Examine the scene. Your eye is drawn down the disorientating white lines** towards the solitary individual surrounded and dominated by inanimate and uncaring vehicles. A scene of despair and inconsequentiality in an uncaring (and possibly hostile world) or as we know it, Tescos. And in the end, we all die etc. etc.
The person who sent me the photo commented, "The guy in this photo is totally isolated against the landscape of cars, which I thought was humorous but also a bit scary..maybe a bit of a metaphor for how I felt. Everything here seems too large and unnecessary .."
Other than my stomach, which is too large and unnecessary, I didn't find this photo humorous, scary or depressing. Those who read my blog regularly will know (and possibly be slightly concerned about) my enthusiasm for car parking spaces and their uniqueness. As I reflected over a period of days I came to realise that inherent in this picture is the meaning of life.
In order to explain, lets go back to your childhood. A place of mystery and wonder where we react in an emotional way to the world around us. We simply experience life. Then we go to school, college, university (or borstal - in my case - a simple misunderstanding that got out of hand), gaol etc. We learn how things work and why things happen but in separate disciplines - physics, chemistry, history, geography, divinity (religious instruction) - I went to a posh school, at least until I was expelled - yet another misunderstanding. We learn to separate, to specialise -to find reason, to find meaning in detailed knowledge. In the heritage world we have specialist curators, alas increasingly rare due to cutbacks, but somehow apt to have rare people looking after rare things rarely.
Thus we leave our education system knowing lots about bits, but with little or no ability to work out how it all fits together, but with the constant search for understanding. Surely this is a sure fire guarantee of societal existential angst, depression, suicide and death amongst the populace (how else do you explain the popularity of Strictly Come Dancing?) We may as well hand out a tanto*** with each degree certificate.
We are always striving to find meaning and museums are amongst the worst culprits. Yet it can be found in a car park by its very meaningless. Take the Buddhist concept of 'Emptiness' - stop the ceaseless search for the meaning of life by just simply experiencing life and therefore find meaning in the meaningless. For example, you can only 'know' the meaning of love if you are in love - you know its meaning by experiencing it. I try and apply that to museums. Museums too often try to educate and offer knowledge thereby failing in their duty to give meaning. The most telling comment in Judith Henry's excellent 'Overheard at the Museum' book is, "This forces you to think and I don't really like to do that." I can sympathise with that viewpoint. At least you can come to the Museum of Unreason and not think and find meaninglessness AND therefore the secret of life itself (I should put that on our advertising leaflets).
And so back to our picture. Here is a moment of wonder, you are experiencing a precious one-off event -yet your thoughts jump into the routine drudgery of life, the size of the cars, the angle of the lines etc. And so you fail to see the brilliance of what is going on. We try and find meaning and the very act of trying means we fail. Don't think! And find the very act of not thinking a liberating life affirming experience. How many museums offer that? Yet every car parking space does offer that, because it is not there to encourage you to think. An empty car parking space is the Buddhist concept of 'Emptiness' in physical form - it is Nirvana, it is a Christian Heaven (a full car park being Hell obviously).
Next time you go into a parking space, stop for 10 seconds and revel in the wondrousness of the experience. I will guarantee the weekly shop will be much more bearable because of it.
Here endeth the lesson - next week pictures of cats with funny expressions on their faces.
*Three of Wittgenstein's brothers committed suicide and he himself contemplated it. Yet he was the most important philosopher of the 20th Century according to Bertrand Russell - personally I think I would rather be happy.
**I like to think the white lines are spaces for trandems, but I suspect not
***tanto - ceremonial sword for committing seppuku
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