The Imagined City

The purpose of the crowd: “It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite. The crowd he needs is the dense crowd, in which body is pressed to body; a crowd, too, whose physical constitution is also dense, or compact, so that he no longer notices who it is that presses against him. As soon as a man has surrendered himself to the crowd, he ceases to fear its touch. Ideally, all are equal there; no distinctions count, not even that of sex. The man pressed against him is the same as himself. He feels him as he feels himself. Suddenly it is as though everything were happening in one and the same body. This is perhaps one of the reasons why a crowd seeks to close in on itself: it wants to rid each individual as completely as possible of the fear of being touched. The more fiercely people press together, the more certain they feel that they do not fear each other. This reversal of the fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest.”

Listening to Minny Pops as I write this. Fashion’s insistence on nightlife as its premier sport requires the formation of a crowd to make itself known. Without the crowd there is no fashion. Without movement there can be no crowd. But for a crowd to form there must first be a discharge. In Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power “This is the moment when all who belong to the crowd get rid of their differences and feel equal.” If Raleigh arts is a crowd, it has not yet achieved the glory of existence. Because it has not yet discharged. This is why we may now call Raleigh The Imagined City. It is a competing web of abstract projections pressed upon it by a disparate clientele barely aware of the others’ existence.

3 months ago I set out to write an article about emerging fashion in Raleigh – street fashion particularly. I went to a fashion show. I went around with my camera. Nothing appeared. Having discovered few leads and even less inspiration from the street to the club I quickly realized the idea is not to survey the market, but to create the market. And that the vista of distinction is being constructed in The Imagined City. Distinction in this case displaying de rigueur all accoutrements of the cosmopolitan. In stark contrast to affirmative and dissident styles which confirm small town clichés. What I’ve found is the isolation of distinction and, at least in this city, its inability to spontaneously form a crowd. For the spectacle of fashion requires a coliseum of eyes. It is not a form unto itself but a social function whose aim is to attract and mystify. It’s appearance advises the necessity of dance.

The way to the discharge: “The destruction of representational images is the destruction of a hierarchy which is no longer recognized. It is the violation of generally established and universally visible and valid distances. The solidity of the images was the expression of their permanence. They seem to have existed for ever, upright and immovable; never before had it been possible to approach them with hostile intent. Now they are hauled down and broken to pieces. In this act the discharge accomplishes itself.

The way to the rhythmic crowd: “For a long time nothing happens, but the desire for action accumulates and increases until it burst forth with enhanced violence.”

The way to the open crowd: “A few people have been standing together—five, ten or twelve, not more; nothing has been announced, nothing is expected. Suddenly everywhere is black with people and more come streaming from all sides as though streets had only one direction. Most of them do not know what has happened and, if questioned, have no answer; but they hurry to be there where most other people are. There is a determination in their movement which is quite different from the expression of ordinary curiosity. It seems as though the movement of some of them transmits itself to the others. But that is not all; they have a goal which is there before they can find words for it. This goal is the blackest spot where most people are gathered.”

The conservative tone of nightlife in Raleigh splinters the city into crowd crystals still with the potential for throng. But diced to a blunt edge a crystal may only attract the number its surrounding crowd desires. For The Imagined City to fulfill its own delusion it is the shadows who must lust for the wail of the crowd.

The imperative of dance to the throbbing crowd: “As long as they go on dancing, they exert an attraction on all in their neighborhood. Everyone within hearing joins them and remains with them.”

Only within a crowd will we feel safe to dress. Only after the formation of a crowd will Raleigh exist. Only at that time will we inherit The Imagined City.

The crowd crystal giving birth: “The return of the moment when they are needed is as certain as the appearance of new crowds, ripe for the stimulation and release which they may be precisely qualified to give.”

Fashion lives outside the city, to invite its gaze we must abolish the notion that it is of a class. The growth of the crowd insists on the equivalence of all bodies. It is against the code, of which a subculture utilizes to crystallize and forever close the crowd. Subculture must disintegrate and reform as a low culture in whose context the high culture is simultaneously vanquished and inflated. In contrast to code the low and high culture, whose commonalities are alarming, use deception to populate. Deception is the only skill required for the employment of style and the reaction of a crowd to form a crowd.

Dear Raleigh: party without inhibition or dignity.

Yours truly,

The Imagined City