLOR, A TASTE OR A FEELING?

Does the anticipated sound of an alarm clock go off a little before the clock itself does? Does the sound of an espresso machine waft into your nostrils? Does a newspaper taste better when you hear the amplified sip of that coffee inside your own head?

Does the clank-clatter of crockery remind you of domesticity? Does the cooing of doves bring a feeling of drowsy afternoon peace?

Does the subdued sound of silverware conjure up images of an upscale restaurant - "Daniel", perhaps? Does the pop of a wine cork cover your taste buds with dried dark fruits and leather even before you take a sip? Does the sound of iced water being poured into a glass evoke the sound of a glug-glug, especially if you've had too much of that wine?

Does the drip-drip of a tap torture your sleep if you haven't drunk that water? Can the sound of a repetitive song in your delirious sleep be Blue? Can the pounding of your head the next morning be Orange?

Can the sound of an espresso machine then be the sound of a Messiah who hast come to deliver?

Guy is treading the area of synesthesia.

BEN ON SPACE & SOUND

DEFINING "REAL" SOUND

When being briefed on the start of a job that requires sound design, I hear constant requests to "always keep in mind that it needs to sound REAL". Conceptually I get it, but always wonder what that statement means to others.....For something to sound "real".

Does "real" mean that the sound will take you back to a distant memory? Will it give you the expressions on the faces of the children playing in the park? Will the sound capture the moment, the feeling, and the space surrounding it?

Space and sound. I experiment with this a lot...I chase it like I am running in a hallway with no end. It's a question with no answer, to make sounds become real within space. Walk in your closet, close the door and speak or clap, open the door and do it again. Listen to the acoustics change, your footsteps sound different with the slightest opening or closing of the door. I try to achieve this in my work and it is impossible... To capture what one is feeling when one hears a sound...The sounds surround us, become a part of us within the space we are in. The two go hand-in-hand. One without the other is meaningless.

GUY ON SPACE & SOUND – 1

SEEING WHAT WE HEAR

The contemplation of sound invites us to account for the subjugation of the Tiny and the Great.

Sound fills. Fills what? Space, but invisibly. Sound flattens. It can knock us off our feet, even when dulcet. Sound is being used in the Gulf of Aden this very day to bring pirates low, depressed, sick, ineffectual. And push them out of cargo ships’ spaces.

The contemplation of sound reminds us of the interconnectedness of the full five senses. The English word “space” comes from the Latin spatium, meaning room, area, distance, all visually perceived. Yet sound, in the realm of hearing, fills—removes—space that’s in the realm of sight.

There are sensors that allow scientists to see sound. And we all of us have sensors that allow us to feel sound’your gut can feel sound, as every go-goer who’s stood in front of a club speaker knows. From now on when we contemplate space, let’s contemplate it in all five sense realms.

RO ON SPACE & SOUND – 2

“SOUNDSCAPES”

The sky is an opaque black of mysterious quality. There are no sounds upon my ears but the delicate tinkle of coffee being stirred into thin-rimmed white China. Ah, a sound so evocative. Maybe it’s the memory of my caring mother stirring milk in a steel tumbler for me as a baby. Or maybe it’s the moment of solace I always resort to over an ornate tea service at The Raffles in Singapore, where space is my very own. Strange that each vignette, while having soothing qualities, is quite the opposite of the other – one is in a sheltered environment, the other, an independent one.

As I hear myself sip, my senses dawn like the sky, softly, slowly, through pink and gold… into the palest powdery blue.

An hour or two later, I step out into the city, and the sounds are suddenly more assertive, as if I accidentally flicked the wheel on my iPod.

A truck assaults my ears with a deafening honk... the sound of impotent control. The subway attendant yells at a meek ticket buyer through the speaker… the sound of oppressed power. Baffle gates beep-beep, open and slam-shut as metro cards mechanically slide through… the sounds of repetitive drudgery promising a fresh new day every day. Express trains chug-whoosh-thunder past, their speed never failing to thrill… the sound of your own heart beating.

On the train, a foursome of harmonious black voices makes music as the band moves through the cars… the sound of a concert that invited itself to you.

On the street, a revving car pounds rap into your skull… the sound of protest against marginalization turned full on so to be all-inclusive. Strains of a rather loud female Brooklyn accent fade in. They segue into the gruff intonations of a Bangladeshi fruit seller who says, “two dollars”. An ambulance wails to cabs and cars to make way… the sound of help that is helpless. The sibilance of Spanish melds into the hiss of meat at a hot dog cart… the sounds of all the world on one city street.

A pan-handler asks you to help him out, please… a sound that’s switched off almost as soon as it comes on.

