In college, my friend Jenna and I played a game wherein we decided which on-campus object or place we would "dedicate" to ourselves upon graduation. Like most campuses, ours had the usual quota of Memorial Benches (and Wings and Halls and Statues and Libraries), erected and plaque-d in honor of the Somebody Q. Moneybags who had donated to the college, or the Class of Xty-X who'd ponied up enough dough to be remembered ad infinitum. So we asked ourselves: Where would our plaques go? What would serve as the perfect marker for our (unfatal) passing?
It is clear to me now that we played this game with a mixture of defiance and terror. Defiance against the insanely wealthy and the bronzed kowtowing that ensued whenever they snuffed it -- why couldn't we, the students who struggled penniless and work-studied through four years of academia, why couldn't we have that kind of eternal reward? Sure, the rich might be responsible for the college's very backbone; its dorms and halls and quads of green, but we were its heartbeat. We deserved just as much reverence. Engraved, if you please.
And terror because hey: it was senior year. Soon we'd be ejected into the real world, armed with Humanities degrees that virtually ensured our ongoing poverty. If we had to plunge into the ocean, we at least wanted a guarantee that our big-fish status would be recognized forever by future inhabitants of our beloved little pond. Proof that we'd mattered somewhere.
At any rate, the ground rules were simple: Choose an object (or place) that nobody would think of memorializing. None of the usual benches or buildings or flowerbeds. Something or somewhere that would take one by surprise. (And, perhaps, be less likely to attract the attention and outrage of campus administration, were the project ever to come to fruition.)
Jenna's answer was by far the best: On the lower entrance level of the campus theater complex (massive auditorium, smaller black box, offices, and classrooms) there was a recessed concrete landing, sheltered on three sides by the outer walls of the auditorium and by a set of glass double doors. Some quirk of this particular architecture caused air currents to get trapped in the landing niche, creating a gentle, constant, swirling vortex of leaves, trash, and general debris.
This, she said, would be her gift to future students and staff. She said she felt it nicely encapsulated her four years on campus. The Jenna Memorial Vortex.
I can't recall my own contribution. I think her choice was so good that I just couldn't top it. Regardless, it was the seed of this project. Thanks, J.
1 comment:
First of all, this is a piece of genius.
I thought you'd like to know that well after Jenna stabbed at the ether of that eddy with her proverbial flag, Washington Post Book critic (and fellow Obie) Michael Dirda actually made mention of the architecture around Hall Auditorium in his memoir (An Open Book), referring to the building itself as "vorticist." Now, he was probably relating the design of the building itself as being akin to that of the Vorticists, those British modernists that stole a great deal of their visual aestheic from the Futurists (strangely enough). But I found his choice of words somewhat disturbing. Locally, perhaps.
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