A Simple Request.

[dcseain]

A city of marble.

Above is your theme: A city of marble. What i ask you to do with this theme is tell me your choice(s) of:

• a tale about a city of marble.
• your concepts of a city of marble.
• what the phrase a city of marble makes you think and/or feel.
• how a city of marble appears in your head, now that the concept is there.
• who inhabits a city of marble? How are they? What do they do?
• Anything else that pleases you on that theme/leitmotif.

You have your charge. Please to respond. Anonymous is ok, but i'd really like to know who sent what. Email me if you'd rather not have your ID known; i'll post your submission as a comment, unless you did so anonymously already. Only anonymous posts will be screened, so again, email if you want privacy.

I thank you each in advance. This is half of a theme that i've been working with for years, and finally feel ready to move on with. I have very specific concepts, and for that matter, a very specific city, in mind, but i want to see what the world at large has to say on the theme before i move forward more. A sequel to this post may be coming soon. Thank you.

/pòitrè/

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

This is probably more flippant than useful, but my first thought was white marble. My second thought was, why be boring? There are all sorts of colors for marble--use them! Unfortunately, I don't know enough about marble to really design something, but let's assume a wide range and good taste. Rich people do painted ladies (Victorian exteriors with three or more colors) in marble.

The city has people who really like marble. They keep most of their old buildings, but when they get steel girder tech, the buildings are covered with marble.

The streets are marble, but they have really good shoe padding tech so their feet don't hurt.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Have you ever tried to walk on wet marble? It's slippery as all git out. They must go barefoot, as that's, thus far, the only substance i've come across that don't slip on wet marble. Thank you for your input. If anything else comes to mind, please post again. :)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

OK, they don't have marble streets, they use slate or brick or something else sensible, but they're so fond of clever stonework that they use color and pattern well.

And they have lots of marble sculpture, too--representational, decorative (I think the Celts could have gone nuts with marble), abstract.....

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

I've seen some marble statues that are actually rough in spots. I'm not sure how one achieves this, but perhaps that technique could be used to make the streets less slippery? If not, some other smooth stone would do.

Hrm...would marble be really good or really bad in an earthquake? My first thought was bad since everything over your head would be really heavy, but if you're talking about somehow carving whole buildings out of slabs they would be far less likely to come down than other building materials. Not sure that's really possible though...even if pieces that big can be mined (or whatever that verb is) whole, they'd still have to be moved into place.

My brain works in mysterious ways...now I'm trying to figure out what kind of plants would work in a city of marble. I vaguely remember seeing trees at Longwood Gardens that looked like stone. Hmm.

[scarlettj9.livejournal.com]

I imagined a city of monuments, like the Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington monuments. Lots of trees and greenways, much like the Mall in DC, though think Logan's Run - run down with lots of overgroth. The people would all be old and simple folk, a society on the downslide to oblivion.

I personaly love marble. Especialy the pink and green varieties. The thought of a marble house apeals to me. And if its a Victorian, all the better. It would be expensive to build, but worth the effort. :)