Impermanent Cities
Images of Edinburgh, August 2019
After Italo Calvino
Cities & Colour 1
When you see the city of Elmer appearing in the distance, it is as though it is shrouded in a thick blanket. Its tall spires softened; its silhouette oddly rounded. Even the clouds, circling about the mountains behind it seem subdued. As you come into the city itself, through one of the train stations or hiking into the outskirts, the reason for this is clear: every inch of the city is covered. Elmer is a city of patchwork. Paper pasted over paper on every building, decoupage street lamps, even the trams clinking along the high street do so on crocheted overhead wires. The cobbles beneath you are built up on centuries of art and advertisement. New billboards put up in the morning are covered over by evening. Ginnels become impassable under the weight of colour and paper. When it rains, ink bleeds rainbows into the drains and the city’s inhabitants are splashed with greens, purples, yellows and reds. The city looks out through stained glass windows onto streets whose colours change with the day. The main street with its banners and imposing columns shows us a new play, a new beer, a woman smiling in a field of flowers and then those in turn are covered over. Who makes the city this way? The citizens of Elmer, who come into the streets with new stacks of paper and pots of glue each morning, who hand visitors advertisements of every kind so that they too come to resemble the city of Elmer.
Cities & Distance 1
The city of Euphrosyne is constantly on the move. It is packed away with the day’s attractions—the coconut shy, the merry-go-round, the candy floss stall. The city’s houses and streets fold up into boxes and are packed onto wagons with the rest. The trucks that carry the city from place to place are emblazoned with “Euphrosyne: The Festival City.” There is no part of Euphrosyne that is not in celebration. The city’s high street, its largest houses, the palaces and museums all hang on Euphrosyne’s vast Ferris wheel, each building supported by striped hot air balloons. It is a city in perpetual motion; windows glinting in the sun as they rise and fall. Only the city’s ringmasters know where it will appear next, sprawling across a set of empty fields, a desolate moor or floating itself across the neck of a river. People rarely come to the city of Euphrosyne, instead it brings itself to them. The ones that go to seek it, listening for the sound of the calliope and waiting for the sight of the palace’s turrets rising up in the distance, are those who desire to make the temporary permanent. They wish to be celebrating always, for songs to never end, to move forever without ceasing.
Cities & Speech 1
There have been many iterations of Kashyr— new buildings, mosques, markets. Each version of the city comes with a new face. Street performers bring their own languages: the sound of the violin, the crowd’s gasps of amazement. The poets bring a language of metaphor: the windows glinting in the afternoon sun become a field of sunflowers; the spires ringed by cloud become an elderly woman smoking a cigarette. The actors coming into the city with each new and shining theatre bring new superstitions, new ways of performing. Kashyr becomes a city made from the speech of artists— other ways are forgotten. The dawn is always rosy-fingered, the sea wine-dark. Living rooms are transformed into stages, each gesture takes on a new significance under the spotlight: a glance at the clock, the fire, the stack of letters by the desk, its own language. To step into the decorated archways and narrow streets of Kashyr is to step into a play, a film, a poem. Each resident plays out the story of their life scene by scene and stanza by stanza, until the curtain comes down and another story begins.
Cities & Colour 2
Rondel is a city nestled between hills; it rises out of them to meet you. The castle’s grey battlements weighing on the horizon, the cathedral’s steeple like a grey needle, the monuments and government buildings are grey on the skyline. Rondel has been built out of the same rain-coloured stone it sits between. The citizens of Rondel wake up to heavy fog each morning, filling up the streets or coming in through any open windows. The inhabitants rush through the rain, the people beside them hazy, indistinct and grey. Stone gargoyles are carved onto the cathedral, and the saint inside a saint without colour: he wears grey robes, raises a grey hand out imploringly and looks out at the world through grey eyes. If you spend enough time in Rondel, pausing to eat under cover in its rainy courtyards or climbing the grey hills that surround it, you will begin to find it beautiful. A piece of carved stone in the shape of a rose, dewy in the rain, a handsome shop display for grey tweed. In Rondel, you too are eventually made hazy and indistinct. You find yourself repeating the same phrases, doing the same actions, each morning stepping out into the fog and becoming more and more grey.
Cities & Spirits
Lind is city of animal lovers. If the statues of horses and dogs as you come into the city don’t give it away, then the inhabitants themselves do, walking their Pomeranians, whippets, Great Danes and Jack Russels. The dog walkers are in their greatest concentration in the morning and evening where you can see them moving through the city’s countless graveyards, angels offering out stone hands to the dogs as they pass. Dogs curl up in the city’s offices, look out of wicker baskets on bicycles, and ride on the trams next to their owners. In Lind, as in other cities, the death of a pet is a tragedy, but in Lind nothing is ever really let go. Look carefully among the churchyards, among those walking their dogs. See the tip of a wagging tail that vanishes into the air, a dog that’s no more solid than shadow. The dogs of Lind never leave. As soon as they are buried, they’re back, clawing gently at the door, shuffling through the bins, and howling at the moon. Their ghosts are loved just as much: they’re thrown sticks they can’t catch, taken on walks they don’t need. Look out over Lind’s rooftops at evening: the chimney pots and the blackened roofs and see the thousands of ghosts rush out of the houses, pale grey and glinting in the moonlight. Travellers to Lind are offered a single piece of advice: call out the name of an old friend, and wait.
