The Magicians House.

 So we had our design module kicked off with an interesting assignment. We were introduced to visualization and representation of spaces by writing an essay about a distinct childhood memory which had a strong connection with a particular space. We were asked to be as descriptive and narrative as possible, so as  to enable a reader to visualize and feel what we had once felt. After this we were asked to make 4 drawings based on our essays to evoke the space on paper. 

Here's the essay I wrote along with some drawings I made. 

The house predated the oldest inhabitant of the society. It predated our little world. As one approached the house, hidden behind the tall apartment buildings, one would associate its image to a picturesque gable roof house. Similar to the incarnation of the Addams Family Mansion. The heavy layers of trees around it and the shade of the buildings engulfed the space in a prolonged winter evening. Dark, chilly and old. It may be my evolved imagination and obvious associations that have made the space and its surroundings so terrifying and mysterious, but that is how I remember the house now. The parents told us that the house was off limits, it was forbidden.

Every one of us kids was terrified of going towards the house, sitting in its blue and black glory. It was often the subject of dares, if someone lost a game of hide and seek, they were subjected to the torture of walking alone towards the house. Often, on the weekends we would all take a group venture to explore it. The scene would quickly shift from our vision enclosed within the cement and plaster coated apartment buildings to a green landscape which looked dark because of inhabiting a corner of the society. A narrow pathway, often moist with the water leaking from the pipelines led us to the entrance of the house. Wooden railings, staircases, broken and worn out windows were what made the façade.

The sight was truly chilling, you could smell the age of the structure in the air. As we climbed up the stairs to the porch of the house, goose bumps would decorate my skin and I’d quickly clutch on my sisters arms. The most vivid part of the house was a stone cold marble statue of a dog. It was completely black, something about its stature and eyes was so fleeting and distant, but they looked right at you. Its presence at the entrance was slightly intimidating. It would make your feet tremble just a little and make your question why you’re still deciding to enter.

None of us ever had the bravery to explore the entire house. Only once did we ever make it to the top floor. The hall was smaller in scale compared to the entirety of the house. As a place that was once inhabited by people, it was almost cozy. But the comfortable ambience was merely its history, for now it was only dust and shattered glass cladding the floor. There was a sofa, with its foam exposed placed in a niche next to a spiral staircase on the right. The echoes of its history were present in all its components, the elements that made the house and everything within it. Like I said, entering the house itself was a taboo and having done that was more than enough for us little explorers.

I remember touching the walls, the dust and moisture would stick to my skin and Id cringe every single time. I think the floor was reduced to such damage that the only thing which it identified to be was the glistening shattered glass which lined the edges, along the windows and some around the hall. Very little light made it through the room, but it reflected on the corners of the glass and calmed my nerves when the rest of the kids made scary noises and howls to scare everyone. This was a house, a space that wasn’t defined by the way the lights danced around but instead, defined by the way the shadows remained still, quiet. Even now, I associate a place indifferent to time as the haunted house. Things, feelings, anxiety, laughter and footsteps all seemed to slow down in here.  Time became engulfed inside the forbidden house.

The lack of openings in the space within, made it trapping in its nature. It wasn’t just straightforward fear that often stopped us from going upstairs but also the prospect that going further inside, would lead to all of us being trapped inside forever. The glass may have been broken, but the windows only let you see the rows of trees and the unaccounted for shrubbery. There was a disconnection from the brighter world outside from this corner which caused the isolation.  

In all of this, what was important was even though the house may have had the image of being terrifying, it was welcoming. Observation and interaction with the house created allure and attraction, which would further set in the thrill as we entered the hall space. The emptiness of the room, made one linger for a long while before the fear set back in precisely when your sight and attention would move to the staircase. A lone member standing tall in the corner of the room, spiralling and convoluting in itself.  The closeness of the curves caused a very dense space to climb through, that mixed with the terror of the mysteries waiting for us on the first floor consumed one completely.

Another aspect of the memory was the way the air within the house made us completely self-aware and alert. A lack of furniture and other components left very little obstruction for the frequently passing wind which moved the thick cold air inside gently. This wind would thus enter the hall, creaking the windows and touching us, the kids, the only obstruction in its pathway. A heightened sensation of the wind would affect our skin and the back of our necks, making one stop in their place instantly.

The absence of even a single insect proved how inhabitable the space was for living things, but it was containable for the inanimate objects and the kids who stood there. In a sense the kids too had become inanimate in this space, they had no will of their own, and we were all in a trance. It decided how much we could see, hear, feel and where we could go. Our minds, actions, feelings were controlled and taken over by the house.

With all of its incomplete and mysterious elements, we got curious about who may have inhabited this space and what would have caused it to become estranged and abandoned. Too paranoid to go inside or around it too often, the fear of getting caught kept at us at the fringes of the house, close to our apartment buildings. We’d stand at a distance and spin stories about the once majestic house of grandeur that was reduced to ruins and cobwebs. The most common story that emerged out in our fantasy struck minds was that, there was an old magician who lived with his beloved dog. He was once attacked by a power hungry evil magician and their duel went on for days, damaging the house beyond repair. In the end the antagonist cast a spell on the dog and turned it into a black statue. We’d scare the other kids saying that the dog’s spirit howls in the night and his eyes glisten with tears.

These stories became our assumed history and association with the space. The wonder, thrill and fantasy is what kept taking us back there even if we’d seen enough. Even after the space fades away or gets old, it still exists and manifests itself, continues to unfold in the narratives that each of us carry with us till date. A space may not exist in its physicality forever, but once it takes a place in one’s mind, it can never truly tarnish or cease to exist. These spaces, which remain in our mind are what map a lot of our memories, associations, behavior and decisions later. The labyrinth of the magician’s house and my experience with fear, thrill, smell of dust and fantasies cannot be separated from one another.