Utopian Trace

In the late 19th and early 20th century Peter Lamborn Wilson hosted The Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade on WBAI-FM in NYC, where he would read his essays as "Radio Sermonettes." One of these, “Utopian Trails in Central Park,” was thought lost until the publisher of Logosophia found some tapes he had made of Wilson’s shows. Utopian Trace contains this essay, with Wilson’s on air running commentary (in a green font), extensive updated notes (in maroon font), and dozens of period and contemporary illustrations.

Taking as his springboard a lengthy letter Frederick Law Olmsted wrote to a friend in 1852 (quoted in full), detailing his visit to the North American Phalanx in New Jersey, a community founded on the aesthetic and utopian principles of Charles Fourier, Wilson imagines what Walter Benjamin’s essay “Central Park” would have been if it had been about NYC’s Central Park.

“Actually, Central Park would have provided a perfect subject for Walter Benjamin, as a setting for his hero, the flâneur, or “aimless stroller,” as an emblem of the emergence of commodity culture, as an echo or embedding of utopian dreams. Walter Benjamin loved Charles Fourier, both for his utopian socialism and his proto-surrealist panache. Did Benjamin know that Frederick Law Olmsted, the chief architect of Central Park, had been influenced by the wave of Fourierism that swept America in the 1840’s and 50’s? Had he guessed that Central Park was meant as an embodiment of this enthusiasm?”

Peter Lamborn Wilson weaves aesthetics, history and philosophy into a panegyric illuminating the numinous heartbeat of the miracle that is Central Park, and the people who made it possible for us to walk this paradise on terra firma.