I agree that it does, and I'm quite a big fan of looking at old things, but I still don't get it. There's a nice quotation from The History Boys by Alan Bennett:
Wanting toilet paper, or paper of any description, the monks used to wipe their bottoms on scraps of fabri... linen, muslin, patches of tapestry even... Some of these rags survive, excavated from the drains into which they were dripped five hundred years ago and more, and here now find themselves exhibited in the abbey museum.
...it is conceivable that one of these ancient arsewipes was actually used by [St. Aelred]. Which at the time would have made it a relic, something at which credulous pilgrims would come to gaze.
But what are these modern-day pilgrims gazing at but these same ancient rags, hallowed not by saintly usage, it's true, but by time...and time alone? They are old and they have survived. And there is an increment even in excrement, so sanitised by the years and sanctified, too, they have become relics in their own right...
Not to say that standing in Boston Common is the same as star-gazing at toilet paper, but the instinct is similar. "Wow, this is so old" vs. "wow, this place is so important." I think that Americans, as people of a young nation, might crave this sense of history more than the Europeans who pass medieval churches daily, but there seems to be a universal human attraction to cool old things. I certainly don't mind this inclination, and I engage in it myself with regularity (as most Yalies do), but I want to be sure to remind myself that these people I'm deifying were men, too, most of whom were less well-educated and worldly than me.
Aren't we special.
1 comment:
My excuse for making this comment long is that I was just in Boston.
To add on to that, it probably has something to do with one of the defining factors of humanity: the ability to - and the ability to want to - empathize. Whether by looking at old "arsewipes" or reading about generals in the Peloponnesian (is that how you spell it?) war, people want to connect with others across the ages, almost to reassure their status as human. There are a lot of us visual learners out there, since us homo sapiens have better eyesight than the other senses, so being able to comprehend that one is seeing the work of human hands long buried under the ground is a challenge for the brain that shows itself outwardly as awe.
I think this fascination accounts for many things that people do. I suppose that is what I sum up as pure coolness when I can sit for hours on end and research old fashions and try to recreate them. Why else would one have a fetish for farthingales?
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