Microspaces

Space: the first frontier. As time was born, a cosmic explosion enabled space in that first infinitely small eon between nothingness and universe. Sub-atomic massless particles formed from pure energy synthesizing into electrons and quarks, then protons and neutrons, and finally atoms, which, even at their nanoscopic cores, are vast empty landscapes of energy. Through their fusion and division, all existence as we know it was formed.

Then too, billions of years later, on a small blue planet on the outskirts of some wayward galaxy, space becomes the first frontier for life. Some ascribe to the theory of that random meteor which brought with it the first polypeptides and ribozymes which self-catalyzed and found solace within the micro-nodules of self-assembling lipid bilayers, thus creating the first cells housing genetic material, the basis for all earthly life (at least as how science defines it). Even those preferring some theory of self-assemblage must agree that without the compartmentalization provided by the lipid bilayer, without the three-dimensional folds of enzymes, without the linearity of DNA and RNA helices enabling the subsequent placement of codons directing protein synthesis, life as we know it would not exist. Further even, billions more years down the evolutionary chain, complex life forms require space not only for nourishment of natural resources, but also for gestation: plants from seeds; fish, amphibians, reptiles from eggs; mammals from wombs. Truly, it is space that defines us, that molds the parameters of our physicality. Compared to more subtle dimensions of our humanity such as the emotional and psychospiritual savannahs unfolding inversely behind our forms may flux with the personal growth of change and fate, our bodies remain relatively static in space, and while we may suffer age and disease shifting our shape, we remain corporeal organisms until our death and disintegration.

Thus, it is also sensible to argue that, while our aforementioned subconscious grasslands and oceans may create the artistic expression that fulfills our transitory lives, the subjectivity of our organismic tangibility necessitates a similar corporeality for the ultimate manifestation of art. Even symbols, the most basic artistic manifestation linking perception to shifting abstract concepts, require space for representation on our physical plane. Furthermore, literature, painting, sculpting, installation, theatre, pantomime, opera, and any other manifestation of artistic expression similarly require space to provide art’s inherent value, that connection between artist and audience, the communication of identifiable expression.

Some may see these as obvious points with little potential for provocative discussion. Still, such mental meanderings are fertile ground for me to begin a new discourse on my most recent travels to Montreal, Quebec. A kaleidoscope of cultures, languages and histories, Montreal is truly a jewel of metropolitan expression. My purpose there was to conduct a market research workshop with some of the finest, most influential minds writing and re-writing the healthcare policies that impacted the lives of millions of Canadians. Having some Canadian heritage myself, the very idea of this workshop gave me immense satisfaction: the fulfillment that comes from knowing that hard work and toil results in a greater good.

To collect the opinions of these fine minds, we required – what else? – space! A market research facility in downtown Montreal was the perfect place to hold our day-long conference. Left to itself, the facility was nothing but tables and laptops and wires and chairs, separated by vast molecular quantities of nitrogen and oxygen. But the potential that this space provided was invaluable housing for their decades of government and private industry experience. While not a large market, Canada is strategically critical in many industries because of its immense natural resources and its proximity to the United States that often results in cross-cultural, -economic and –political dynamics that cannot be ignored in successful product launch planning.

Canada’s healthcare system, for those of you who are unaware, is far more akin to that in the United Kingdom or Australia than it is to our principally commercial insurance landscape here in the U.S. For decades now, this universal approach has clashed with skyrocketing healthcare costs resulting from aging populations, innovative new pharmacotherapies and rising salaries. If it allowed access to the most innovative new medical therapy without cost controls and intelligent access management, the entire government of Canada could go bankrupt.

As such, the government of Canada, like those of the UK and Australia, has increasingly relied on the concept of pharmacoeconomics to guide which people can have access to certain drugs. Without delving into the nitty-gritty, around which whole careers and government beauracracies have been based, pharmacoeconomics essentially weighs the cost of drug therapy against the indirect cost-savings of other reduced healthcare costs. For example, if by publicly reimbursing a drug for diabetes, a number of amputations are prevented, then depending upon the price and volume utilization of the drug, the government might save money on the hospitalization and rehabilitation due to disease.

It has been accepted by modern medicine for a few years now (about 10,000 years after traditional and shamanic cultures recognized the same fact), that unhealthy lifestyles lead to disease. For example, people with diets heavy in saturated fats and sugar tend to develop cardiovascular problems and diabetes; people who smoke tend to develop certain cancers. While genetic variance differentiates those more susceptible to these risk factors, at one level or another they impact everyone.

