{"id":67,"date":"2021-07-06T13:45:23","date_gmt":"2021-07-06T13:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.narrativeinfrastructure.org\/blog\/?p=67"},"modified":"2024-11-11T08:53:09","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T08:53:09","slug":"cities-are-like-magic-carpets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.narrativeinfrastructure.org\/blog\/cities-are-like-magic-carpets\/","title":{"rendered":"Cities are like magic carpets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Once there was and twice there wasn’t…<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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they take you places full of meaning<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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As I sat upon his magic carpet, I reflected wise fools seek truth while shrewd artisans sift for meaning. King Solomon was so focused on building his temple that he discarded this carpet\u2014a gift from the Queen of Sheba honoring his wisdom. Give the king his due: truth endures, while the transitory is toil.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019d rather fly than walk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If we do not tell its stories, the city unravels.<\/h1>\n

They are only as strong as the warp and weft that holds the beautiful knot-work. <\/p>\n

The city is the context<\/em> \u2013from the Latin \u201cwith textile<\/em>\u201d\u2013for a vast number of simultaneous stories (Childs, 2008; Rogers, 2013; Filep, Thompson-Fawcett, & Rae, 2014; Bakshi, 2014.) The threads that make up that textile are themselves the threads of previous stories that form the warp and weft of the narrative infrastructure. Media ties into this infrastructure and expresses new stories much as the knots of a rug display a pattern. Most media studies focus on the macro pattern expressed by the knotting, but offer only token reference to the underlying structure.<\/p>\n

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This is an example of a worn rug that has lost its knot-work and exposed the weft in one location, and the underlying structure destroyed in another area. If the city could be lifted up by the narrative infrastructure\u2014as artistically suggested below\u2014presumably abandoned urban space would be left behind. <\/span><\/p>\n

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