Pan's concert

"She was frankly disappointed when [Pan] proved to be slighter in stature than her Alobar, and she could barely keep from sniggering at his foul tangles of wool and his silly tail. Even his stench failed to measure up to Alobar's description of it, striking her as more locally naughty than universally nasty. It wasn't until he began to pipe that Kudra got some sense of Who (or What) He Really Was.

At first, his playing, too, seemed slight; it was so simple, careless, and primitive that one had to sympathize with Timolus, who, judging the music contest between Pan and Apollo, had unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the Apollonian lyre, thereby establishing the tradition that critics must laud polish and restraint, attack what is quirky and disobedient, a tradition that endures to this day. Had Timolus not hooked Pan off the stage so quickly, had he possessed the - what? the honesty? the humility? (Timolus, after all, couldn't play shit) the nerve? to actually listen to Pan, to respond with something more genuine than his preconceptions, he might have been affected, as Kudra began to be affected, once she stopped smirking at his obvious lack of formal training and quit comparing him unfavorably with the flutist, Lord Krishna. Pan's song, because it served no purpose, was above all, liberating. It was music beyond the control of the player's will or the listener's will; the will, in fact, dissolved in it (which may explain why it was politically necessary for Apollo, with the compliance of Timolus, to drown it out)... Kudra felt that at Pan's concert she was on less than solid ground, yet, as unsteady as that ground might be, she was driven to dance upon it."

- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

Free floating in the sewers of architecture

I graduated from SCI_Arc on Sunday, flushed from the institute out into the real world. Wish me luck!

The jury for my final review was nothing short of amazing:

Tom Mayne
Sylvia Lavin
Neil Denari
Emmanuel Petit
Craig Hodgetts
Hernan Diaz Alonso
Benjamin Bratton

The review was, in a word, contentious. Sylvia Lavin and I just don't seem to have common ground.

Zizek on Toilets