The not-yet-masked man in downtown Norfolk strides purposefully from one small enclave of demonstrators to another with an air of momentous self-importance as I approach down the opposite sidewalk. An older man probingly produces sound effects from his keyboard deployed by the Confederate memorial while a couple bulletin display boards are being set up on the sidewalk. It's the first Occupy demonstration I've seen in person. The not-yet-masked man is dressed in black business attire, accentuated by the leering Guy Fawkes visage settled atop his forehead. Our eyes meet as I pass by in my black and tan Naval Service Uniform. If I was in civilian attire, I wonder if he would read my onlooker's interest as a potential contact and approach me with pamphlets and lessons in Mephistophelean economics. Instead, he simply registers me as already and formally committed to the massive naval warfare organization in whose regalia, traditions and regulations (including those prohibiting me from interacting with demonstrators while in uniform) I am embedded. I sense no contempt from him, and no shame as he goes on about his business with the quasi-evangelical spectacle quietly being established around him. I cross the street and walk down the sidewalk on the other side of a large modernized fountain from the demonstrators, stopping to look more closely at what I take to be a piece of the city's public art atop one of the fountain's marble blocks. It is a collection of birdhouses decked with small signs saying "foreclosed".
Whose territory is downtown Norfolk? I find it an awesome experience visually, from the great cranes and ships on the waterfront to the winding streets and taller buildings, geometrical monoliths pinnacling from chiseled streets with inspired fractal variation. A skeletal structure of roundish polygonal floors in a staggered pattern is all that is visible of one building as it materializes over the months into the city's continuity. Is this the territory simply of those who live and work here, who know its streets and have long since tired of the country-boyish fascination that lifts my eyes? If any would disdain my response, I pity their desensitization to the sheer novelty of what has been brought into being there or in any city. Polygons, girders, monorails -- these shapes do not occur in nature. If they do, it is only on the microscopic scale. We bring these shapes into our habitats as if from the ideal Platonic realm, praising their simplicity and neatness as much as their efficiency. When a colony of ants makes an encampment, it looks like a mound of dirt pocked with breathing tubes. It may have an underlying structure, but the variations are on a comparatively simple theme. A human city, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the psyche. The downtown flagship areas of ceremony and elegance, the monuments and churches that champion ideals whether implicitly or explicitly. The less glamorous, industrial parts where tedious, important work is done. The endless exhibition and exchange of the megastore, the mall, the gas station, the shopping center, and the mythic Mom and Pop store. The culture nooks, the restaurants, the schools, the dive bars where the people gather like so many myriad unique links in chains of neurons firing in serendipitous synchrony and self-important cacophony. The ten thousand signs and signals and billboards that say to us, "Remember…" The tiny group of demonstrators exercising their right to free speech in public downtown, gnats buzzing tales of politi-corporate incest in the ear of the giant.
The quasi-country feller in me would like to think of the city as my territory, but it isn't. My territory is my awe. The city belongs to those who live and work there more than me. In the hierarchy, the claim can be traced to the state and the nation. Maybe it most resembles the work of those unseen engineers and architects who designed the pulleys, blocks, and circuits, but they were just vessels for a need. They responded to a job that needed doing, and brought something else to bear to bring it all together. Their professionalism, their inspiration -- but inspiration is not the servant of the inspired. The professional is just the one with the self-discipline to show up with the humility and dedication to bring the Muse into existence. The city is the progeny of the Self.
What's inspiring me right now: The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield, Carl Jung, comic book characters The Question and Jack Hawksmoor
