Sunday, April 23, 2006

The Work Of The Delicate.

"Sometimes, it is not the strong who should build a memorial, but the weak, the emotional. They aren't cold in their hearts. Only they would know how to feel, only they would know what goes on underneath it all." -Me

Thats what I think whenever I see the Vietnam War memorial in Washington D.C.. Designed via open competition by a 21 year-old Asian architecture student named Maya Lin, it is an amazing story of the will of one girl who wanted to give a nation a chance to reflect, a chance to remember on the horrors of war, in a memorial unlike any other.

Instead of a huge tower or a fancy sculture, the Vietnam War Memorial is shockingly simple: a 'V' shaped black granite slit in the earth, its axis carefully positioned towards the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, its surface etched with about 58,000 names of American soldiers who died, in chronological order, instead of alphabetical.

Although she has since become a famous U.S. architect well into her 40's, her evocative memorial, to me, stands as the greatest testament to what one girl achieved when she believed in her young, inexperienced self, against an entire nation still nursing wounds from the first war it didn't really win.

Most importantly, I think she taught America how to go past the outer masks of oneself; to discard the masks of ego and desire for recognition, and to go to the inner temple of the soul, and to build a memorial that serves as much needed closure for the hearts of families who lost people they loved.

No other building does it better than this.

Vietnam War Memorial - Wikipedia

jOhn thought at 6:25 PM