so i am also the first to cry, "the sky is falling!" did i mention that?

tonight, on the way to the lease office, God offered respite and hope. seriously, as we were headed out the door to go negotiate a new lease on our present home, the guy with THE HOUSE called and said, i can't guarantee it yet, but the others haven't called. so he has decided that if he doesn't not hear from them by 'bedtime' he is recinding their offer and offering the place to us. WOOT!

if it isn't apparent to those of you that know me, i am given to letting myself get excited about possibilities. my wife takes a different route and doesn't let herself experience excitement until there are realities. we both have our reasons for our approach, but i am beginning to think i need to adopt her's. all too frequently we approach something that looks like it is going to happen. i allow myself to relax, celebrate, congratulate, what-ever-ate... and then the possible falls through.

i guess the theory is that she never feels disappointment, whereas i do all the time. i don't consider myself an optimist, but when viewed like this i apparently am.

so this morning i got up thinking i was going to have a great day. for the last six weeks or more i have been wrestling with finding a home. (and before you ask, no we are not buying) during the hunt i have had a constant sense of anxiety and indigestion. but saturday we found THE HOUSE. finally i let all the anxiety fade and i filled out apps under the assurance that as long as we weren't felons the place was ours. i slept good last night. i fantasized about a space in the garage for a potters wheel.

then today the harsh light of reality caught up. due to a snag the guy renting the space is obligated to rent the space to another applicant. growl. i hate this.

National memory. National amnesia. When Pierre Nora and Paul Connerton begin to define the mechanisms of creating a nation, specifically the creation of a national memory, they both suggest that the creation of a national memory is obtained through the act of forced forgetfulness. To form an identity of self, the nation must first define itself by making an effort to rid itself of that which it is not. By first defining that which we are not, and then expelling or reshaping the elements that are within this area of not, a nation is able to give itself boundaries and citizenship by way of exclusion. In forgetting that which it does not want to be or that which it was before becoming a nation is giving its citizens a sense of belonging to a group, an ownership of sorts.

This idea of the collective amnesia is one of the most disturbing concepts I think man actually lets himself verbalize. The history and memory we keep are mechanisms that teach us lessons from out mistakes and keep us from returning to them. They also give us a point from which to measure our growth and progress as a nation and society. When you purposely set out to forget it is not just about making a new thing it is about destroying the old. Connerton references this exact thing when he talks about the trial and execution of Luis XVI. I understand the power of the act, as Connerton outlines it. The casting off of the old regime and the disassembling of it so that it can never again rise up, but what makes this moment of forgetting so scary to me is the ability for history to become contrived.

In an effort to keep out lives growing and progressing it is occasionally necessary to look back and see where it was that we started (true in both an individual sense and in a national sense). If we have given in to the thought of a constructed memory, we see only the construct, and not the path we walked. In fact this construct is the true sense of my foreboding. The construct begins to define us or dictate our future movement. If the construct is true, there is hope to learn from it and move beyond where we are (in effect evolving). Conversely though it seems that if the construct of our history or our memory is made up, I have to ask who is making it up. The very concept of a national memory or a forced forgetting smacks of Orwellian dystopic nightmares.

As George Orwell stated in his book 1984, people use history to gauge their present state and to decide where to move as they head into the future. The voice that dictates the past (read: memory and history) of the nation, controls the future of that very nation. Being a cynic I don’t think that humans are very able to deal with that much power, which they can lord over their fellow man, and are more likely in situations of power to resort to malignant ways rather than altruistic means.

When reading over this precedent paranoia I find that this is my gut reaction to the idea of forgetting. I can read the essays from class and understand very clearly what the authors sees as the means of national memory. I can understand the way that both authors contrast homogenous models of national memory with more diverse models. Looking at historical example I can very easily agree that sometimes it is easiest to just put an event or a time-period out of mind, or to rewrite it in our memory to have a more positive spin. I think that it is natural to want to avoid guilt (as in the case of Germany after World War II) or to want to diffuse the power of the past by physically altering something that held power (as with the Confederate States of America and ongoing argument over “the stars and bars”). Though even in this understanding of the human condition in its place in History and use of Memory, I find the idea of rewriting history or memory abominable.

