September 2, 2003

• A propos of my last 'blog...
  
  When I'm in a place like a parking lot I find myself thinking about its design. Mostly places like that are designed to be quick and easy and cheap to implement. The cost of those poor little trees is, in fact, a luxury that someone had to sign off on. There's someone's signature somewhere on a piece of paper somewhere in an architectural office somewhere, next to a line on a contract that says:
  
  Ornamental trees: 5 Initial here: ____
  
  The architectural value of those trees is related to how the parking lot looks from the road. If the lot looks like a horrible unattractive hot black asphalt salt lake expanse of flatness, then by gum we need some little trees here and there to make it seem a little less horrific.
  
  It's like when you go into Starbucks and due to the decor alone, it seems as though something artful and profound and enlightening is about to happen. Here's some news: It's like a McDonald's, except they serve expensive coffee. I mean, you go into a McDonald's, and the decor is telling you that something whimsical is about to happen at any second, even though it never does. And in Starbucks, maybe someone has a laptop and is writing an email to their grandma or something, but nothing like the promise the decor is making.
  
  Because either way, it's illusion. It's a happy illusion, one that it's not too hard to object to, but it's still an illusion.
  
  And those little trees in the parking lot are designed to be an illusion of aesthetic value, an illusion of human scale. I'm thinking about all the Wal-Marts I've ever been to... No trees in the parking lots. No illusions. Just a big flat slab of asphalt, with the occassional light pole.
  
  I want to connect this idea to the rest of life. I want to say that everything that's designed is like this. Designs, usually by intention, use illusion like putty, to fill in and smooth over the gaps in everyday assumption. Those little trees try their best to make the overwhelming expanse of parking lot feel a little less overwhelming; the assumption is that the existence of the parking lot is more important than how overwhelmed you feel. The requirement of a pallative underscores this basic assumption. That the pallative (the trees themselves) are so pathetic underscores the underscore.
  
  This is my main problem with the newness of American culture. We don't have a way to evaluate what's more important, other than to count the money, and creating illusions is, itself, a lucrative business. We commodify illusion and sell it to ourselves.

  • 4:53 am
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