The Golden Ass

"You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?' And brick says to you, 'I like an arch.' And you say to brick, 'Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.' And then you say: 'What do you think of that, brick?' Brick says: 'I like an arch.'" - Louis. I. Kahn

A building is a figure or image, and an extension of the humanity who makes it. Brick is our sexuality, our desire for intimacy.

Our word orifice comes from the Greek (and Roman) myth of Orpheus. An orifice is an opening in the body, or in a building. Sex is about openings in the body and in the heart. And, in the end, Orpheus was torn apart by the Bacchantes, companions to and servants of Dionysius.

Drawing of a window in a town in the desert in Spain between Bilbao and Barcelona (drawing by me):

The use of a lintel to create an opening is Orpheus “looking back.” Listening to the brick is Jesus as our true humanity. Orpheus uses and trusts in his power to obtain the impossible. A pastor friend of mine has a history of using compassion and curiosity, the practice of listening, as a tool to obtain the intimacy he wants. I can tend to use my muscles and my words to do the same. Orpheus used the power of his song.

So, appropriate to the way I can tend to practice obtaining intimacy with my own power, I'm noticing that part of me wants to skip ahead to the most intimate expressions of what love means when I first meet someone. This moment is a good lesson in the fact that love is embodied and cultivated over time. But that image of the fullness of intimacy that appears in the mind isn't necessarily a bad thing. It belongs to the nature of such relationships.

Notably, though, it's our technologies of the global village that have trained me to imagine that such a "skipping ahead" can be fulfilled "in the flesh" rather than as an image in the imagination that belongs within the limits of the nature of the embodied, sexually intimate relationship that is cultivated over time.

I am imagining this "fulfillment" of aspirational wishes as an analogy to the late modern fulfillment - through sociology, ideology, science, and the power of technology - of early modern aspiration to greater and higher levels of human mastery, with new modes of speculative knowledge.

In other words, I am trained through the power of the technology of digital internet media that shapes me to put myself in the place of God, to make my imagined aspirations immediately appear on earth as they are in heaven, rather than to patiently cultivate what all of humanity desires in the embodied flesh of humanity over time, Incarnationally.

In other words, the speed and ease of, and the power required in the making of any orifice of any size, any where, and at any time, with a lintel, is, in my analogy, the arrogance of “manifest destiny” taking shape in the order of sexual intimacy.

"God wept, because human nature had fallen to such an extent that, after being expelled from eternity, it had come to love the lower world. God wept, because those who could be immortal, the devil made mortal. God wept, because those whom he had rewarded with every benefit and had placed under his power, those who he had set in paradise, among flowers and lilies without any hardship, the devil, by teaching them to sin, exiled from almost every delight. God wept, because those who he had created innocent, the devil through his wickedness, caused to be found guilty." - quote from a fourth century Christian leader, Potamius of Lisbon from THIS BLOG POST, by Mako Nagasawa.

Here - in our specific technological context of the global village - the fall to mortality from immortality is inverted to the desire for immediate delight as an aspiration to overcome humanity's relationship with time, with and under our own power (i.e. - "it had come to love the lower world").

Just as Orpheus, relying on the power of his song, “looked back” out of fear and anxiety of the loss of his love, I am similarly tempted – out of a fear and anxiety of being “exiled from almost every delight” from an intimacy and care that otherwise stands before me as the fullness of creation itself, an intimacy and care whose power I inherently carry and bear in my body - to reach above the humility of my station to an immediate place in the intimate glories of heaven. Orpheus, Nimrod, and myself all have this temptation in common.

The beautiful, patient crafting of an arch over the weight of time in accordance with the nature of the brick, however, is proper and appropriate human cultivation of intimacy embodied slowly in and over time. It is my tending to what I had imagined I was exiled from. Jesus shares his power and presence (intimacy) with us and leads us to life, shares his life with us. We could say he is our master mason who invites us to do the same, to follow him in this, to build (intimacy) the way he builds.

I say, “You see all those people coupling up. Yeah, that’s not for you.” God says, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

To use a lintel to create an orifice is to conceive of and treat the wall as an abstract, mechanical plane and to then, of course, use foreign material to mechanically create an opening where you want. It was around the previously referenced time of late modernity’s powerful technological, economic, and political fulfillment of early modernity’s vision when steel and concrete began to carry the structural weight of a building, and when brick began to be treated either as a mere abstracted mechanical plane, or exclusively as a performative display of “outer” flesh. A building is a figure or image, and an extension of the humanity who makes it, so these bifurcations of our humanity between natural and supernatural, body and soul, spirit and flesh that appeared in modern anthropology also appeared in our modern buildings. Or did the image of humanity in our buildings also appear in our anthropology and in our epistemology?