Evolution or god or nature or something has given us the ability to remember. This tool in most cases is not just to keep a chronological order of events. Memory (and history) helps us create insight and connection through time and space between events. We are able to associate and build the past as a foundation.

I know that this is rambling and not focusing on the task of understanding national memory. I cannot find in national memory a subject that is easy to examine. I get hung up on the implied secondary issues. Beyond my obsession with collective amnesia I do see that national memory and its application is very much a part of one of the conversations raised a few weeks ago in class. We talked a little about memorials. Specifically raised were questions about whether memorials work. At the time I think were still heavily referencing Calvino and his Marco Polo character. The discussion led to what a memorial means and what it does. The discussion rounded to the idea that a memorial framed an event and lessened it, by limiting the scope that the memory behind the memorial. This led to a discussion of memorials in modern day America.

This is a problem that sits on us even now. In New York they are arguing and hosting never ending panel discussion after panel discussion to decide what if anything the memorial of the World Trade Center should be. (I promised myself that I would talk about September 11^th). This contrasts with the seemingly very authoritarian stance of the founding fathers of this nation, or of any other. Our founders simply sat down with a vision and drew up a master plan for events or places that they felt would begin to define our country. The same sentiment can be seen in the formation of the Italian states into Italy, as we know it. The voice of authority or totalitarian control is able to decide on monument and memorial very easily. It seems though when you introduce a population of diversity and alternative views, the focused movement towards a single statement of who and what we are becomes nigh on impossible.

Memorable. What is the formula that causes a barn in Nebraska to spring to mind when thinking about architecture rather than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome? It’s the mood. It’s the spirit. It’s the “feeling.” When asked these are the answers my friends and neighbors offered up.

I have to question though what is it that really creates these nebulous and emotive answers.

Is the memorable quality of a place in the intimacy of details and nostalgia that Peter Zumthor finds in his grandmother’s kitchen? Or is the memorable nature of buildings found in their monumentality and timelessness, as the work of the ancient Greeks was to Le Corbusier? Are we looking at the big idea and the form? Or is god in the details?

Unfortunately for the sake of grammar and propriety, I am going to talk about my personal thoughts and memories, as they pertain to the memorable. When Elani talked to the class about this assignment and suggested several routes to work from (slideshow, personal work, etc…) my immediate reaction and idea was to dig through my morgue and portfolios. I thought that in the depth of my collections I could find bits and images and ideas that would begin to show where the memorable originates. Piles and boxes and filing cabinets later, I talked to my girlfriend as we sat watching our daughter.

To the point, I asked what made the memorable… well memorable? She looked up from watching out daughter rolling in the grass and gave me a funny look. “Isn’t it the poignancy of a moment that makes it memorable?” she suggested. After a few minutes of this question-for-question route I gave up and sat back to watch my daughter as she tried to catch a butterfly.

The overwhelming mass of paper, models and photos from my morgue had failed me; my girlfriend could do no more than keep me in a stalemate; Saturday was passing slowly with a lazy nature that would soon leave me without an answer and rush into a new week. And than my daughter showed me that for which I was looking. She didn’t offer up a dialogue. She is not that amazing of a two year old (though she is close). Rather, she made a moment memorable. And in that moment, she showed me the how of something (or someplace) becoming memorable. The simplicity of her play and joy also showed me why it is not usually the things that are supposed to be great that are memorable, but more often the memorable is things that are academically forgettable.

My daughter showed me all this in her playtime in my backyard. I was sitting there watching the afternoon slip away into the adolescence of early evening and I had become completely taken into Nate and her play. I started thinking of why this moment was so “memorable,” as nothing else was sinking in to me in a way that answered the question. There was a milieu of things that came together in the moment. The most remarkable of it was the personal engagement in the moment. Another portion was the intimate setting of the experience. The tactile and aural elements that I play over and over in my mind when thinking back upon the moment. It becomes clear that memorable to me has much to do with sensual input (ever so much more than just seeing it).

