The Art of Being in Several Places at Once
An essay on the relationship between place and identity
Can your body occupy two, three, or even four places simultaneously? We’d probably say that to suggest such a thing would be outrageous—absurd. We know, as a matter of scientific fact, that our bodies cannot occupy more than a single place at one time. But what if the opposite were true? What if there was virtually no instance in which you or me or anyone were ever in a single place?
As a thought experiment, let’s assume that at any moment, we are physically occupying several places simultaneously. Even right now—as you read this—wherever you are—consider the idea that you are in several places. And consider that this is something inescapable.
Our frame of reference will be the places in which we’ve been our entire lives and the places in which we continue to be. For instance, I’m writing this essay in my library. If I asked you, where would you say that I am? What place am I in? Is it my library? Of course. But I’m also in my home. Which one is it? Am I in one or both of them? If you were in New York and I told you I was in Los Angeles—as I am currently—would I be speaking the truth? If so, then am I not in my home and my library and Los Angeles? Each of those places is distinct and separate, yet here I am, physically in all of them. To say I’m in one place would be to utter a profound falsehood.
The problem—it seems—is in the specifics of our language. It would be much more precise to say that our bodies cannot occupy two locations in space at one time, which is a scientifically and philosophically undeniable statement. However, as we have just established, to be at a single point in space does not automatically suggest singular placehood. So, yes, we cannot occupy two points in space, but a single point in space can reside in more than one place. This is because space and place are two entirely different things.
Place as event
Some time ago, I met a colleague at Blue Bottle Coffee on the corner of Broadway and West 3rd Street inside the Bradbury Building. The scene was what you might expect from the coupling of the words “coffee shop” and “Los Angeles”: People on laptops with headphones, duos—like myself and my colleague—discussing creative projects and life’s purpose, contemporary interior design, exposed brick, the bespoke coffee-making process on display, tasty concoctions of creams and caffeine.
No one would deny that the Blue Bottle at the Bradbury is a bona fide place. It’s a coffee shop. But what precisely makes it a coffee shop? Is it the chairs, the menu, the ordering counter, the presence of coffee and cups to serve it in? It can’t be. Many places that are not coffee shops have all those things. The physical objects, even the way the Blue Bottle is designed, can’t be the factors that make it the place it is. Apart from the minds and behaviors of the people who know the societal and cultural meaning of what a coffee shop should be, there is no way to justify the ground level of the Bradbury being a place to gather and drink coffee.
What makes a coffee shop a coffee shop are the things that happen in it. At any moment, keeping most (or all) of its physical characteristics, that Blue Bottle could transform into a deli or a shoe store, or even something radically different, like a chiropractor’s office. We can easily imagine a cafe-themed chiropractor where patients are served espresso, and the waiting room is identical to the Blue Bottle location. Chiropractic tables could occupy part of the storefront area, and the back of house might be one of the few places you can substitute existing equipment with x-ray machines and muscle stimulators. Instead of “Blue Bottle Coffee” the sign out front could say “Blue Bottle Chiropractors.” The physical features would be identical, but the place entirely different.
Places are shaped by thought and action. The objects and artifacts within a place mean what they mean because of the happenings surrounding them and how they are used in interpersonal human activity. When we view places as passive containers, as we often do, we miss their vitality as active participants in the narratives of our lives. Though places exist in physical space, they are not physical. The built environment exists as a result of place, not the other way around.
In his book Getting Back Into Place, the philosopher Edward Casey writes, "Rather than things defining places—as occurs on any strict container model, since the container has to take its cue from the contained—places empower things from (and as) their boundaries." He goes further to categorize places not as things but as events, writing, “a place is more an event than a thing to be assimilated to known categories. As an event, it is unique, idiolocal.” The notion of place as event suggests a dynamic and unfolding character to what we traditionally conceive as static and inert locations. Instead of a fixed point in space, understanding place as event emphasizes its grounding in temporal happenings that shape its character and significance. It is less a set of physical coordinates and more a locus of human experience—a unique, unfolding occurrence imbued with identity, history, and emotional texture.
Therefore, it seems reasonable to accept that there is no place, nowhere, no matter how typologically specific its physical appearance might be, that is the place that it is chiefly because of those physical characteristics. A place is what it is because of what happens in and around it. To be in several places at once then has little to do with bodily limitation and everything to do with the personal and interpersonal dimension of human existence.
We might even say that everything that we are—from the uncertainties of our childhood to our ambitions as young learners to how we cultivate our being with our families and friends—is caught up in place. There is no thought related to our active existence in the world that can be conceived apart from place. Casey puts it succinctly when he says, “to be is to be in place.” If we accept that our being is tied to place, then the question of where we are becomes a deeper question of who we are, and if we are almost always in several places simultaneously, then what does that say of the different layers of our identities?
Where you are reflects who you are
In the epilogue of his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison expresses a sentiment about the interconnectedness of place and identity. The narrator sees a character from the beginning of the novel lost at a train station. He sees the man, but the man doesn’t see him. The narrator muses on the lost man’s predicament: “Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are. That must be it…to lose your direction is to lose your face.”
Several years after I first read Invisible Man, a mentor recommended Edward Casey’s book, Getting Back Into Place. In the book, there is a section in the preface where Casey writes: “...where we are—the place we occupy, however briefly—has everything to do with what and who we are (and finally, that we are.). This is so at the present moment: where you are right now is not a matter of indifference but affects the kind of person you are, what you have been doing in the past, even what you will be doing in the future."
Casey’s expanded detail prompted me to consider the relationship between place and identity beyond my superficial attraction to Ellison’s prose. Specifically, Casey’s assertion that the places we occupy have to do with our past, present, and future selves suggested I had to rethink my initial assumptions about place as a secondary backdrop of reality.
My time in architecture school, for example, in studio specifically, comes to mind. I was there because I was a student. At least to some degree, I had completed the prerequisites required to be in that studio. And being there represented who I was indeed becoming, which was an architect. As Casey suggests, the place I occupied had everything to do with who I was, who I had been, and who I would be in the future.
Take even where we live. It's not by chance. Even if we were newborn babies, where we live is not random but a complete indication of who we were in those early days. As adults, our residence might speak to who we are in terms of our relationships, our work, or our ambitions, perhaps even be an indication of something that we want to avoid. Whatever it is, where we are is not a matter of indifference. Far from being solely an internal or psychological matter, our identity is manifested, at every moment, in the place we occupy, "however briefly."
Being in several places at once
There are many places that we can go from here (no pun intended). That’s as far as I’ve gotten in the thought experiment. On an exploratory level, considering this might push us to expand our thinking about place. We might question ideas of places as singular, static locations and instead understand them as complex, overlapping realms deeply intertwined with our multifaceted identities. Perhaps we can even use this lens to challenge ourselves to live fully within each moment, to appreciate the variegated experiences places offer, and to recognize the extraordinary diversity of our being.