Sounds layer themselves into your psyche, but there are so many such as this one that we learn to selectively deaden ourselves to. Then, we carry this auditory space we individually own – like a buffer, a winter coat, an outer layer of aura, even.

After the day’s auditory assault, I return to my meditative Mecca, my temple of Asian buddhas, my retreat of tealight serenity: to my own world of sound.

Or more likely, the lack of it.

RO ON SPACE & SOUND – 1

“THE TOAST”

I have a favorite toast.

I’ll fill your glass quarter-ways from the brim and ask you to raise it. I’ll ask you to close your eyes; then, I’ll touch my glass to yours. Just when the resounding ring fades away, I’ll touch it again, yet again, and again. I’ll ask if you see a little stone village called “Saint Paul de Vince” hugging the hillside, and whether you hear distant church bells peal as evening birds flutter away into lavender skies.

Chances are, you will.

Then we’ll open our eyes and sip a blend of Grenache, Carignan and Cinsault, and swallow the breathtaking Manhattan citiscape, as our ears fill with the sounds of “Out of Nowhere” by Art Tatum. Touched with hints of honky-tonk, the keys on the piano will cascade like drops of water, each note chasing the other in a complex and coordinated dance of footwork.

We'll take another sip, and start a conversation about this:

How does sound define your space, create it, conjure it up, leave it?

How many pockets of sound does your space encounter on a given day?

And how do you deal with them?

RO ON EYESPACE – 2

SPACE IN THANKSGIVING WINE GLASSES

Guy holds up a lens that makes me see my glass this way:

http://www.rohini.com/thanksgiving/

GUY ON EYESPACE

THE EYE OF A HURRICANE

What is a bubble? When we look at a bubble, are we perceiving the space inside it, or (I think more probably) are we perceiving the container of that space?

At first blush a bubble seems to be, by definition, not space but container: anti-space enclosing space neatly and efficiently. But actually, that’s not really right. Another use we have for “bubble” is what we could also call a “pocket”: an area of negative inside a positive. Holes in swiss cheese are bubbles, you know—at least before the cheese is sliced.

I mention this because we often actually do conflate space with its container. A bubble is an easy example, but what about the “P Spot” Rohini talked about earlier? Most anyone would say that the P Spot is a space; that when those poor locker-room men and women are looking at the P Spot, they’re looking at negative space.

But I’d say that when you are looking at the P Spot, in fact you are probably more aware of its container—naked people!—than of anything else. The P Spot is both the space and its container, inseparable.

In American football, quarterbacks are not trained to throw the ball at their teammates (receivers), but actually to throw the ball at spaces between the opposing team’s players. The fact that they have to be trained into this shows our innate tendency to recognize mass rather than its lack, but the fact that they’re highly successful at it shows that on an instinctive level, space and anti-space are on a more equal footing than we realize.

This understanding allows us to perceive mass better, because normally observing an object—an individual mass—leads us to ignore its container, the space around it. Thus we miss information and perception until we realize that the two are one.

Seem a bit abstract? Then consider the hurricane. Understanding its rotation requires recognition of the space around it. Hurricanes happen to rotate counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere because the heavier airs surrounding them rotate clockwise—not because they turn that way on their own. You don’t usually see these surrounding airs because you’re focused on the storm. But the the only way to understand hurricanes, if not all weather, is to look at everything, positive and negative, massy and light, empty and full: all side-by-side, associated, and intertwined.

RO ON SPACE & CITIES – 2

THE SPACE OF ROMANCE

Last weekend, I met my clandestine lover for a tryst in Paris.

So was it the forbidden nature of this assignation that made Paris that much more romantique?

Was it the morose blue-grey eyes of skies that wept the tears of a longing lover? Was it the winged horses, holding back their passion with the reined-in restraint of sculpture frozen into centuries?

Or was it the fact that even the architecture in the city wears the sexiest lingerie? Mmmm… little crochet wraps of metallic white lace wrought upon Juliette balconies, teasingly half-concealing every stroke of stone, every dimpled shadow, every enigmatic hollow?

Look – everywhere you look, cherubs in faded gilt have drawn their bows to pierce their arrows of love into your eyes. So you must shut them tight, until your eyelids quiver with the effort.

As if all this were not enough; the mouths of the French are puckered, each word articulated about to become a kiss.

Paris is a pleasure that spills over the brim into an acute Poetic Pain of the Senses… Paris is love made quite unbearable.

If Paris were to have a face, it would be the grimacing face of a Petite Mort, the objective of which, ironically, is to create life.

One moment, the day is awash with vertical stripes of icy rain; the next, with soft, diagonal skeins of golden sunshine.

A puddle winks at me and the air flirts with my hair, brushing the locks back with so gentle a touch that they fall back to where they were.