Because treating diseases such as hypercholesterolemia and cancer and diabetes are very expensive, government and commercial private payers have incentives to implement what are affectionately known as disease management programs. In these programs, which currently exist in the U.S. and other nationalities, the third-party payer creates a program, which may include mandatory pharmaceutical use, diet and exercise regimens, and stress control. A future step then, once these become the standard of healthcare management, may very well be for payers, both private and government alike, to deny reimbursement of treatment to people who are put on, but do not follow, disease management programs. These practices may be draconian, but are also arguably necessary for the solvency and continued operation of healthcare systems worldwide. Still, such pre-determined living does not reconcile well with our needs for space.

At the time, even upon completion of the workshop, the philosophical connection of these discussion to the concept of space had not yet touched upon my mind. Truthfully, I was merely glad to complete this culmination of months of preparation. But as I transplanted my travel bag and laptop carry-on from the hotel to my good friend’s apartment, vacationing as it were, for a day in that Canadian city of integrated dualism, I had a few moments to continue my reading of Aldous Huxley’s “Island,” his last novel. Contrasted with “Brave New World,” in which everyone’s existence was pre-determined from birth depending upon their genotype, “Island” relates a South Pacific Utopia, isolated from the worlds of capitalism, industrialism, militarism, religious idealism, nationalism, and above all, unnecessary suffering. This society is steeped in Buddhist tradition, but has a healthy skepticism of religion, intriguingly juxtaposed to a deeply spiritual and mystic culture balanced between meditation, physical exertion, psychotropic mushroom use, and tantrik sex. These cultural staples are counterbalanced by science and logic, and the synergy of ancient and modern wisdom enables as perfect a society as mankind might expect, in which personal choice and harmony enable everyone an extremely high degree of happiness and personal fulfillment.

One core concept to Huxley’s Utopia is that of population control, which he similarly stresses in “Brave New World.” Unlike in “Brave New World,” however, in which population control is achieved through the pre-natal sterilization of embryos and controlled factory growth of human beings of different genotypic destinies, Huxley’s Islanders achieve population control through sensible living. As an isolated island with no petroleum reserves and no good port, the Utopia Pala was spared the religious rhetoric that has demonized our freedom of choice with regards to birth control. Combined with the institutionalized teaching of tantrik sex, couples only conceive when they want, and no couple has more than a few children. Thus, the natural resources of the tiny Palanese state are more than sufficient for all, and even parents with young children live in relative peace.

Contrasted with Bangalore or New York City or Mexico City or Shanghai or Rio de Janeiro, Huxley’s paradise seems enticing, and underscores the importance of space in society, in stark contrast to the realities of modern living, where overpopulation creates extreme competition for the most basic natural human needs such as food, shelter and sanitation, let alone living wages and material luxuries and retirement. In most of these cities, however, the wealthy still commandeer space for another of mankind’s needs, or, if not needs, at least strong desires – artistic expression. For what good is material luxury if one’s soul is not nourished as well?

Montreal encapsulates an interesting compromise not entirely unlike Huxley’s Pala. Except for being half-way around the world and despite having a massive bureaucratic government, and even with its strong French Catholic population, Montrealers remind me of the Palanese. Though in much colder climes than Huxley’s Islanders, Montrealers emanate the warmest of vibes, a similar energy signature to that which I have found exuded by residents of other mid-sized, affluent Western cities. A lack of over-crowding has resulted in space for the luxuries of life, most particularly art and culture, which is evident everywhere. But unlike some cities, in which this appreciation of art is brutally juxtaposed by massive impoverished slums and the despair of the destitute, downtown Montreal, at least, seems amazingly clean and well integrated.

This integration is so expansive that underground graffiti art melds in the cityscape with centuries-old religious and colonial architecture and vast new corporate skyscrapers symbolizing commercial power. I am a huge fan of graffiti art; not monochrome tagging, but rather the beautiful angular loops and whorls of shaded outlined color that encapsulates a human being’s identity. When a street artist takes the time to explore the space of some empty brick or concrete façade, a certain spirituality seems imprinted in the construction, and suddenly the line between our physical and divine selves seems less defined, healthily blurred, a throwback to ancient cave paintings. My tour guide informed me of an annual graffiti party, in which, in a certain district, artists from all over Montreal gather with ladders and spray cans, and decorate public spaces with their monikers. In addition to the multihued lettering we saw emerald dragons in flight, faces flowing into each other, grenade-spraycan-men threatening perpetual artistic explosion…the images flow through my mind now, too many to describe. She described to me how, as this annual ritual commenced, b-boys and -girls gathered around DJs to show off their latest breaks. Having experienced so many cities intent upon marginalizing rich counterculture, I felt a deep appreciation for any government willing to allow its people such alternatives of expression. As she led me around, drinking in rare sunshine that separated weeks of slate gray, I was amazed by the visual richness of graffiti soul imprinting, and by the pride which I felt flow from the city’s denizens as they saw me gawking in awe.

