May 28, 2009 | Leave a comment Do not venerate the place. It is passive and did not write the songs and knew no clever rhymes nor mastered meter with the well-placed feet that you so admire. The event was a magnificent fleeting sliver of time that bloomed in our past and grew in our unintended lying to fit a need, way beyond the deed. You set it on an altar with signs and guides and glass cabinets; but the goodness of the moment, the worth of the story, is long gone. Gone in reality, passed. Living on in your words which are a distorted lense that bends the light of the truth so it curves to fit your purposes, however well intentioned. Do not venerate the place, do not make it an undeserving monument where white-gloved curators must tremble at an imagined majesty and handle the crumbs of our everyday tables with a breath-holding reverence, heavy to the touch with import and meaning which they agonise over obsessed and are tested so that they may say they have a certificate that signifies their understanding of what we were and what we stood for in every way. We lived here in ordinary ways. We made all our mistakes, fallible and room-spinning, puking, with a depth only you see and we wished we had in our time. Your artefacts were our broken clay pipes and your big discoveries were the rotting bones of our dogs. So, do not venerate the place; lay down the next generation of legend and trails with your own flints and sonnets. Share on Facebook