Bohemian Ponderings

Ponderings About Breaking the Grid...
Chapter 2.2

The grid, the system that simultaneously promotes freedom and repression. The grid, an interlocking series of pathways and rules that guide us through our daily lives. Although there are many ways to consider the idea of the grid, it appears in its most physical form as the city itself. It is literally represented through the streets and the automatic functions that it promotes in humankind. People move like automatons… like the Egyptian murals, in sync with each other. They move as one with the machines, through the surfaces, into the shelters, the buildings. The buildings, the constructs, are a set; a theatrical device that creates a set of behavioral “roles” for the actors. Always, the actors have that sense of slight (ever so slight) unease, even though there can be overwhelming peace. This is the clue to look for a way to break the grid. The structure must be disassembled. For the most part, the city is composed of right angles. It is the basis for the city, and is the essential pattern for the grid.

There are those that break the grid through their own physical manipulations, such as through the practice of Parkour. There is the kind breaks the grid through actual destruction, such as natural disasters. On another level, the circle or the curved line represents a breakage from the grid. It represents a new reality, unchained. A vehicle for the circle is glass, and glass can also provide a pathway that leads away from the tyranny of the grid. It takes the grid, and pushes it through itself, and what emerges on the other side is something original and new, and… changing. The goal is the break the grid, to have a metamorphosis take place. It is an ambition to take something familiar and re-purpose it for renewed consideration about the familiarity of the grid. It takes place through creativity and through imagination. This is the beautiful act, with the result that a sense of deep and vital peace can be felt… individually within the grid.