In short, all in service of machines, with the idea, no doubt, that machines are fundamental, the only truly useful thing, the all-encompassing solution . . . But what about the rest? Those needs that aren’t immediate, that aren’t practical or distinctly material, and yet are no less urgent? The so-called spirit? Memory, imagination, creativity, depth, complexity? And what about the larger questions, which are common to other essential domains of knowledge, including biology, physics, philosophy, psychology, and art: where and when did it all begin, where do I go, who am I, who are others, what is society, what is history, what is time, what is language, what are words, what is human life, what are feelings, who is a stranger, what am I doing here, what am I saying when I speak, what am I thinking when I think, what is meaning? Interpretation, in other words. Because without interpretation there is no freedom, and without freedom there is no happiness. This leads to passivity, a tacit acceptance of even our brighter moods. One becomes a slave to politics and the market, driven on by false needs.
When I finally got a hold of the man behind it, 79-year-old Bob Seigel, he was wary.
“It’s gone too viral,” he said.
Typical NIMBY not wanting anyone new to join in, I thought. But a trail is probably a story, and I needed a byline. So here I was, in a sour mood, coming to ruin it more.
“I take it you’ll go and write about it even if I tell you not to?” Bob asked.
Then, in 2015, Star Wars: The Force Awakens happened. Near the start of the first act, a young scavenger removes a pair of goggles, and we meet the galaxy's new hero: a brave woman, draped in no-fuss garments and carrying a staff. Every fan wanted to be her; every fan could be her. “I make a lot of costumes with my dad,” McIntosh says, looking down at her linen and straps. “It's super empowering for girls to see that they can be that person.”
Now Rey is heading into her third (and possibly final) movie. Which has meant four years of fan-driven debate about the existence and value of a female protagonist. Much of that conversation has felt either rote or backward—but shifting the focus from Rey's gender to the more specific ways she wields and wears it reveals the deeper secret to her success: her costume.
My father, a theater neophyte at the time who was always eager to accumulate trivia, settled in with his program and tried to distract himself from the heat with some light conversation. “You know,” he murmured to my mother (uninterested in theater then, now, and forever), “I think one of the songs from this show is famous.” “‘The Ladies Who Lunch’!” answered a warm, benevolent voice behind him. “Sung by Elaine Stritch.” Then, somewhat conspiratorially, as if not to spook the sixteen-year-old a few feet away burdened with the impossible task of putting over this booze-soaked, acid-tongued aria: “Oh, you gotta listen to her version when you go home—it’s iconic.”
The word has become ubiquitous to the point of cliché—something that was certainly not lost on the actress in question. Theater columnist Michael Riedel’s use of it to describe her, during a 2010 appearance on the PBS series Theater Talk, was met with exasperation. “What’s ‘iconic’ mean?” she crowed. Riedel attempted to redirect the conversation, but Stritch was not to be deterred. “Let’s all level. Let’s all level today and tell each other what ‘iconic’ means,” she insisted, inciting guffaws before the final thrust: “it’s a mouthwash!” Even her rejection of the descriptor merely authenticated its aptness. Elaine Stritch, for many, is a figure unquestionably worthy of veneration, mythic and holy.
Some of the best architecture happens when its creators are looking the other way – side elevations rather than imposing facades, kitchens and stables in great palaces, chimneys and roof trusses and other functional items. Something good happens when the anxiety to impress is removed, and an architect or builder can just get on with solving a practical problem with a degree of grace.
So it is with most of the structures in Slacklands 2 in which the architectural curator and teacher Corinna Dean follows up her 2014 book Slacklands with further images of what she calls “rural contemporary architecture of the 20th century”. Her examples are such things as the ancillary structures of dams, military installations, water towers, mine headframes. What makes them striking is that they follow logic outside the usual run of houses and farm buildings, as often as not made inscrutable by the passage of time – whatever considerations once guided them tends to be forgotten.
I saw two old white horses in a field,
in the corner of a field,
in the shade,
who had sought the shade,
thoughtfully.