Blue: a chair is a very difficult object

Lance Olsen

Somewhere, someone still remembers. Somewhere else, someone forgets.

—Ellen Hinsey, “Eastern Apocrypha”

Walking, Mies van der Rohe

concludes as he watches the oily

Spree slide by his cab, is—

I never—

That is a building.

I never walk.

Look at the building.

(The efforts of the mystics remain

episodes.)

We must have—

There is a man.

There is a building.

Look at the man.

That building is—

Order.

One could say Berlin is a captive of

the nineteenth century.

The broad boulevards.

Massive stone facades.

That poor man.

Those neo-Grecian pillars.

Look at his face.

One could say I always take—

(Every How is carried by a What.)

We must have order.

It can be no other—

What was wrong with his face?

Because the word rectilinearity

exists.

I always take taxis back and—

There is a building.

Perpendicular.

(Every force evolves a form.)

Because a taxi is—

And so I rarely see a city.

What is there to see in a city?

Is that a—

Berlin, an imperial hallucination.

(One should never forget a square is

also a rectangle.)

In the end the war being a failure of

German architecture.

A taxi being a moving room.

Because red is money.

Because we can.

Have order.

Because civilizations must.

Who said—

A motorcycle bombinating past.

The clean line: like time travel.

I miss my wife.

Bombinating.

All this moving.

Otherwise we would be something

else.

I love her but I cannot live with her.

Because less is—

Blue.

I can live with Lilly but I cannot live

with Ada.

We must know that life—

I can live with Lilly now but I could

not live with Ada then.

Her chairs.

This sky: that blue.

But later it will rain.

They say.

Because red is money and yellow is

also money.

Because what would it feel like to

know your son’s name?

His uncluttered substantive.

What would it feel like to—

All this moving.

Lilly’s chairs untaught me so much.

There is a building.

If there is a god, he is—

I changed my own.

Name.

The sound of Mies stretching into

the sound of—

There is a—

Thank you, Lilly.

There is another.

The sound of Mies van der Rohe.

Will they ever stop?

When in doubt, deploy the Dutch.

Just a suggestion of the aristocratic.

If not, perhaps, the substance.

Because my father carved stone.

Because when in doubt check the

streetcars in Berlin.

(Every human being has the right to

pure color.)

Because the important thing in any

crisis is whether the streetcars are

running.

Because the Kingdom of Prussia.

Because if the streetcars are running

then life is bearable.

Lilly’s furniture hurts, its lines so

impeccable.

Because the phrase industrial steel

exists.

Plate glass.

(Because every architect has been or

will be a refugee.)

(This is a self-evident truth.)

(Because 1927.)

We become exiles inside our own

countries.

Because my father carved stone and

I carve space.

We become exiles inside our own

countries.

The efficiency of skin.

Bone.

My son carves—

(That man’s face.)

Specialists are people who repeat

the same errors over and—

Martin used to say.

I hear you, my father’s last words,

deathbedding, but I haven’t crossed

over yet.

Just a moment.

Just a—

Then the elated smile spreading

over the mask he used to be.

New York, a beautiful catastrophe.

Berlin doomed like Pompeii.

The will of an epoch translated into

three dimensions.

Is the definition of architecture.

We must know life cannot be

changed by us.

(A chair is a very difficult object.)

Light and—

A house a machine for living in.

Said Le Corbusier.

His name eleven letters and one lack.

Mine fourteen and three.

It should be pointed out.

And so life will be changed.

And they came to me and said:

Design a memorial for them.

Gimpy Rosa Luxemburg.

Scrawny Karl Liebknecht.

And so life will be changed, but not

by us.

To her: Kindly stand still while we

beat you with our rifle butts and

shoot you in the head.

Lilly’s chairs designed in wind

tunnels.

Because less is—

To him: Kindly step out of this

moving car while we shoot you in

the back.

Ada.

Because the space between build-

ings is—

They execute people in front of

brick walls.

Because the space between build-

ings is as important as the buildings

themselves.

So I built a brick-wall monument.

Cantilevered slabs.

Steel-and-concrete frame.

Bricks jagged.

Grout unsanded.

Because one could say—

All this moving.

Because one could say the clean line

represents a choreography for living.

One could say a way of maneuver-

ing through the present.

If there is a god, he is—

Architecture starts when—

Architecture will always be the real

battleground of the spirit.

—he is in the details.

Speechlessness sans silence.

Because architecture starts when you

carefully put together two bricks.

And so they asked me: What do you

talk about when you’re with a client?

And I told them: Never talk to him

about architecture.

That’s the most crucial thing.

Talk to him about his children.

About his dog.

Talk to him about his rust-red and

dark-chocolate snakeskin Italian

loafers.

Talk to him about those.

Talk to him about—

About—