This is highly recommended, a series where I provide a compelling argument for why you should like something that I like.

Dear Reader,

Do you guys know what buildings are? I’m assuming that if you’re reading this blog, you probably know what buildings are. But I guess that I should probably never assume anything. And in the spirit of continuing to be an exceptionally lazy blog writer, I’m going to pad the rest of this intro with a definition of buildings that I’ve copied and pasted from the good folks at merriam-webster.com:

1: a usually roofed and walled structure built for permanent use (as for a dwelling)

(I’m going to pad a little more of this intro with a complaint about how when you copy and paste something from a different website into Google Docs, the formatting gets all fucked up. It’s fucked up.)

Now that we’re all clear on what buildings are, we can quickly move into the part of the blog that actually tries to communicate a point of view.

I highly recommend looking at buildings.

Why?

Vaguely Inspiring

You know when you’re trying to meet the self imposed deadline for your blog and failing miserably? And no matter how hard you try, you find yourself creatively desperate and in a time crunch, week after week after week? And how you think that posting up near one of the windows on the 17th floor of your office (pretty good view, tbh) will help give you the spark you need to start writing? No, of course you don’t. Because that’s my story. Don’t steal it. Find another way to get vaguely inspired to do something you don’t have to do, but are forcing yourself to do for some unidentifiable reason.

Aesthetically Satisfying

For what they lack in inspiration, buildings sure do look pretty cool. All the right angles. The sharp lines. The mish mash of colors and materials and shapes and sizes are what make any decent skyline worth looking at. And it’s the incongruity where buildings truly shine. Give me a late 19th century Roman Gothic stone joint next to some incredibly intimidating Brutalist chunk and I’ll stare at them for longer than I stared at this blank page before typing anything. (It was a long time.)

They Don’t Change

One of the best things about that incongruity is that I can count on it. Every day (barring fog, fuck fog) I can look out the window and see the same feat of engineering jutting into the sky, crammed next to another feat of engineering that truly doesn’t belong next door. In a world where a highly recommended blog doesn’t get posted every week (my fault, but whatever), it’s nice to have some consistency.

Wondering What’s Going On In There

Somebody is inside and they’re doing something. They might be doing something fun. Something boring. Something absolutely horrible. But what’s most important is that they’re doing something I don’t know about. And I would really like to know what that something is. (Have you ever seen a building a million times and then finally gotten the chance to go inside, only to realize that what you thought was going on in there is definitely not what was going on in there? Never meet your heroes.)

They Don’t Look Back

I’ve found through personal experience that when you look at something that can look back (people, geese, the void, etc.) for too long, things don’t end well. Buildings never look back. They just pretend that nobody is looking at them and go on with their lives. (Except for a few buildings with inflated egos. You know who you are. And you like it a little too much when people look at you.)

There’s got to be one thing you don’t like about looking at buildings.Running Into People While Looking At Them

Unfortunately, not everybody reads this blog. And that means that not everybody heeds my advice about looking at buildings. They’re usually looking other places, like where they are going. That’s no fun. If everybody tilted their head back and admired the architecture while walking, I wouldn’t have this problem. If more people read this blog, I wouldn’t have this problem. I wouldn’t have any problems.

In order to stay consistent with the established formatting, I’m going to pad this outro with something else that makes my job a little easier: white space.

love,

nicholas