Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue

I went to see the documentary Helvetica tonite at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown. It is only showing this week in Chicago. It really excited parts of me that I hadn't exercised in a while. I was exhilarated by the aesthetic debate amongst the designers, the belief and devotion that each of them felt for their own way of working. However, I was not swayed either way—grid/chaos, neutrality/expression, modernism/youknowwhat. But not because I have disdain for either cause, or claim to champion anything new or revolutionary. It is just that I can find myself as truly affected or satisfied by a perfect alignment of squares as I can a cacophonous typographic assault. I'm not riding the fence, or anything sinful like that. I just don't see the choice as required, or the two options as exclusive. What a boring argument, Michelle! "Why can't we all just get along?" Such bullshit. I've never been one to straddle the issue to avoid offense. Though once, in Core II, I did manage to get through an entire final without actually picking a side in the debate. At the end of the class, Charlie Gorman called me on it, with an amusing look in his eye. In my defense, I had the flu that day. But I still remember it quite clearly, so Charlie affected my conscious somehow. Today, though, I am not ill.

It is hard to discuss the contemporary when you are in it/doing it. Perspective is feigned, self-awareness unachievable. But we have moved on. That can be the only thing for sure. To what? Who knows. All I can attempt to do is rationalize my own simultaneous fascination with structure and pandemonium, my tumultuous need for design restraint as well as anarchy.

Riding home on the L, I started to be able to grasp this concept about myself. I love the L, even more so I believe than the NYC subway system, my previous summer fling. But not because of either's efficiency or utility. Nor does it have anything to do with a preference of public transportation versus driving. I can truly appreciate a good, long drive. The control you have over your own changing environment, the way a car's momentum can be a catalyst for your mind's own wanderings. This desire for movement and change translates over to my pleasure riding the L as well. However, most of the romance of the L to me has to do with its constant—the city.

I have known for a long time that I was not a country girl, though I expect I will always be a Southern girl. It was the way things fit, much more than the typical teenage desire for freedom. And I realized today, on the train, that it is more than the pace and the excitement and the possibility of the city that fulfills me. There is something aesthetically satisfying about it as well. Chicago trains are elevated, thus making far better use of their windows than their counterparts in NY. The windows provide a frame as we tear through the city, between the buildings, the train beating against the tracks, the sunlight make a rhythmic game out of the chase.

It's the way the battered brick buildings hold their ground, wearing old painted advertisements like faded tattoos. And across the street a shining glass tower soars above, a beacon of perfection, its geometry obvious and balanced. In between, wooden billboards are slicked over with glossy paper and glue, some ripped or berated by the wind, others pristine and immune. But all these things do not compete, or form "isms" and force you to take a side. They are pieced together in grids, connected by concrete. Individually, they are as different as David Carson and Massimo Vignelli. Together, they become a whole new aesthetic. A city is a problem and these elements are solutions. They are relative to one another, in all senses of the word. Their association produces new associations. And their compromise is not compromising. In the distance the buildings blur, neighborhoods combine to form shapes. They blend, their materials of no consequence, their origins no longer evident. Their impact doesn't fade, but changes shape. A silhouette, a strike of black against the orange sunset.

Recently, an interviewer asked me where I get my inspiration from. Overwhelmed, I stammered something about architecture. This is what I meant.