Mies and Me

In NYC

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The dream starts with Mies in New York outside his Seagram building on Park. It’s raining, wet and dark yet still daytime cleaves. The black steel and bronze glistens and the sky is brooding and heavy with moisture as if you had placed too much vignette on the scene before you, through your eyes. Everyone has black umbrellas; each single one faceless. The highlights, tinged orange from the filters of the windows the lights shine out from, flirtatiously, colourise our friendship.

On the extravagant plaza, an avuncular embrace - a big strong bear hug - ribs pop, lungs suck: he’s a big man and smokes his cigar with the only aggression he seems capable of. Magically he does not get wet, it is as if his building is there sheltering him alone. The subject of our conversation, as always, is Rothko and why he pulled his paintings from the Four Seasons. We play out our usual roles, me with the “ smiling through tears ” anecdote and him the more macabre “ pool of blood ”

Our conversation turns a lighter tone, never trivial, nor small, before a seeping feeling of emotional shortfall; as claustrophobic as the weather. Perhaps it is the mutual understanding that this is the last time our dreams will cross, so I look him in the eye and ask how it feels to have built something like this ( waving a touch too nonchalantly, I see now, at the curtain) and he asks me what it feels like to want to know and how I expect him to answer that. The glinting smile of his eyes says it all. 

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So it goes without saying that these photos are NOT of the Seagram building, for some reason I don’t have a photo of it. But given that there are a few buildings in NYC which are very similar is, IMHO, testament to the greatness of the man.

New York City, November 2018, Nikon d750

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