The Old City
Dec. 23rd, 2018 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootTrying to describe the Old City will never really work, but you know it when you're there, or almost there. It requires going up those steps, or walking through the door or wandering down that alley or turning the corner. Like the Door in the Wall you may find a secret garden with playful panthers...Or you may find something else entirely; I have been told by someone who could never be coaxed further on the subject, that there is a time portal near Marble Arch, but it is extremely dangerous, presumably because of all those temporal anomalies everyone's favourite Gallifreyan creates so blithely, but also because Marble Arch was once Tyburn; there are some place/time combinations best avoided even by the most curious.
The Old City is easily glimpsed in London or Venice or Granada or Edinburgh, not so easy to grasp in LA or Sydney. The secret isn't one of space/architecture and it's a mistake to think that light can dismiss the old city. Whoever wrote season 2 of True Detective tried to work with the glare of the yellow, hinting at dreams of Carcosa that lurk behind Los Angeles; a pity they did it so badly. The old city can be found everywhere. What matters is not the shape of the labyrinth - as season 1 of TD demonstrated so well - but the ability to get lost in it.
I will be interested to see if I can glimpse the Old City through the eyes of New York.
The Old City is easily glimpsed in London or Venice or Granada or Edinburgh, not so easy to grasp in LA or Sydney. The secret isn't one of space/architecture and it's a mistake to think that light can dismiss the old city. Whoever wrote season 2 of True Detective tried to work with the glare of the yellow, hinting at dreams of Carcosa that lurk behind Los Angeles; a pity they did it so badly. The old city can be found everywhere. What matters is not the shape of the labyrinth - as season 1 of TD demonstrated so well - but the ability to get lost in it.
I will be interested to see if I can glimpse the Old City through the eyes of New York.
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Date: 2018-12-23 05:49 pm (UTC)And you will find it in NYC, though not in the borough of Manhattan. Brooklyn is the place.
Have you read China Mieville's The City and the City? I highly recommend it if you have not.
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Date: 2018-12-24 08:24 am (UTC)We're staying in Brooklyn! I am so looking forward to this :-)
I have barely done anything in LA except the usual touristy stuff; the place seemed very peculiar to me so I ran away to hide in Yosemite for a month. But there will come a time for a proper study of the City of Angels.