It’s been really gratifying to see more people commenting on the uneven distribution of firework joy, whether as a form of reinvigorated protest, or in the shape of that poem being shared about explosions and the differentiated lives we’ve lived. That’s been a thorn in my side for most of my life.
I wrote my own poem once about the rat-tat-tat of compatriots insisting on our communal bonds outside my teenage bedroom door. I wrote an email too, my first time experiencing a Royal Air Force fighter jet screaming over the Royal Mile in Edinburgh back when I barely researched the places I’d go and didn’t even know that was an annual display.
I was so incensed by having my nervous system so shot mere meters from the offices of some pacifist organization that I typed that email directly into my phone, demanding that they speak out against this barbarism. You can imagine how I feel about the Blue Angels that pierce Seattle’s skies every year. Yuck.
I’ve since realized that I don’t like screeches and bangs for more sensory reasons as well. But the root of my distaste remains ideological. No, I don’t like explosions very much at all.
This artwork is called “The Fin Project,” but I prefer the subtitle, as per the artist’s website: “From Swords into Plowshares.” It’s made from the dive fins of decommissioned nuclear submarines (you don’t always see the “nuclear” part when looking it up) and was installed in 1998 in this former U.S. Navy base.
According to the artist, the UW Professor of Sculpture, John T. Young, “The hope is that similar “pods” will be created around the country and the world, as symbols for peace on a global scale. The artist is particularly interested in creating them in Russia near the former Soviet submarine bases in Vladivostock or St. Petersburg, in the desert of the American Southwest, along the coast of Southern California, and on the East Coast.” As far as I can tell, he managed to pull it off one more time in Miami.
I first heard about this space on the bus back from a photo walk; I was telling the guys about my preparations for the Uranium Film Festival that Spring and they suggested I check it out. Though it wasn’t entirely planned but it felt right spending a few minutes here today.
In the words of Anthony Bourdain, “there’s a metaphor here,” and he’d probably finish that sentence saying something like: there’s a metaphor here, standing on this hill strewn with the spent shells of the military-entertainment complex, overlooking the hippie-liberal pacifist public art.
But in keeping with his spirit, I’ll just keep the weight of that image hanging in the air and cut away to something completely different, like the uneasy neighborliness of guys waiting for their wives in their car and other guys sent out to check on them by theirs, sheepishly pretending to have to drive off somewhere to take the sting off the question. Or maybe this thyme tea we got today as well.
Can you tell we’ve been re-watching a lot of Anthony Bourdain?