In Guatemala, you can live on The Street of Purgatory.
You can live on the Street of Sorrrows.
Or you can live on the Street of Oblivion.
According to ancient history, the Street of Oblivion is the worst address you can have. It recalls
the Roman idea of the destruction of images by order of a government, called "damnatio memoriae". As reported by Sara E. Bond in the New York Times, "Romans saw it as a punishment
worse than execution: the fate of being forgotten."
Isn't that why we write memoirs, diaries, blogs, and tell-alls? To avoid the awfulness of
nonentity? We twitter and tweet and Face-off and Googlize, just to be seen, just to say
I AM: Notice Me. Why we Dance with the Stars and not with the Joe Blokes; why we idolize
those who have captured the bright lights of celebrity, hoping it will somehow rub off
on them? Or is this contemporary angst the result
of a cult of the individual which will perhaps become archaic in the near future?
Of course you can choose to be memorialized in song. Calvin Trillin tells us that "to memorialize the first ten digits of pi,
you simply have to sing, to the tune of the Mouseketeers' song,
'If numbers had a heaven/ their God would surely be/ 3.1415.92653'".
Or perhaps you would choose to be memorialized by none other than Tom Lehrer, quipster /songmeister who
got many an undergraduate through math classes at Harvard many a moon ago. If not reassuring, he is at
least succinct:
"We will all go together when we go,
What a comforting fact that is to know
Universal bereavement,
An inspiring achievement,
Yes, we all will go together when we go.
We will all fry together when we fry.
We'll be French fried potatoes when we fry
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie
Yes, we all will fry together when we fry."
There's more, but you get the point.
An interesting corollary is a 2009 video called "Conceal/Reveal", showing the act of removing a
bandage swathed around a face. The video was produced by a group called NAMELESS which
focuses on design and concept- based projects.(2) Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist recently detained
by his government, has taken a different path: he will be seen, and acknowledged, even if it
involves risks, which it obviously did. His video, "Without Fear or Favor", reminds us of the
courage required to stand up and be noticed.(3) Thomas Friedman tells us of a demonstration
on Arab satellite TV from Benghazi, Libya: shown was a banner reading in Arabic "Ana Rajul",
meaning "I am a Man".(4) That man was seen around the world.
If oblivion is indeed our inevitable address, what about now? In an area like Silicon Valley it
is easy to get swallowed up, squashed like a pesky mosquito, crushed just for someone's joy
of crushing. Follow Yogi Berra's advice: when you come to a fork in the road, take it. As one character on Grey's Anatomy said, "You're in a lion fight. Just because
you didn't win doesn't mean you don't know how to roar". Go roar! (5) Order sauerkraut when it's
not on the menu, and then roar with delight when it appears. (It means you chose the right fork.)
c. Corinne Whitaker, a hip artist
Note: the ever-challenging architect Rem Koolhaas
has some provocative ideas
about preservation vs destruction; he once proposed that UNESCO form a "Convention
Concerning the Demolition of World Cultural Junk" as an antidote to the obsession
with historical preservation for its own sake.
(1) See also Lehrer's "So Long
Mom"
(2)The Conceal/Reveal video by
Nameless is available here.
(3)Ai Weiwei's "Without Fear or
Favor" can be seen on youtube. Additionally, viewers may want to look at
Anish
Kapoor's Leviathan, created for Monumenta 2011 at the Grand Palais in Paris,
which he has dedicated to Ai Weiwei.
(4) "I Am a
Man" appeared in the Sunday New York Times Opinion Pages on 5/15/11
(5) Whitaker's "Have You Roared
Lately?" appeared on the Electronic Quill issue of May, 2008.