Our history is my history, so this is both narration and confession.

A lintel is sexual intimacy with anyone, anywhere, any time, and any how – because my body is conceived of and treated as a mechanical abstraction. To quote Willie Jennings: “[B]odies are rendered in this vision of intimacy into dumb machines activated only by and through narratives of sexual consumption.” Speaking of consumption, as Lou Kahn noted, a lintel is cheaper and more efficient.

To listen to the brick rather than to treat it as merely abstract plane or performative display, however, is to conceive of and treat the wall as a body, to listen to the desires of my body. An arch is hearing built into sexual desire also desires for care and economic security, intimacy and connection or belonging, and faithfulness and dignity. And it is to enact sexual desire as though it is joined to them (i.e. marriage). An arch lovingly tends to the limits of the brick as gift rather than to either desire to reach beyond them or to imagine one’s self constrained by them. This acceptance of the givenness of the nature of the brick is extraordinarily “expensive” and “inefficient.”

A lintel is abuse of the brick (even to the point of often cutting it, if need be). It is tolerating my sexuality being treated as an efficient tool and a cheap possession – and treating others that way, too. The arch is the honoring of the beauty and dignity of the brick, of our sexuality, of the intimacy that’s built into our very bodies. I am aware that the drawing above is of neither an arch nor a concrete (nor steel) lintel. But, when my Architecture professor saw it, he recognized the orphic nature of it, the call and invitation into intimacy and our dignity, and he said, “THAT is an elevation.” He said that, because it elevates - as compared to the fact that the myth of Orpheus ends in his very body being torn apart, his falling.

To use a lintel is to exert power and control over the brick (even to the point of cutting it if need be), to be trapped in the tension between patriarchal heroism and control versus reactionary freedom, between purity culture and liberation. An opening carved out of the unity of the body with the reconciling joining of the two sides of the opening with an arch, however evokes the beauty of mutual desire that gives shape to the burdens and efforts enacted upon and by my body.

The lintel is the status quo, the norm. This is part of why Louis I. Kahn died $500,000 in debt. It’s why healthy sexuality is so difficult for me, for us. The arch is the disruption of our current technological, economic, and political power systems and structures.

In the making of an arch, life and death are at stake. A master mason “stood under” the scaffolding of an arch as it was being removed. This is the root of our word “understanding.” This is our reliance on the scaffolding put in place by the Master of our desires in the “Word that comes from above.” This Master is the fulfillment of our humanity, the full union of dirt and divinity. In the placement of a lintel over an opening, we use power tools to enforce our will, and we are able to imagine that life and death are never encountered. But this is only because the building never really lives and moves; it doesn’t really carry its own weight. Here, “the building” is dignity and beauty of our sexuality and our intimacy that is inherent to all of our relatings.

With a concrete or steel lintel, the brick has no inherent dignity; it is only a tool to get what I want. It is using both the brick and the lintel to get what I want, which is presumed to be reached for and grasped towards from outside the brick itself, from outside the intimacy woven into all human relatings. Remember that Orpheus uses and trusts in his power to obtain the impossible. Jesus, on the other hand, shares his power and presence (intimacy) with us and leads us to life, shares his life with us. He invites us to do the same, to follow him in this.

So, to forego the use of a lintel and to tend to the nature of the brick is to create an entirely new and different building. It is to die to the old person and to become new in the one who shares his full humanity with us.

With an arch, then, we are lovingly tending to the nature of the brick to follow the plan of the body of the building. We are using our agency to direct the intimacy that’s woven into all human relating and inherent to the brick itself. Intimacy is about openings in the body and in the heart. Some intimacies belong and are ordered towards different rooms of the house. An appropriate relational order is established over the time of the relatings. We invite people through orifices into the appropriate rooms: porch, den, dining room. And, the particular intimacy of the husband and wife is framed by the orifice leading to the bedroom. “Tend to your heart with all diligence; For out of it are the ways to life.” – Proverbs 4: 23.

In other words, this blog post is like an architectural plan to help me find my way through the intimacies woven into creation.

So, in masonry, the wall and arch are not built brick by brick, individually. The bricks are woven – turned and mutually mirrored – as groups of three into a unified mass that, in the end, acts as one together. In order for this to ring true, with a building that stands upright and beautiful as a harmonious union with integrity among its elements, the joinings have to be tended to with love - just as in human joinings.

“Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5 like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” - 1 Peter 2