It's quite the perfect example of how physical space can translate into that space in one's thoracic region called "The Heart".

ADAM K ON SPACE & CITIES

A LONG WALK FOR A SHORT DRINK

Guy’s critique of the space that's called “Los Angeles” brings to mind an advertising concept that my business partner Tom Moyer describes, which is convoluted and offers little in the way of beneficial information – “A long walk for a short drink”.

Indeed, when viewed, experienced and thought about from a certain perspective, Los Angeles can be a vacuous space where connections, identities and souls can easily get lost. Interestingly, it is the lack or absence of the markers (the satisfying drink, so to speak) that ground us in our humanity, which attracts (rather than repels) so many people to Los Angeles.

While no doubt there is a certain truth to his critique and my layered confirmation above, there are other ways of "seeing” and of “being” in the City of Angels.

For example, Los Angeles can become a modern platform for a Zen-like experience. The long distance between things, the time spent alone in route, the nondescript destination upon arrival, can actually help one get in touch with letting go - and just being. In this state of mind it¹s easy to accept that there is no “there”, there in Los Angeles. (Even though so many who live in this city are in search of something.) It all becomes just the here and now. Moreover, one senses a vitality, or perhaps the true allure of Los Angeles -­ a space, like the people who live in it, always in a state of becoming.

ADAM K ON EYESPACE

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

My reaction to Ro's naked glaze in the men’s locker room at the gym conjures up the memory of a pregnant moment in Luis Bunuel’s film, Un Chien Andalou. (Or perhaps it is really an abortive moment?).

Here’s the scene from my memory:

A delicate young woman is seated on a chair in a limbo setting. (A kind of space that’s everywhere and nowhere.) A man, gentlemen-like. stands right behind her. The two are in portrait mode, gazing at the audience. They look as if they know that they are being watched (at least by the camera). The audience sitting in the theater is surely less reflective, less aware, watching at will and without reproach from the safety of their cushiony seats.

Slowly, the man lifts up his arm to reveal a straight-edged razor. He holds it tenderly in his hand. The camera then creeps in for a close-up of the woman’s face, and comes to rest only when one of her eyeballs fully fills the screen.

The macro eyeball is raw, bulbous, and viscous. The spatial relationship is disorienting. The effect is unsettling. Suddenly, the activity of seeing becomes an object to contemplate, and no doubt to question – as in, “what’s going on here?” Bunuel’s answer is nothing short of the unthinkable. The frozen moment is about to become thoroughly chilling. The razor blade slides across the smooth and silky surface of the defenseless eyeball. It cuts deep. (I believe Bunuel used a real cow’s eye. No special effects here.)

Yes, the eye is disfigured. But what’s more disturbing is that the entire “space” is ruptured. The space on the screen. The space between the viewer and the screen. The space inside the viewer’s mind. I remember at the moment of incision turning away, not wanting to ‘see’. Abort the space. Now, years later, I still don’t really want to ‘see’ this moment. It’s almost too much for the mind’s eye to take in.

So what’s the learning here? First off, if you haven’t seen this Bunuel film, do so. (And keep your eyes peeled for the eyeball scene.) Secondly, try to always watch where you’re going. Otherwise you might end up in a space that’s not always pretty to look at, or be seen in. You know, like a men’s locker room.

GUY ON SPACE & CITIES

VERTICAL EXPRESSIONS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT?

It’s funny that Rohini uses the word “nomadic” when referring to Singapore expats. Because the first cities were actually created by the settled: farmers, for whom space was an enemy used by their rivals—the nomads—to destroy and subjugate. How things have changed.

I think of cities as the greatest anti-space constructions that exist, because they were created to combat space. The point of a city is to reduce space.

Or is it? The particularly American model of the city seems to contradict this concept. America itself was built on the exploitation of what was crucially perceived as space—land undeveloped by Westerners—even if it wasn’t, since it was actually already in use. Similarly, beginning last century invasive American cities in turn exploited the same land, once again perceived as space; sometimes exploiting it on absurdly grand scales. (In this case the space wasn’t space either: it was already in use by farmers, ranchers, miners, or manufacturers.)

The most grandiose example of this is Los Angeles, a desert valley whose first mass exploitation came with orchards and farms made possible by modern irrigation. But this farming stratum was almost completely obliterated by the extended undense deposit of human construction, both residential and commercial, a hundred miles wide and two hundred long, that makes up the modern city.

Cities are often interpreted as vertical expressions of the human spirit, but the seeming contradiction of the American example shows us that it’s not so. The American example shows us that cities really are the anti-space. The key to understanding this comes from an example like Los Angeles, which demonstrates how space, in fact, is perceived as time, and vice versa. For without the compression of time the automobile gave us in crossing distances, Angelenos would not perceive the compression of space their city gives them—and it would not be a city at all. Would it?

