There’s a federation of concrete settlements, abandoned apartments spanning from Siberian outskirts to Malaysian investment failures. Clicking through the rotted Chernobyl buildings – apropos for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 release, wonder if the title was ever a nod to Tarkovsky – so the pipes are crumbling to soot, and its walls sear a tile’s white through the dust. It feels as though you could stitch together these worlds to the 2003 downtowns, don them the Rust Districts, mirage for walkways, same white pavement as fabric. Brownish puddles and broken windows to let you know you’re the only one here, onboarding to float in limbo. Walk down the subway stairs to find some blue stripes and faded tile more.
All these directors fail to understand that, if you pan over the meadow, though one could assume it’d invoke a spirit of discovery waiting, to the Last Man it is only a meadow. Some parts of film won’t be conveyed to those who don’t have some tacit knowledge from actual living. There is no stir of adventurous spirit; there is only another plot on Google Maps to mark as checked, catalogued, thrown back into the archive before the data rot solidifies its insignificance. Everything is insignificant in a world of numbers and fully named. No more yearning in a world labeled and hyperventilating about the few public squares left; you’ll hop on it because otherwise if you can’t secure a spot so everywhere else feels as though the ground will disintegrate into the sun, suspending one. Waiting to derezz.
But these negative spaces hide something much to be desired. After having so much repackaged novelty one cannot help but crave the opposite: the abandoned and forgotten. It is in these 2003 asphalt plains – mimicked in some videogames, Sims City or Sonic DX, Ico’s fused meadows – that maybe, maybe the herd needs to dearly remember. Or find some resolve: with enough negative space so one’s own world fills in the rest. Whatever comes next can be unbearable. So hollowed and resuscitating from the collective amnesia, but at least true to form.
Whether you choose the 2003 asphalt or the 1980 Hong Kong tech markets fanning through the heat and haze, or a regal march through the Holy Districts to pray – so whatever it is, even if each world sincerely dissolves and swallows you with it (you can almost hear the “stuck in the past” eyerolling amongst the indifferent) so at least it wasn’t the modern cliff most march toward.
The abandoned and the forgotten, outdated or resolutely worthless: it is in these plains one at least asserts their sovereignty. I may visit the hobbit shops, become the gremlin shaman: I very much would like to run by a newly fashioned island coast amidst the fallout, asphalt floating in the water, mana rising. Church upon the hill, shine a light even if there’s a cloister of maggots between the pages. Let’s rewire mp3 players because at least then you didn’t have to uncomfortably know that every second your device is Connected, you are Uploaded, you will Access, and you’ll Chain, chain, chain into the hivemind. I will roam the arcade while the dodging the expanding holes of indigo void, electric flames squirming; I will at least be free in this destruction.
For while one roams the Holy Districts, fiddles with 80x31 LED blue screens or drags their hands along the cement walls – so these worlds-of-stasis come alive, you the single spec of consciousness breathing it in. Spiritual tendons to expand until the sovereignty latches and restarts the clock, steering it in completely uncharted territory. Smelt something new, or magic to discover, synthesize something from the world’s immediate base form: true escape from the 25-75 death march in a mental Noah’s Ark.
Looking over my asphalt havens I wonder if one persists we’d live in such a spotless world to sprout from it, where the white blindings polish everything to a shine and I’m shuttled from the 1000th cement floor to the 83rd floating park, grass saturated. To not be stuck in the past, but instead rewire the whole timeline, kickstart the engine again and perhaps seek a New Beginning far far away from the electrically-delivered lobotomies.
Pave new roads through a nurture of our historical tree tapestry, rife with prior wilted possibilities. Retracing one’s steps in a hope to find the promising path, so is the power of these abandoned and forgotten worlds.
I refuse to be mentally caged while the 2003 asphalt plains wait. Right outside, actually.