Driven to distraction: the gravitational draw of the urban | Thinkpiece | Architectural Review
▻https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/driven-to-distraction-the-gravitational-draw-of-the-urban/10030702.article
Will Self recalls the search for urban excitement after the suburban tedium of childhood
My poor mother: at several and different times in her life she suffered from phobias that either made her feel hopelessly confined, or horrifically exposed. I was close to her as she stood – metaphorically speaking – havering on the doorstep, poised between agoraphobia and claustrophobia. And I’ve remained close to her, in this respect at least – even though she died 30 years ago. My intense relationship with her has been mediated, in part, by the novel I wrote, How the Dead Live (2000), in which a fictional character, based on her, experiences a prosaic Western death from cancer, only to find herself in a late capitalist version of the Tibetan Buddhist bardo; the between-lives state wherein the disincorporated ego experiences its own disintegration into component, appetitive parts. Intense, eh.
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