But if merely walking through downtown impressed me, my joy reached its pinnacle as my friend abruptly turned portside (to be nautical about it) and led me through a building entitled (something like) “Galleries d'Art Contemporain.” The space had clearly been newly refurbished from some previous factory or industrial building, with slapdash wood flooring that barely hid warping and that toxic stench of newly applied synthetic white paint. Piping snaked along the ceiling, and the whole building was filled with unused nooks and hidden secrets that emptied out into vast glass windows and views of downtown superstructures. Needless to say, we explored the building from bottom to top.

From hall to hall and floor to floor we walked, on that beautiful cerulean Tuesday, pausing only to venture into artist studios promising the latest in contemporary abstract symbolism. In one gallery, portraits of famous leaders included conspicuous rodents-–flying squirrels squatting on hairpieces, albino animals bearing buck teeth, tails raised and scampering across the shoulders of world leaders, encapsulating the skittish instinct of despotism. My personal favorite, of course, was one gray chipmunk smoking a Castro cigar – on Castro’s lapel! In another gallery, we perused the most recent prints from Quebec’s newest generation of print artists, some already gaining fame and touring their exhibitions throughout Europe. In still another gallery, a massive symmetric assembly of miniature picnic tables rose at least 6.5 feet off the ground, and was approximately 5-6 feet wide. It was tucked in a corner, but if one looked behind the massive obelisk of picnic tables, between this monstrosity and the wall sat one lonely picnic table with a doll of female figure, turned to the corner, her head pushed against the wall in isolation and despair.

But the gallery we explored first, and was most meaningful to me, as well as the theme of this ridiculous diatribe, was the spacious gallery of a truly exploratory artist. He had hooked common household plants up to an electromagnetic pulse emitter, which, when applied to the plant tissue, caused micrographs of plant cells to emit a sort of cosmic light in response to this energetic salutation. Plugged in to electric grids, these micrographs hung on walls reflecting the cosmos (which, coincidentally was the title of almost all the works). In the basic tissue of the plant, one could see the truth of stars.

Upwards and upwards we climbed, exploring galleries, noting offices of conservationist groups, architects and multimedia consultants, until we reached the roof. Climbing up and out, peering up again at ozone, we were amazed to see an asphalt roof, covered in thin gravel circles painted turquoise and azure and indigo. These flat Venn diagrams became a backdrop for my brief fleeting glimpse of the spirit of Montreal. Panning upwards from the gravel circles were rooftops of modern shops plastered in colorful graffiti; just a few degrees skyward in my visual field was an old chapel, its columned roof shifting into tall tan spires cut exquisitely in gargoyles and pious geometries. And then, further back, blocking the horizon, the monstrous skyscraper of KPMG, a testament to the pretend permanence of corporations, with an apex pyramid of sleek glass reflecting pale blue sky. Never before had I witnessed a city so welcoming to its many personalities, and so accepting of the natural schizophrenia that manifests when urbanity creates polarized lifestyles.

Yet the most interesting aspect to my mind was that the geographic borders of the city, sandwiched, as they were between ports and mountains, necessitated a certain density of construction even without an immense density of population. As such, though some art in Montreal is imported, the Art-with-a-capital-A of Montreal seemed birthed from the people, from a new synthesis of ancient traditions. And, in truth, though Huxley’s Palanese live in harmony, they live predominantly without art, without literature, without all the symbolic contrivances man has created to process or escape samsara. In this way, maybe, the citizens of urban areas are more fortunate, and though we pay a price for our exposure to the collective field of expression, perhaps our existence is enriched to appreciate disharmony and chaos. Perhaps a commitment to urban artistic space, even at the expense of other human needs, enables our evolution further, beyond organisms defining existence in terms of birth and death, to a single synergistic entity transcending the dictations of nature. Though Huxley is undoubtedly correct that balance is critical to our ultimate human potential, perhaps those of us in the adolescence of humanity can learn to tie our roots to our future from the adaptive spatial vision of cities like Montreal.