Poetic space (a thought in progress) part 1
Why are some spaces conducive to creativity? I have found a spot, near my home, in the hood of Footscray, which is just such a place. It is a cafe.
The interior is forgettable, it may even be a liability. It is slick and tasteless and way overdone with its metal tables and polished concrete floors, dual LCD televisions both playing their soundtracks at once over the top of background music poorly chosen.
But forget about such spaces.
What really matters is this:
The cafe has a balcony that sits at the rear of the building and overlooks two pairs of railway lines, one of which crosses over the other, the lower descending into a subterranean world strewn with rubbish and graffiti.
In the distance you can make out the walkway that spans across the platforms of Footscray station, and the small figures with their diverse gaits, speeds and intensities to their movements. Further afield you can see another railway line leading to the station and in the far distance, the docklands of Melbourne’s ports with the city skyline spread behind.
It is an unplanned poetry. I think it is the confluence of human destinies and intentions which I find so electrifying. It hints, suggests that at the boundaries of intelligibility lies the dynamism of human life. A dynamism that exists between the lines, so to speak, of the instrumental, functional intentions of the ordered human world.
And yet another cross current, a small park, a reserve with a gazebo across the railway lines and at the top of an embankment covered with rocks shrubs and trees.
Here gathers human detritus with the unofficial sanction of government and police to drink from cans and goon bags, whose laughs carry across the wind, a call high pitched, an answer deep and gnarled.