Thank you for arranging for the pdf to be forwarded. It is a redoubtable piece of research which makes sense of the proposal, and expresses a measured response. It no longer appears arbitrary. And the sense of the trite definition of parabolic interference is not lost. It may prove useful for the hordes who will visit the garden.

Pondering your piece on Cedric at greater length, the encounter reminds me of the Passagen by Walter Benjamin. Indeed this extraordinary work could be taken as a starting point for any planting scheme, ‘World exhibitions are places or pilgrimage to the commodity of fetish…’ Or ‘It is not what is past that casts it light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. In other words, image is dialectics at a standstill.’ It seems clear he was unable to still his mind enough to make sense of the endeavour, and yet, and yet. There were storm clouds looming. Gawd knows how to pick one’s way through this massive text. To quote from the current Foreword, ‘Did (Benjamin) leave behind anything more than a large scale plan or prospectus? No…The Arcades Project is just that: the blueprint for an unimaginably massive and labyrinthine architecture…’ The play’s the thing. Would Cedric Price have approved?

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