Beautifully lyrical piece of writing over at 3 Quarks Daily, in which Australian poet Peter Nicholson writes something between an elegy and a story for the Sydney Opera House and its principal characters, musical, architectural, historical. Here are a couple of quotes, which I've annoyingly selected from the top and tail - do read the whole thing:
"In the middle of a hot Australian summer, a new cross-city tunnel forcing motorists to use its subterranean tendrils, road closures making drivers either succumb to its expensive ease or find new ways about, tempers at breaking point, one suddenly caught a glance of the Sydney Opera House, out of the corner of the eye. There, centring the whole city of Sydney, this amazing building still had the power to overwhelm with its leaping shells, its suggestion of ascent to an empyrean. Fruit rinds, sails, wings—each person chooses their own imagery. How far removed from the sweat and fury on the roads below, what Platonic perfection in contrast to the swearing and rising blood pressure of infuriated drivers ..."
"Before you, above you, around you, is the winged victory of human aspiration made visible in concrete, steel and tile. The Sydney Opera House stands, not phantasmagoric, something inspiration, technology and sheer hard work brought forth at the cusp of city and ocean, yacht sails and ferry lights disappeared in evening. A glimpse of the Sydney Opera House from a mess of traffic. The spirit is refreshed and your blood pressure eases, architectural lines tracing from paper the nervelines of our best intentions, metamorphosing into reality, not dissolving into thin air ..."
