What’s Going On
Friday, the last day of my work week. Beginning to mentally prepare for a road trip to the west coast, driving back with stops along the way. I believe 
the final stop is to be New York City and then return to Chicago. Hopeful of visiting Gettysburg along the way home.
Some pictures of “life” as I encountered it yesterday. Nature, the earth continues to burn with the increasing heat load of human habitation. There are fewer bees, fewer birds, and fish in the sea. Weather 
events become more destructive. The climate-change-mass-migrations are just beginning for us in North America. Our government builds detention camps along the border for holding people indefinitely if necessary. The object is to make more difficult the already time 
consuming and onerous legal barriers to entry into this country. Land of hopes and dreams? Only in the imagination, or in the old time song lyric.
While seated in the dining area of a well known chain fast food restaurant, I had occasion to contemplate the “Brutalist 
aesthetic” which apparently is coming back. I found this definition:
From the mid-20th century, this style rose in popularity before reaching its peak in the mid-1970s, when it came crashing down as a model of bad taste. But that’s all changing now, with a renewed interest and appreciation for 
this once derided architectural style. Known for its use of functional reinforced concrete and steel, modular elements, and utilitarian feel, Brutalist architecture was primarily used for institutional buildings. Imposing and geometric, Brutalist buildings have a graphic quality that is part of what makes them so appealing today.
What was once recognized as bad taste is now heralded as the “new” good taste. The style with roots in architecture is applied to music, art, interior design, etc. The beating heart of brutalist approach is functionality. The graphic quality is imposing. The appeal has to be its usefulness for selling anything, for conditioning the observer to adapt, to become a customer. The vivid colors, the straight lines, the simple shapes, all anesthetise the judgment toward making a purchase.
Is not Nature the obverse of the Brutalist aesthetic?
2 thoughts on “What’s Going On”
Vincent Van Gogh could not sell a painting during his lifetime despite the best efforts of his brother Theo. Now a hundred million dollars is a low estimate for one of his paintings. Indeed tastes and habits change with time. Like Cole Porter penned in Anything Goes:
The world’s gone mad today
And good’s bad today,
And black’s white today,
And day’s night today…..
Perhaps saving the planet will become trendy and we can really make some headway in altering our behavior.
Becoming trendy! Now that is a plan for survival. By then we will already be in freefall.