Monument

Memorials exist for all sorts of things.  There are lots of monuments devoted to war and death, and most of them follow a predictable pattern.  Everyone is probably familiar with the Vietnam Memorial and its wall of names; those who have seen it recall vividly the impact of seeing 58,195 names of dead soldiers engraved on a single surface.  The corresponding event for my generation, the September 11th attack, was memorialized in a powerful way that I remember as particularly affective (rampant commercialization notwithstanding).

But what does a monument tell us about the event it memorializes?  Names and numbers are important, but something important is missing.  Anyone that knew someone whose name is one of those lists remembers them as a person, a collection of memories and experiences that told a unique story.  It can’t be boiled down to a saying on a tombstone or an entry on a census form, and it is crucial to preserve those experiences.  For an experience that can’t be boiled down to a singular event, maybe it would be more effective to let those experiences stand on their own, to memorialize them not with a mass of identical entries but with a ready-made figure that can represent individuality for each person who engages with it.