Space

As a drama teacher this summer, I taught – and learned – how everything around us affects the character of the space we occupy.  A basic theater game involves mirroring a partner’s hands, working in tandem to agree without words on how to shape the space.  Is it thick? Heavy?  Slippery?  Only after mastering this can an actor move on to shaping the space around them in a way that communicates emotions.  If two people are having a fight, how can we tell that just by looking at them?  They use their bodies to change the shape around them, giving it hard edges, electricity, and violence.  The study of acting includes not just how you twist your face or deliver your words, but your awareness of the entire space around you.

Designers of sets, cars, clothes, and most anything else keep these ideas in mind.  Angular is masculine, tough, and ominous.  Curvy is feminine, kind, and comforting.  That’s why the inside of an SUV is as inviting as your mother’s lap, and women’s suits in the 80s conveyed a bulky strength that women didn’t have before.

Since we arrived in New York in early September, hurricane season filling the space with humidity you could slice, I’ve been very aware of how the space has been carved by us, and how we shape it as well.  All these angular buildings and endless flat stretches of pavement – how strange it is to be an animal in this sort of space!  In most cities you have a sense of the features of the land.  Not just a hill or two, but more trees, grass that’s been there for a while, a guess at how water comes in and goes out on its own.  It’s hard to imagine that this town has ever been natural, hard to even guess what it might have looked like as an untouched island, with a soft shoreline and marshes.  When the space is hard around us, it is no longer part of who we are, receptive to our movements and our soft bodies.  The square buildings cut the space into hard-edged blocks that move as we move around them, cutting into us sometimes.  I think this is why we feel either exhausted by being here or energized, as we rally ourselves against the unnatural.

In addition to a constant awareness of the quality of space in New York one can’t help but notice the lack of it.  Parking is difficult, sidewalks are crowded, subways are packed, the job market is competitive, and you can’t get a reservation in a restaurant.  I am delighted to come home and close myself in a room, feeling my own space at last, even if it’s just a rental.  And parking depressed me so much on my first try, as I searched for half an hour, always just missing an opening, endlessly hunting for my spot in the world, or at least on the block.  But oh the thrill of finding your very own space, safe and sound and just right, even if it’s out in the public where everyone can see.