RO ON SPACE & CITIES – 1

TWO CITIES. TWO DIFFERENT BRANDS OF SILENCE.

There’s something so very raw yet refined about the nomadic life that expats live in Singapore. They know instinctively to cut themselves smaller, chunkier, meatier, richer slices of life. It is as though life itself is a two-year contract in this exotic new destination, so there’s an urgency to grasp it more fully. As a result, more intense relationships are formed, more beach volleyball played, more cigarettes smoked, more regional travel explored, more love made, and more wine drunk than possibly anywhere else in the world – or so it seems. One meets more travelers, evoking and slaking that wanderlust, in a quest to discover new places and people within themselves.

So I was not alone in my journey of search a few years ago, when I would fly San Francisco to Singapore every three weeks with a day’s stopover on the neutral grounds of Tokyo. Here, I would trade one of my identities with the other. The SIM cards on my cell phone would also switch on a different set of contacts, just as the currencies exchanged. It was a thin line I tread between my two lives – one with myself, the other with my husband – and I needed both to survive who I was. I’d lost my soul in San Francisco, and needed to keep my sanity. So who I became in Singapore was my therapist.

When I’d moved to the Bay Area, the silence of space had struck me like a giant slap across my small face. The empty vastness of the skies was marked with weird cloud patterns by the invisible paintbrushes of winds. The desolate sound of airplanes tore across the silence. On the wide freeways, cars moved mechanically in synch, each distancing itself from the one ahead as much as possible. There were no human sounds upon my ears, and the few people I met didn't appear to need people - or did I sense a certain shame in their admitting to having this need? Perhaps too much physical space had created a proportionate amount of emotional space, which had evolved into emptiness and cold distance? Perhaps why almost everyone I knew then saw psychotherapists more often than they did their friends, and were resigned to the loneliness that was their most frequent and forced companion?

When I'd reach Singapore in the little hours on the clock, the swish-swish of palm trees on the ECP would brush away these meandering thoughts. I’d refuse to be picked up, as I needed to be completely alone with My City. Out of the airport in a trice, soaring in a taxi that was redolent of rice and pandan leaf, and freezing with air-conditioning, I’d roll down the window and inhale the humid air like a dog hungry for new smells.

I’d exchange different brands of silence with the two cities. I’d trade that lonely, desolate, restive, cold, dreary, impersonal no-answer stillness in San Francisco for a deep, long, communicative, pregnant, hushed, comforting quietude in Singapore.

Although I had a cartload of relationships, with a key hidden here in a purple sock or there a jungle boot waiting for me to pick it up, I’d stay the night with my other self in a Nonya-style suite at The Intercontinental, where swinging wooden doors set with bits of colored glass would ground me to this dreamy reality.

Then all the text messages would come pouring in... like tropical rain.

RO ON EYESPACE – 1

COMFORT OR CLUTTER?

So. I decided to study visual space in locker rooms. I started somewhat inadvertently in the Men’s by wandering into it by accident. Dazed, I watched men grapple with modest shock for their invisible fig leaves, protesting with accusatory, wounded glances – poor deer in the headlights.

Not a little embarrassed, I fled to the Women’s locker room, where shared space is a silent, seething bugbear on everyone’s mind. Who is really the encroacher – the stripper or the "strippee"? Why should I avert my gaze and limit what is my rightful visual territory when someone flaunts her unsolicited nakedness? If I looked, wouldn’t their space be just as violated? To this, American comedian and writer Rich Hall has a solution: The “P Spot”, a place on the wall which men in washrooms meditate upon, fearing that a glance in any other direction might arouse suspicion.

On the eye, space is as much a comfort to some as clutter is to others. The Japanese worship minimalism, treating space itself as an object. Perhaps this also explains the white plate rage in restaurants, used to display the art of food. My own obsessive-compulsive preferences demand sitting away from the clutter of cutlery and the crowdedness of corridors – God forbid washrooms – when I dine at a restaurant. "Princess", they call me, but why doesn’t it sound like a compliment?

"Princess" wears block colors, never prints - no matter how pretty. Princess also has mirrors on her walls in place of pictures; with space reflecting space. Compare that to a fridge crowded with magnets and attempts at art by children of proud glowing parents. Who’s to say what’s right?

My pet peeve is space in wine glasses. Nothing offends my sensibilities more than a glass of wine filled to the unsightly brim. If anything needs to breathe, it’s Wine. In addition to "Breathability", there needs to be room for "Swirlability". How will you perceive the rim, and read its difference from the core? How will you allow it to tell its story of Viscosity through its tears?

This is where I bow gracefully out of your visual space and ask you to fill mine with your thoughts.