My response to this beginning and vague definition of memorable was to think whether or not I could apply the same points I was struggling to denote to spaces and/or the built, rather than just to the afternoon. The questions now are what places do I find memorable, and then once I have a place why? This “why” is when I will compare my ideas of what is memorable with what is decided to be memorable.

The defining places of memory for me are the villa I lived in, in Florence, Italy, the loft in my best friend’s house, and the house I live in presently. Kind of strange “defining works,” but as I have found the memorable and the monumental do not go often hand-in-hand. Due to its scale I find the monumental almost too imposing to create memories, the space becomes easy to remember thru repetition of exposure, but there is not true sense of memorable.

Taking the three spaces that I find memorable from my own life I can see that the memorable nature of a place can easily be related to the memorable nature of a moment. The moment is only for the moment, but the built stand unchanging for time.

Saturday I found myself engaged in an intimate setting with multi-sense input showing the moment to me. Similarly I find that space that will be memorable is engaging and sized to comfort. Paired with the scale of the environment I generally find that memorable spaces are flooded with sensory information. In Florence the sensual memory is tied up in the smells from the kitchen and the countryside. Christopher’s loft resonates with the odor of teenage boys and fresh baked cookies; the carpet’s abrasive rub on our feet and legs; the sounds of music flowing out and over us and the meow of one of his cats. My present house is memorable due to its hardwood floors over a crawlspace. As you move about the house there is a kind of bounce to the floor and a slab of your foot on the wood. The slap creates this echoing thud that follows you or precedes you throughout the house. The texture of the floor is smooth, yet you can still feel the grain of the wood under your toes when you walk or slide your foot across the floor.

It is not actually these floors that are memorable. It is not the villa walls that make the memory of Florence. It is not the carpet or music that define Christopher’s loft. The memory of a place is not so much in its physical and definable qualities, though these do serve as reminders for what makes the space memorable. I think that the titillation of the senses is the driving force in memorializing a place.

My best example of this I would have to cite as the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles. I know this wasn’t listed among my top memorable places, but as I tried to describe them and have come to a more aware state of what makes the memorable I realized that the Bradbury was a perfect candidate to discuss memorable through.

When you stand in the atrium and bask in the sunlight that floods down, it is not the ironwork on the skylight or the railings that is memorable, it is the quality of the light. When you think of the metal work and the intricacy of it as it rises and moves through the space, I don’t think of the patterns it creates. I think of the feel of the cold iron and the undulations of it beneath my hands as I walked running my fingers over it.

Seeing a space in a photograph or in a slide doesn’t create a reality of the space. Even walking up to a building and seeing it from a distance doesn’t create a reality. The memorable qualities of the places we consider memorable are created through an interaction of the building and our senses.

