Reading Response # 2

For my second reading response, I chose Phillip Lopate's On the Aesthetics of Urban Walking and Writing. I enjoyed this article because of its interesting insights as well as it being more concise than other narratives on the same subject. Though Lopate centered on the location of New York and specifically Manhattan, I still found universal elements that could be applied to all cities.

Lopate discussed prominent walker-writers such as Walt Whitman and Charles Reznikoff, but intertwined his own experiences. He made a brilliant point early in the article where he stated that we must remember to keep our vanity and self-absorption in check in order to let the landscape act independently. Many people feel as though they are laying claim to the city they're traversing instead of letting the city give them feelings of vulnerability and fear. Lopate also talks about the eroticism of acting in a group: being a voyeur, yet remaining involved. For Lopate, his love and desire for walking seemed to be replaced when he was married. This, to me, seems terribly depressing for such an advocate of the walking/writing community.

Almost all of my walking and recording was done alone and in settings almost completely void of other people. Reading Lopate's article made me long to walk among a crowd and capture things that I can't possibly get in my current settings. I plan on doing some more shorter walks in intensely urban settings to achieve a more rounded backlog of work. I also love the idea of forgetting yourself and thinking strictly about the landscape, because I think that's a very difficult thing to do. I recognize the fact that I need to do more of that.