Bric-a-Brac – Kellen Deighton

The B&E of History
Parents are interesting to their children at two times in their lives: when the offspring is young and don’t know any better, then when they become adults and they do. Here the term “parents” might easily be swapped for “the past”; both undergo similar yo-yoing levels of interest to people as they age. Once we are sufficiently interested in the past- its people and things- to dig it up for ourselves, there is only enough left for us to make a spotty translation of our own. For the most part what exists after the fact is a bricolage, the small pieces, unimportant enough to be left unchanged while everything else is just memories. To make these bits coherent there must be a willing dedication to work that takes its time pay off.
We broke into a piece of the past I had been studying, walked around and rearranged a few things in a way that wouldn’t be noticed except by the most astute viewer. We each played a part in making a new set of rules for how this place might be seen and understood. We were optimists, taking our versions of old methods in hopes that they might survive in a new place. This disjunction may be funny but not everything funny is a joke.