House that used to be. 10512 Bellamah Avenue, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10930 Otsego Street, North Hollywood, California. 2135 Picket Place, Colorado Springs, Colorado. 7 Jamestown Drive, Searcy, Arkansas. 1606 Solway Drive, Lewisville, Texas. 11 Willow Road, Milford, Massachusetts. One more number in the file. When I think back on my wandering and of the house of my youth I find it difficult to separate one of these from another. It is not that I don’t have specific and site dependant memories of house, more it is that my mind has become placeless in its definition of house and home. As I remember entering my house it is a hardwood door and a steel fire door and rickety divider on rusty hinges that squeak and a large wrap around porch and an airlock with a hat-rack. The lock sticks. The locks aren’t in yet. The door doesn’t lock. In all these incarnations though I always remember the moment after the door opening as the same. And in a strange sense of déjà vu today when I go home and open my front door and step inside it will be the same memory made tangible again. The rush of the scents of living pushing out of the house to fill the void left in the doors movement. There is the sweet and garish smell of cooking that hangs in the house from last week. There is the mild hint of a shower and soap. The familiar lift of my mother’s candles and potpourri. The opening of a door into my house is the movement from the world that is loving, hating, indifferent, angry and proud into the comfort and reality of things familiar. There was once a living room in which no one lived, and rarely one walked. The furniture was clean and uncreased by sitting or slouching. In the corner of the room there was a painting by someone I didn’t know and of someone that I didn’t know. Over time and through movement that room is no longer there. All that live, where once there was a living room, are books. It has become a space stripped of its haughty pretension and is now a large hallway. The amusing thing to me about the transformation over time of my living room is that now that it is not a living room at all it is alive and used and made part of the day to day. The smells and sounds of life that make my house no longer die at the doorway to the living room but they now enter its space and play with the drafts of the space and live amongst the volumes that sit and watch. Even the hearth that sat so many years unused seems alight in that the living around it has become corporeal and filled so often with laughter. From this space that is no longer a room and yet is not a path I can hear kitchen noises, as food and homework are prepared. There are the hollow thunks of footfalls on the hardwood floor leading in all directions. One could almost slide down the hall from here if it weren’t for the partition. To the back of the house there is the hum of a computer or the buzz of a table saw. Hypnotic in a way that cannot be argued with. Step to the rear and we pass from one time to another and from the carpet and wood of a house built before me onto the warm and lazy ceramic tile that my father and I laid. Here on this hard warm floor many hours were spent. When it rained the skylight above the floor sounded of a snare-drum, and when the sun shown in the glass walls the room became so bright one could forget that you had a body or eyes or anything save the brightness of the light that dissolved everything and the hard warm tiles that supported you endlessly. This is the shortcut that many times caught me on my way to elsewhere. The house echoed through this room and off the tile and around the brick and glass walls. The sun room or garden space or play room of rec-room or wrecking room could possess you for hours with nothing but its tricks of light and the sound with which it filled. But as I said there was also a hum from further back. Its pull almost as sensual and far more demanding than the wiles of the sunroom. Even now it is set apart from the rest of the house. Down a hall, past a breezeway and then through a door that looks like any other in the house but you can see it has more weight even before you push on it. It has a stance that suggests an impenetrability. There is a rush or air and a crack of a seal as you put your weight into the door to move its weight. In this doorway you stand again between two worlds. Something much higher though is at stake between these two worlds. At the front door you separate your mind and your body. Here though the portal is a movement between the spiritual and the corporeal. From the house are the smell of people and the sounds of living. I can hear my daughter laughing; I can smell the alluring charms of my wife’s perfume. But through this door is the smell of sawdust and linseed oil. The clank of tools and the half-birthed forms of projects that will one day be my legacy. I can hear my girlfriend asking if I am going to be in the studio long. And I can hear my father calling to me from the shop asking my to come in and close the door so that the dust will settle.

i have been trying to move myself back to a place i was at several years ago. in the midst of my masters work i found subjects that really tore at me. and i wrote. i am a passable writer at best. and i should probably have my wife rewrite everything i put before public eyes. but in an effort to get a reaction (probably only boredom or "0 comments") i am going to publish here thoughts that i explored previously. care to comment, please do. bored to tears? i won't continue this for long. i do appreciate those that stop long enough even to read one of these essays.

sean

my wife has a deep and abiding love of ball-gowns. she, as i have mentioned previously, would love to wear ball-gowns everyday. i find this facet of her personality sweet and rate it very highly on my list of things i love about her.

due to her infatuation with gowns i probably know more than any American man should know about labels and prices and designers. and it is with a certain amount of sadness that i have to mention, the gown store that was downtown in the Pioneer Mall is no more. i walked past this morning and they are cleared out.

every morning walking in, their display windows were a reminder of my wife's endearing qualities. now i will have to find a way to appreciate my wife by looking in the windows of The Sharper Image.