I have become train; train has become me

May 19, 2025

Since I already used up valuable real estate explaining this newsletter, I wanted to make a short post about my night yesterday evening.

The house I am staying in is right beside the train line: I am not sure if this is some kind of genius idea on behalf of the organizers, or accidental happenstance. I have yet to thank or notify my hosts for this act of… inspiration or subterfuge.

I lean towards the former.

Last night, I entered into some strange fugue state, oppressed by the perpetually passing locomotives and their cargo, yet at the same time I figured this is perfect, I have become completely embodied into this project. Not quite train, not quite human, an amalgam of each. I thought of J.G. Ballard and his novel Crash (without the sexual obsession) or, better yet, maybe even Concrete Island : I am the architect, stranded in my (metaphorical) Jaguar amidst the entropy of modern infrastructure, a lost casualty of engineered wilderness. I am becoming infrastructural form, just like Ballard’s protagonist increasingly becomes the landscape itself.

Lying in bed, another train wizzes past, sparks flying from its brakes. I learn to anticipate its arrival, a faint whisper of steel-on-steel that spirals its sound from the distant horizon to crashing through the windows of my room. I leap out of bed; determined to make a video of these trains that have started to (already, I’ve only been here a mere matter of hours) shape my perception.

But enough of Ballard.

I try to sleep, only to awaken, again, to the hard logic of the railway that governs my thoughts, dreams, and actions. Another leap out of bed, another missed video.