Really, what's the point of any memorial? Of digging up the deepest, darkest chapters of our human experience? Of forcing one to look head on at something that's much more comfortable to turn and walk away from? Why. Why?
I can only speak for myself here.
Honestly, it's not that i have some morbid curiosity for death and violence. I do, however, possess a rich appreciation for the past. For history. And for what people with beating, feeling hearts and minds have done to one another throughout time.
Chris and I biked down the west coast of Ireland 11 years ago. We always had room in our limited panniers for books on Ireland as we roamed the landscape. We were there for adventure, but also to learn about that island. One day, as we found ourselves biking on a lush green bit of flatland near the northwestern coast, we stumbled upon a sculpture that made our jaws drop. In the seeming middle of nowhere, here was this huge metal art piece: a ship. Three masts. And sails...not of iron cloth, but of clinging skeletons. Out there, on an empty oceanic edge of this emerald island sat a memorial to the Irish famine victims. The ones who fled on the "coffin ships" to America, hoping for the chance at a better life...and not always making it.
This piece of art affected us profoundly. We found more books specifically on the famine. the events leading up to it. those who suffered. those who managed to escape, with generations of sadness on their shoulders. This memorial shook me to the core. Enriched me. Surprised me with it's unexpectedness upon the lush landscape of Ireland. I will never forget it and because of it, i will always have compassion for those souls who lived, died or survived that experience.
Memorials -- whether expressed through music, poetry, sculpture, painting, films, novels, oral traditions or any other creative human form -- are a vital necessity to our very human fibers. To our connections to the past.
I could go on all night, sighting memorials that have affected me deeply and have been expressed in all the disciplines listed above, but the hour is late and there are still bills to pay. I had to stop and reflect on this a moment because, well...it's been on my mind.
i wrote this tonight while listening to Rachel Portman's soundtrack from Oprah Winfrey/Jonathan Demme's film adaptation of Toni Morrison's work "Beloved"--a trifecta of memorial expression to African Americans struggling to pick up the pieces in a post-Civil War landscape.
