Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of words have been written about Maya Lin's masterful
Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its deep symbolic power. As you'll see below the fold, a few of those words are mine.
Today, as we again commemorate the "11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" -- the exact time and day of the signing, in a railroad car near Compiègne, France, of the ceasefire that brought World War I to an end -- I've been thinking about our human need to create memorials of important events. I've been wondering how the Iraq/Afghanistan War will some day be memorialized.
What symbols can represent its meaning? Which materials will evoke its complexities? Whose vision will distill it down to its deepest significance?
Such questions, I believe, need to be discussed and pondered. I hope that, after reading the rest of this essay, you'll leave comments and thoughts describing your vision of what we can tell our descendants about this part of our national history.
Three years ago on Veterans Day, I blogged about
my own perceptions and reactions to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I stand by every word I wrote back then. Here's an excerpt:
As a persistent protester of the Vietnam war, I was reviled by what my country did there. As such, I experienced many of the "homeland" effects of Vietnam. But no matter how deeply I thought I had been affected by the scar upon our nation's psyche that was Vietnam, I was completely unprepared for the emotional torrents that rained down upon me when I visited Maya Lin's creation. It drew out an extraordinary range of feelings and thoughts, building its layers of meaning with an intensity that I didn't know I was capable of perceiving.
Ms. Lin has written and spoken eloquently about the symbolism she designed into the structure. Well, many others have written such things about their artistic or architectural creations, but the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is that rare work of art where the symbolism, both intended and (perhaps) unintended, really connects for me.
For example, as you approach the Wall from the nearest street (Constitution Ave NW), you can't really see it until you're almost upon it, reminding us how the war snuck into our consciousness bit by bit. Rounding the corner of the Wall (shaped in a vee-as-in-Vietnam, of course), we have to lean over to search out the first few panels for the first few names of the first few Americans to die in the war ... again, a reminder of how insidiously the war began. Then as we step down, down, down into the ever-deepening war, the ever-increasing litany of names on the stark black panels overwhelms us with its volume. That there is no hint of idolatry, no attempt to memorialize anyone's "achievements" with a statue or battle flag, powerfully demonstrates how wrenchingly horrible and unheroic and just plain wasteful of human beings the war really was (I think the statues forced into the VVM by politicians do nothing but detract from the power of Lin's masterwork). All of the war deaths were equally painful to the country, so there's no indication of rank or service branch on the Wall ... infantryman or pilot, Marine or Navy, buck private or bird colonel, Special Forces or nurse -- all ended up just as dead for just as little reason.
If the phenomenon of transference exists, there is no better example of it than the Wall. Day or night, rain or shine, the grief and sorrow of loved ones, survivors, and buddies of the memorialized dead washes over and engulfs anyone and everyone. No one close to me died in Vietnam; in fact, except for my ex's uncles I don't think I know or knew anyone who was in the service, much less anyone who was in-country. Yet I am overwhelmed by sorrow and palpable, heartfelt grief whenever I visit the VVM (which I do every time I go to DC). I'm not one ordinarily subject to feelings of deep emotion, yet being at the Wall is invariably an emotionally-wrenching experience for me. I've stood at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and I know that others around me were experiencing shatteringly deep emotions about a millenia-old heritage I share, yet I remained a tourist. That's not the case at Maya Lin's Wall.
Three years later, the only change I'd note is that in the interim I've met a few people who served in Vietnam and elsewhere in those days.
Human beings have a deep-seated need to create symbols to signify the meaning of shared events, to try to make sense of those experiences. The power of the VVM, of Maya Lin's astonishing accomplishment, is that it doesn't tell us how to react to it, doesn't force us to reflect on Vietnam in any specified manner. It simply is ... and in its non-specific symbolism the VVM draws our emotional, visceral responses out of us.
We will, some day, commemorate today's war ... a war that has so thoroughly reshaped our national experience. How might that be done? How will we symbolize this laceration of our national consciousness to future generations?
I am the leftest-brained person in the world, so I have nothing whatsoever to suggest for this assignment. I hope some immensely creative Kossacks chance upon this diary, and that they might offer their thoughts and concepts for such a memorial. Who knows ... maybe something as unprepossessing as this little diary will inspire the creative juices of the artist who discovers in his or her soul a way to encapsulate the Iraq War.
Unless someone comes along with an idea of such imaginative power and depth as Lin's VVM design, I fear that we'll end up with something as sterile, as corporatist, as just plain ugly as the National WWII Memorial, something that will hide and obfuscate and whitewash this tragic chapter of our collective history and common experience.
Sad to say, maybe such a travesty would be the most appropriate symbol of Dubya's Folly.