Noir

As I sit here staring out of the window periodically and finally getting down to thinking about some work, I realise I am presently perfectly contextualised for the discussion of Sullivan/Wright/Lautner that I'll be delivering this Friday back in the sheltered confines of the Keyworth Building, because what stands, no towers, around me is so NOT what they were about. For one it couldn't be more brazenly inorganic, and on the other hand couldn't be truer to the real ethos of the American Way, or at least that way as it turned out, without a trace of inspiration from Walt Whitman. What they stood for was the dream that never happened, could never happen, but was therefore absolutely necessary as the foundation for something that was the complete opposite.
Competition, avarice, technology, paranoia, I'm drowning in it here, every pixel on the TV shoves it in to my head. No wonder 'noir' is such an authentic American literature, that's the only space left to write, from dead beat on the streets, that is the literal base line, and the only way is up, if you're lucky.
So of course the idealist Sullivan had to end his days in a flop house next to a bar, of course Wright had to secure his future through celebrity and of course Lautner built those hideaways for James Bond villains, it's just that those villains weren't actually agents for SMERSH, but exactly the opposite as well.
If I were looking for a discourse on the actual architecture of the American city, I should be lecturing this Friday on Philip Johnson, but that would be too too close to the bone, too real, too black, see what I mean? However it's worth thinking about, who needs that organic millstone anyway?