You Go to My Head (2017)
Jake (Svetozar Cvetkovic) is the architect who, having escaped from the hectic world of the city to live in the middle of the desert in Morocco, falls in love with a “vision” of woman and her architecture.
Wow! This is spectacular!
“Maybe… But you know those dunes over there are moving North 9 meters a year. They are swallowing up fertile land. Pushing out the people who use to live there. Oh that’s terrible. And it’s happening all across the Sahara.”
Can anything be done?
“Well, some people want to plant trees to stop desertification. But I have another idea. There is this scientist in California who’s being experimenting with kind of natural cement that binds the grains of sand together.”
What do you mean?
“Well, it’s not actual cement, it’s a bacteria. But when you mix it with sand it solidifies. You see if you can bind the grains of sand together you can create structures. Structures built right into the sand. Structures that people could actually live in.”
Really? Wow. So that’s what those drawings of yours are supposed to be.
“Yes, exactly. An all new kind of architecture. Something no one has done before.”
The deserted Labirinth
“The labyrinths | that time creates | vanish. | | (Only remains | the desert). | | The heart, | fountain of desire, | vanishes. | | (Only the desert | remains.). | | The illusion of dawn | and kisses | vanish. | | IOnly the desert | remains. | A rolling | desert (Federico Garcia Lorca, Poema de la Seguiriya Gitana, in Poem of the Deep Song)
“It is said by men worthy of belief (though Allah’s knowledge is greater) that in the first days there was a king of the isles of Babylonia who called together his architects and his priests and bade them build him a labyrinth so confused and so subtle that the most prudent men would not venture to enter it, and those who did would lose their way. Most unseemly was the edifice that resulted, for it is the prerogative of God, not man, to strike confusion and inspire wonder. In time there came to the court a king of Arabs, and the king of Babylonia (to muck the simplicity of his guest) bade him enter the labyrinth, where the king of Arabs wandered, humiliated and confused, until the coming of the evening, when he implored God’s aid and found the door. His lips offered no complaint, though he said to the king of Babylonia that in his land he had another labyrinth, and Allah willing, he would see that someday the king of Babylonia made its acquaintance. Then he returned to Arabia with his captains and his wardens and he wreaked such havoc upon kingdoms of Babylonia, and with such great blessing by fortune, that he brought low his castles, crushed his people, and took the king of Babylonia himself captive. He tied him atop a swift-footed camel and led him into the desert. Three days they rode, and then he said to him, “O king of time and substance and cipher of the century! In Babylonia didst thou attempt to make me lose my way in a labyrinth of brass with many stairways, doors, and walls; now the Powerful One has seen fit to allow me to show thee mine, which has no stairways to climb, nor walls to impede thy passage.” (Jorge Luis Borges, The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths, in Collected Fictios)
