Thinking About Not Thinking About Things

The living will always be dogged by the questions of life; that is an ineluctable fact of life itself. After all these questions concern the living, and questions can only be answered by the living. Yet is it in their interests to answer these questions? How should they answer?

One way of answering these questions is to think through them. Thought may be based on many things: experience, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, intuitions. If you are lucky, they are a swarm of fireflies leading you out of the night. If not, they each separate and wander in different directions, until the light is so diminished you are left stranded.

Adiós to el Capitán

The departure of Arsenal's captain and playmaker Fabregas has been a fait accompli since the start of the transfer window; the price has not. Indeed, one of the world's best midfielders has been sold for not even €40 million, a marked reduction on the asking price of £40 million, which is already a huge drop from his market value of £60 million. For comparison, even Andy Caroll cost £35 million, and Kaka was £56 million. That said, even if the club had gotten the full £40 million, an adequate replacement might not be available on the market.

What has Arsenal lost? Arguably the third best central midfielder in the world, behind Xavi and Iniesta (one wonders how Barcelona is going to line up this season), and the most effective midfielder in terms of assisting and scoring goals in the whole of Europe last season. Fabregas plays just behind the striker, allowing him to play the final ball, but also drops deep to dictate the tempo and loft long killer balls (notably for Adebayor and van Persie), or go into the box to finish off moves. Arsenal more than most clubs relies on that position to create chances, as play usually goes through the middle, and to score goals as well, since van Persie plays as a false nine. (Perhaps to bypass his absence against Newcastle, they tried to play down the wings, which failed as the quality of crosses was inconsistent, and too few players attacked the ball when it was sent in. Fluency and ball retention was also poor.) Not only has Fabregas consistently shown the vision and positioning needed to shine in that role, he has developed a good understanding with many of his teammates as well. Without him, the entertainment value of Arsenal (not spectacularly high in recent seasons, to be sure) will go down. To replace all of that will be hard. What are the options?

Concrete Thoughts

Architects must be really free, considering how much time they seem to devote to reading widely. Consider this debate (after the lecture). Perhaps it is the relic of a liberal arts education, or else built on that foundation. Possibly a soi-disant autodidactic Renaissance man could accumulate a comparable amount of knowledge, though shaped by individual preference which may prove inadequate in some areas during public discourse. Or do such intellectuals only seem unfathomably erudite because of our paucity of knowledge in those areas? After all, a study showed that participants who asked questions of their own specialty to outsiders were later appraised as being more knowledgeable by those outsiders.

On a side note, this reminds me how much I want to visit MAXXI. I'm still sceptical about parametricism as the future of architecture though; as interpreted thus far, its aesthetics are not natural nor immediate enough, at least to the untrained eye of the present public.