Fear and Architecture

Sometimes, it’s enough for an object to be within close reach, which allows me to lie down. So that it seems somewhat natural and no passersby stare. It’s best when my legs are elevated. Then the blood flows better to my head, or at least I imagine it does. After all, everything happens in the head somewhere.

Finding this object is often difficult, because its absence is what triggers the senseless fear. Often when I’m with someone, but also when I’m alone. Then an inner resistance starts, and I try to run through everything, but the day can’t be blamed. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with me either. While I’m getting soaked with sweat, I try to force the blood to circulate by pumping my hands. And I tell myself inwardly that it’s really not so bad, and after all, it didn’t happen yesterday either.

Sometime in a theater, a scene of brutal violence is being performed. I think it was about jealousy. There was no blood, but loud wailing, as is allowed in modern interpretations, and deep red light. I’m sitting in the middle of one of the back rows, and what’s happening on stage feels very intense to me. The whole class is there. The scene keeps playing out in my head, becoming much more extreme than necessary. Then I become aware that I’m in a room with maybe a hundred and fifty people. I think the air is bad, too, and I can’t just get up and leave. Then a feeling grabs me, a sense that I need to get out of there and escape the situation and the play. I’m paralyzed. Maybe because of the situation. The architecture of the theater now feels suffocating. The hall is like a steep box with no visible exits, which I desperately need. And everything that’s happening inside, and the echo of it in the room, is overwhelming.

I talk about how architecture affects our lives, about whether it pushes me beyond the limit. I talk about meeting places and the difference between outside and inside as if it were something profound, even though sooner or later inside, foolish madness awaits. Outside, too.

And hastily, you have to hold on and pump. The morning is easier, because then I’m not thinking so much yet and I’m at home, where I know everything. 

Even the heartbeat is constrained, and with trembling hands, you just want to get away and not wake up soaked in sweat on the floor with a fear of death. Despite hastily gathered nervous strength, you still feel like you’re failing. It’s only during the ride that you feel how much this fear has struck your heart.

2023, Chengdu, Sichuan
Philipp Groth