A Monk and the Bearded Lady

In Delirious NY, Rem Koolhaas titillatingly claims that at one time Coney Island was the "clitoral appendage" of New York, a.k.a. a "pleasure center" that exploited recreation as a means of stimulating the adjacent urban evironment. What is of more interest to me is Coney Island's proximity to the sea; perhaps the most powerful scaling device in existence.

Having grown up visiting family in the oh-so-colorful Brighton Beach (a 20 minute boardwalk stroll from Coney Island), and having participated in a solo-journey to Brighton, England, yesterday (two worlds that are so different they may be deemed similar), my fascination with "synthetic recreation" by the sea continues.

The collapse of amusement park and nature's most powerful, soothing element seems strange if not completely counterintuitive to me. When I think of the sea, I immediately reference Caspar David Friedrich's painting "Monk by the Sea," in which scale becomes a measure of man's insignificance in comparison with the sublime universe. When I think of the term "amusement park," I replace the sublime with the surreal and find the measure of man best quantified by how many elephant ears he/she can consume in a twenty-four hour period.

Luckily, my intuition that Brighton was not one large fun-house came to fruition as I continued walking down the coastline in hopes of finding unspoilt nature and a proper place to channel my inner-monk in favor of a bearded lady. My chance arose as I followed a slightly legible pathway along the sea. After passing an array of snack shacks as well as a mall, supermarket complex, "naturalist" (nude) beach with some confident participants, and a bizarre marina community emulating a silly post-modern Venice with walls, I found the undercliff walk.

Constructing a landscape along the sea's edge is a tricky pursuit. Given a heavy hand and a capitalist heart, serenity can easily become the Jersey Shore. Let nature take its course, and dunes erode, diminishing beachfront in favor of tall grasses and flooded basements.

However, the delicate intervention of architect and coastline proved a fruitful venture in Brighton. In a careful mixture of earth sculpture and functionalism, a snaking path along the white cliffs becomes an endless perspectival device to the neighboring sea. Using massive concrete forms, the cliff-walk is a fascinating trail in which the pedestrian must reflect on the interstitial moment between land and sea.





After walking for about four miles, stopping periodically to sketch or observe moments in which the cliffs were suddenly inhabited by small cafes and shops, I noticed a footpath. Leading to a somewhat unofficial "over-cliff walk," I decided that I would return the exact way I came but at a completely different elevation, thus enabling myself to observe the same landscape from a completely different vantage point.

















As I began my trek, I was reminded of Yann Arthus-Bertrand's photography of earth in aerial view. As I walked along the cliffs, I watched the rocks I had just climbed, the seaweed I had smelled, and the people I had passed become repetitive patterns, blocks of color, and dots of movement.

Another four miles and a short nap by the sea later, I sat on the Thameslink train thinking one last time about scale. As I moved through the universe, one station stop at a time, a reflection in the window amongst thousands of other reflections, I felt content.




note: All images included are taken by me. For links to artists/authors noted, see the "tid bits" column to the left.