Keepsakes & Monuments

“It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sommbitch or another.” – Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly

I’m not a huge fan of statues. Of any kind of monument, really. Oh look, let’s all stand around and look at this big thing someone built, which serves no practical purpose, except to remind us that somebody built it. It’s their keepsake writ large, hauled into the present by the past, and it keeps us from making our own way. It’s like a huge rock dropped in a river, forcing the river to change its course by its very presence.

I think there’s a distinction here between “art that lasts long enough that it becomes like that” and “things that are built just to be monuments.” Sometimes you paint a picture, and people either really like it or a strange series of events make it a historical oddity (or both) and it becomes monumental. That just is what it is.

Cultures throughout history have moved big rocks around in order to say “We were here, we changed the Earth, remember that we did so – that we were like gods, able to shape our creation because we were above it.” It’s in humanity’s nature to do that. I don’t think you can avoid it. But I also don’t stand in awe of it. Because I have my own rocks to move.

Most of them will be small. Maybe some will be large if there’s a reason to move them. Some will just be the tools I used for a time and then flung into the ocean because I don’t need to remember them.