Who says we cannot dance about architecture?

 Trying to come to grips with Le Corbusier--an on again/off again endeavor of mine for decades--a presence forever looming, like the Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, one of my favorite buildings, yet forever unattainable-- but also like so many of his other buildings (realized and not) that leave me cold--the cavalier trajectory of his urban vistas--how I so appreciate what he wrote and what he painted, the lightness of line and all that emphatic certitude, while so mistrusting the outcomes of his architecture--admiration mixed with wariness.
 Regardless, what most intrigues are his polymathic means to singular goals-- starting with his self-declared alias (a mask that lays bare?), and the oft-remarked fact that, when he gained French citizenship, he entered "homme de lettres" as his occupation on his identity card/passport.  


A belletrist then, a self-declared citizen of the Republic of Letters...to encompass all else, or at least to order the others: the architect, the painter, the designer, the one who sketches.



Two months before he died, in his final interview, Le Corbusier said: “...not being able to build certain things, I could draw them; but not being able to explain them entirely in drawing, especially when it came to urbanism, I had to explain them, so I wrote.”


So maybe we can actually dance about architecture...

Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.