t/and the day has come when there's only  

       work left/T

Dear Gene,

I have an idea for a multimedia project (maybe a “film”) about the experience of “city.” At this point, the best description I can offer is in naming what I envision being one of the project’s component parts: you and I in correspondence.

This correspondence would be rooted in:

1. •readings of Lewis Mumford’s The City in History; although, your recent desire to revisit Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America would, I think, be equally fitting and could be done simultaneously. The purpose  of using Mumford’s book has its origin in that I once asked you what book I should read to better understand “cities” and you suggested The City in History. And as you’ve recently questioned me about any memory I have of de Tocqueville’s work, that strikes me as enough reason to go with it as well. Documents of this correspondence could include (but would not be limited to): lists of questions, emails, letters, postcards, newspaper clippings, photocopies from texts with notations, telephone conversations...
   

2. •any materials you and I can gather or generate about the spaces where we currently live. These materials might include: writings, photographs, videos, audio recordings, any textual material that might provide insight into “city.”
   

To further initiate this project I have included with this letter a DVD with some images/sound that might be representative of my vision at this point. I have also included a photocopy of the first chapter of The City in History and a photocopy of the opening pages of Democracy in America, each with some notes. Actually, I think one could get a good. general sense of this project by envisioning that instead of a script, this would be a film textually guided by photocopied pages and notes jotted in margins.