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Maintaining memory

7 comments on Maintaining memory

Maintaining memory

oldmemorial.jpg: In my review of the World Trade Center memorial finalists yesterday, I raised an issue I don’t think we’ve faced much in this realm before: The need to keep a memorial fueled.

James Lileks raises the same issue today and says:

As much as I like some of the designs, especially the Garden of Light, they seem too high-maintenance. You can already imagine the sign on the door: The Garden of Light is closed today for repairs. Statues tell the story when the power goes off; statues don

7 responses to “Maintaining memory”

  1. Barney Lerten Avatar
    Barney Lerten

    That’s the trick on this spectrum — to remember, but not to overly dwell … to inspire something other than fear and more intense sadness… not an easy note to hit, and surely not one where everyone will hear the same note the same way.
    Hmmm… makes me think of music, and that maybe a special symphony would be a more fitting memorial. Or another one, at least.

  2. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    I really liked your proposal. I don’t think I could ever have sat through and watched it though. A friend of mine, over many beers, said he would have proposed 3000 sets of footprints in the sidewalk around the entire site with statues of men and women holding either a briefcase and or coffee variously placed to remind everyone that we walk amongst the dead and they walk with us lest we ever forget. Had he not said it 3 weeks ago I may have prodded him into submitting it. This from a man who is not sentimental in the least. On the other hand, I really like the idea of a tribute to their lives and not their deaths. I didn’t really like any of the 8 finalists.

  3. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    I’m going to copy this from my comments in a post down below because it’s more apropos to this one (I’ll add something new, too, I promise):
    Let’s remember that it was only a few years ago that there was some threat to remove Grant’s Tomb from New York because it was so neglected. (It’s certainly ignored up there in Columbia Peacenikville; I took some locals there once when I was visiting, and they looked at me funny the whole time, like what kind of sicko wants to honor a general?) Or consider the poor Hall of Fame– THE original Hall of Fame, not the Bowlers’ or Burger-Flippers’ Hall of Fame, established in the late 19th century to honor dead white males of eternal fame (like Matthew Maury and Rufus Choate), which now sits rather forlornly and unvisited on the campus of Bronx Community College. (See http://www.bcc.cuny.edu/HallofFame/HallofFame.htm)
    One more (new) comment: actually, the whole idea of how you make something that lasts millennia is quite interesting, and something the human race has both striking experience and lack of success with (many of the things we think of as impossibly old, like the Taj Mahal or the Last Supper, are in fact on the verge of being lost at a fraction of the age of other things like the pyramids). The scifi writer Gregory Benford wrote a really interesting little book on this problem called Deep Time, coming out of his work with the commission that was trying to find a way to design something that would warn people away from nuclear dump sites 10,000, 20,000 years from now. (We should live so long.)

  4. DSmith Avatar
    DSmith

    To my mind, the best memorial would have been to completely rebuild the WTC towers, to the original blueprints. And no other memorial at all.
    Anything else is a terrorist victory, and a cheapening of their sacrifice. Just imo.
    And yes, we should take note of how well this culture takes care of their memorials. A neglected memorial would be a terrible disservice to those who died.

  5. John Avatar
    John

    Nine eleven is going to be neglected quickly. It has become phrased and framed like many other causes du jour: ribbons for bring-the-troops-home, aids, profanity, etc. Finally, even Whoppi Goldberg, one of the high priestesses of political correctness, said “Enough!” and wouldn’t wear all the ribbons on her collar/lapel at an award ceremony she was hosting.
    It is sad that all of those innocent people have been politically spun into heroes. Many of them performed heroic acts in helping others out of the building that day. Most of them were, as Jeff so appropriately put it, “innocents”, killed to make a political point.
    Why are we trying to make these innocents into something they were not? Doesn’t the horror of the event speak for itself? Isn’t it enough to say that all those firemen and policemen/women from the different agencies gave their lives trying to save other lives in a conscious sacrifice of their own lives?
    The enormity of what will ripple from that one day won’t be fully understood for another ten years. I think that because every politician has used the event for their own purposes in all the babbling of an election cycle the general populace will grow weary within a short time of reminders. After the 2004 election will there be much talk of it outside of those whose lives were personally torn?

  6. button Avatar
    button

    I do think that 9/11 needs to be memorialized. It’s comparable to Pearl Harbor.
    About maintaining the memorial, I was wondering if some of those that depend on lights for their effect (eg: Suspended Votives) could be converted into solar power.

  7. Kate Avatar
    Kate

    I don’t mind a video memorial as long as it’s not produced by any PBS-approved doc. guys. I don’t want to see anything all “tasteful”. Maybe Tarantino and Spike Lee and Tim Burton should do it.