Fiction trip
“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind … We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary to invent the fictional contents of a novel. The fictions are already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.” – J.G. Ballard
“To invent the reality…” isn’t that the task of an architect too?
Of course I love traveling and have had a number of trips to many lovely and beautiful cities where I enjoy walking around and being amazed by the architecture, I rarely have chances to write about those trips. Mostly because after a trip I often feel so exhausted that at some certain moments my mind goes blank and it unpleasantly leads me to feel too lazy to verbalize my memories. Furthermore, I always tend to have little time to spend on a city, too little that I often have to rush and therefore no time for writing.
But this time, the trip is unique. Unset for any actual trip, I let my mind wander to some places that I have never been to: The Shinjuku district in Tokyo, as it was described in a book of Murakami’s called “Norwegian Wood”, somewhere in Texas that I’ve read about in Paul Auster’s book “Moon Palace”, and some places which I can never literally visit, such as a number of Continuous cities, Cities and Sights, Cities of Dead, etc. in Calvino’s book “Invisible Cities”. And without any preparation, I’ve already begun my trip to some certain cities by reading Fictions.
There a numerous cities which are worth exploring. And normally we have two ways to do that: to go to the site to feel the real ambiances like an urban stroller would do, and to open up the mind for imaginations. As always, I am interested in wandering around and discover things by chance, like an urban stroller. However, those urban strollers in the 18th century went on foot to discover the cities because they had no other option. Nowadays, since information, maps, photos and writings about a city are available everywhere, one can easily find the historic background, current data or news about a city without having to move from one’s desk, actual walks are no longer the best or unique tool to analyze cities.
For example, I am staying New York and right now I am unable to go to Tokyo, but with the support of modern technology, I let my imagination take me to the city with my different “companions”. They are either well-known anthropologists, Australian professors, Japanese architects or artists. I find it exciting and I’m sure that way is much more informative than being actually there without any knowledge about the city. Even if all I have done was to read the documents about a city, I am still a stroller in a sense – a stroller in the world of imagination.
– Tuan Manh Nguyen
(edited by Van Khanh Tran)