All Our Wrong Todays(48)

The International Conference on Architecture and Urban Design is this weekend, hosted in Toronto for the first time, and as the local wunderkind I’m supposed to give a speech to open the conference. I agreed to it months ago and I don’t know why it wasn’t canceled after my hospitalization, but no one told the conference organizers and they’re freaking out that I didn’t show up to the dinner beforehand, because five hundred architects, urban designers, cultural critics, graduate students, and, well, I don’t exactly know who, but five hundred of them are milling around outside the auditorium waiting to hear my talk.

I have nothing to say to five hundred architecture nerds. But some pushy rattle in my subconscious tells me this is important to John, so, even though I don’t want to be John, I tell the person on the line that John will be there at the scheduled start time. I explain the situation to Penny and I can tell she suspects this might be a ruse to disappear now that I’ve slept with her four times in the past eighteen hours, so I invite her to join me and we have our first shower together and, yeah, I really don’t want to leave that shower stall, but she’s suddenly all business, slipping on a lovely little dress and fixing on makeup while I shave with the razor she uses on her legs and armpits.

We catch a taxi to my place and leave the meter running while I hurl myself into a suit and let her look around a bit. She ties my tie and it feels so intimate I almost cry. She smiles at me, warm and curious at the same time, and I think it’s that smile that gives me the balls to do what I do next.





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I have nothing planned for this crowd of probably very smart, very talented people who are no doubt wondering if the fuss about me—him, John—is remotely worth it and of course it definitely is not.

Conference organizers cluster around me as I walk into the auditorium holding hands with Penny, asking if I brought any audiovisual aids. I look around the venue with its five hundred full seats and its tiny lectern set before curtains closed over massive floor-to-ceiling windows and my mind is devoid of human thought. Every molecule of liquid in my body squeezes out of my sweat glands. There’s a flittering, sooty sensation in my throat that feels like I swallowed a cloud of moths.

I notice a crack between the curtains, like whoever shut them neglected to give the cord a last tug. The auditorium is on the top floor of a tower by the lake and through the crack I see a sliver of the city skyline. I ask for a marker, something I can sketch with, and pull open the curtains, revealing the view of the city. A programming assistant scrambles over with a thick felt-tip permanent marker. I uncap it and, with the full-bore gaze of five hundred people on the back of my head, start to draw right onto the window.

What I draw is the city as I remember it, not as it looks here. My skyline, not this skyline. It’s a strange cognitive experience because I can’t draw, but John can, so I’m teetering between the two of us, his talent and my memory. I sketch out the city as it should be. The room is quiet, some soft murmurs and throat clearing, but no one calls out, like, stop drawing on the window, idiot. So I keep going until I’ve completed the skyline that’s supposed to be there. Only then do I face the crowd.

“We are failures,” I say. “We’ve failed ourselves and we’ve failed the world. Architecture is the art we live in. And we could be living in miracles. Instead of dull boxes. Instead of geometry. We, in this room, make the frame that the world looks through to see its own reflection. And if the world has not provided us the materials we need to unbind our imaginations, we must demand it. Everything that we need to reimagine this city, every city, to redefine how human beings live on this planet, it’s all possible. No idea is impossible. All we need is infrastructure. But are we inspiring the material world to chase our grand visions? Or are we letting infrastructure shackle us? You fail yourself, you fail the world, you fail the future, you fail whoever looks out the window to see what we as a civilization are capable of. Look out that window at the story we’ve told. Is that a story you’re proud to tell? Think about what you tried to build today and ask yourself if it will change this world into the one we need. If not, why not? Start again. These are not buildings. They are monuments to the future we deserve.”

I’m supposed to talk for an hour, and that’s, like, maybe two minutes. But it’s all I’ve got, so I put the cap on the marker, throw it to the wide-eyed programming assistant, take Penny by the hand, and walk out of the auditorium, letting the heavy wood doors swoop closed behind me.

As we wait for the elevator, it sounds like they’re destroying the auditorium, ripping out the seats bolted to the floor with their bare hands and hurling them against the walls. Later someone tells me that’s just the sound of five hundred people applauding.





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Just to be clear, I don’t think my speech was all that applause-worthy. My wild skyline drawing was dramatic, and people were surprised I called them all failures, and everyone likes to be told their profession sets the tone for the whole world, but I can’t tell if people applauded because they were inspired or provoked by what I said, or if mob logic just peer-pressured the rest of them into joining in once the first person clapped.

Whatever the reason, the speech made the cover of the Toronto Star newspaper the next day, with my window drawing reproduced above the fold. Countless hastily posted online think pieces followed in prompt succession, pro-and-conning me, the speech, the skyline, architecture as a profession, and various tangential subjects cooked up by journalists needy for something to write about so they can get paid, late and badly.