Cities & Speech 2
Even from a distance you know you’re approaching the city of Stell. It glimmers like a jewel on the horizon, snatches of its music carried on the air. As you get closer, the glimmering becomes the neon lights of a thousand offers: OPENING NIGHT, SOLD OUT SHOW, FIVE STARS, COME AGAIN, BOOK NOW. If you look closely at the rubbish on the street, you’ll find it filled with ticket stubs. The buses and trams are all furnished with theatre seats, still smelling of beer and popcorn. In the pubs a guitarist is swapped for another as soon as the applause dies down. The comedians queue for the microphones and tell jokes until dawn. Under the bridges, electric lights cast shadow theatre on the curved walls. In Stell there is always more to see, more to do, to experience. The whole city cries out for your attention. There are breakfast shows, and lunch shows, and dinner shows. At midnight, horror stories, jokes for the witching hour and surrealist theatre for 5AM. There are fire eaters in the squares, marching bands in the parks. The mood is one of exuberance, a thousand Scheherazades begin telling a thousand stories, you could go room to room, street to street for a lifetime and not see all of Stell. Its bright lights, noise, laughter and fanfare cannot be stood for long. Its inhabitants are curious for their endurance—seeing new shows every night and waking up tired every morning.
Cities & Distance 2
Arriving into the city of Rusch, you are given a choice: a cobbled path sloping down, or the marble steps leading up. Each of these steps has been carved from a different colour of marble: honey-gold, white spun through with grey, dusky reds, or a deep green. In the lower, the cobbles lead you to streets built over one another until the light is blocked out entirely. Rusch is a city of halves. In the lower, the pubs operate in underground tunnels, cold and dripping with water. The smell of limestone, or rot, or occasionally vinegar, lingers with the stale beer. The back rooms lead into one another and again and again, making a labyrinth in the dark. Song and laughter echo down the curved walls. The upper takes you to bridges overlooking the city. Small streets where one has to dodge past cafe tables and press against the railings to let others through. Here you can gaze down upon those moving through the lower, with the wind whipping down from the hills. In Rusch, the distance from one place to another is not only measured in miles, but in staircases. Travellers find themselves exhausted by the climb between the two parts of the city. Frequently, left on the staircases in Rusch are shoes, entirely worn down at the soles. The city has grown at angles, and defeats the traveller attempting to see them all.
Cities & Escape 1
Aiden is a city that only appears in the dreams of delayed travellers. As the days become indistinct, and we find there is no difference between an afternoon or an evening, the city settles into our minds. First, a street corner, a shop with a carved mantle above the door and blue terracotta tiles. A tiny Japanese restaurant, with steaming ramen served in deep bowls. The next night, the covered market, stretching on for miles. Stalls with fabric of all colours stitched together to keep out the rain. We pass under linen and velvet and brocade. The next night, the riverside, with glass houses built up into the trees, and smelling thickly of honeysuckle and jasmine. Shops with tall, glass-fronted windows, the grand sandstone edifices of banks, wide bridges with elaborately carved balustrades and statues of leaping seahorses, flowers that open into streetlamps. The city is impossible, and imaginary. It carries with it the images of anyone who wishes to return to somewhere: a courtyard in Leiden, a dress shop in Leeds, the sloped and curving streets of Edinburgh. It has no train station. In Aiden, there is no going, only appearing, only wandering through its vast, empty museums and picturesque streets until dawn. Until the next night, when we return to Aiden again.
Cities & Escape 2
Syrinx has a curious set of borders: most travellers don’t know they’ve arrived until they see it’s landmarks: an unmade bed with sheets twisted like seafoam, the bookshelf like a castle’s parapets. They remember when they were a child, and a study table became a mountain top, the system of caves under the bed. The Turkish rug becomes a series of narrow and winding streets. The flourishes in the corners each mark an oasis, with ornamental islands curved like seashells. At its centre, the flowering walled citadel, gardens spilling across brick-lined patios. Twelve arches, each decorated with trailing wisteria, lead into an inner courtyard. There stands the palace with rooms set out like the petals of a flower. Here must be the leader of this city. A king in fine clothes who greets you warmly, and sends servants to bring you strong coffee and rose-flavoured biscuits. Is this Syrinx? It has to be. Orange blossoms waft gently through the streets. The inhabitants go about their business: selling bunches of violets, fresh bread, trinkets from travellers, and a rug that when laid out, turns into a perfect map of the city. Watching it, the rug becomes Syrinx, and the first Syrinx vanishes into the weaving.
Cities & Hindsight
August is not a city. It cannot be returned to. But passes, like Tarot cards laid out across a table. Where someone can point to The Magician, his costume and tricks and say “That was me – The street was my stage. Do you see him, twirling his batons?” Or then again, he’s the passing jester who taught you to balance on one leg. How The World might be a city or a burlesque or an oyster cracked open at a seafood restaurant. How The Wheel of Fortune is an embroidered skirt, swirling out at the hem, and the crowd parting this way and that. Then, a cleared table. A sigh blown like chalk into the air. Turreted streets fold into a memory, a kiss is tucked into an envelope for later. All these moments could melt into other moments, like images drawn on frosted glass. But for those in that August, there is still a cast, a play, laughing in dilapidated rooms. There is a train to catch and coffee in paper cups. There is the 31st, a city shedding it’s confetti. There is tomorrow arriving unannounced.