I've neglected this place a little since my epic write-up of my epic meal at the Fat Duck. Which is a bit of a shame, as I did some equally noteworthy and interesting things last week.
picture by Russell Davies
I went to see a real live moonwalker, the second man on the moon talk at the Royal Festival Hall. Given the original future-looking optimism behind the growth of both endeavours, it seemed like the appropriate place to hear him. This was especially reinforced not only by what Aldrin talked about, but by both the men interviewing him, Rick Stroud and Andrew Smith. As Smith said in his introduction, "They had to make everything up as they went; it was a gargantuan feat of imagination" which is something that is all too frequently forgotten. This imagination seems to be Aldrin's driving force to an extent, at least as a credo for living:
"All we need is the determination to define the best course, the imagination to set bold targets, and the willingness to take risks. The future of space exploration begins, as always, with imagination."
I actually didn't take many notes, because sometimes Aldrin would manage to ramble off on personal tangents that were hard to follow because they seemed to come out of nowhere. Other times, he talked entirely in soundbites like the one quoted above, which I suppose is to be expected given the number of times he's probably had to answer the same questions over and over again.
Ironically, the one question he's asked most is the one that he still struggles to articulate an answer to; that one about what it feels like to walk on the moon. His answer to this seemed the most genuine part of his performance (and make no mistake, up on that stage he was certainly performing), but unfortunately was the one where I didn't manage to take any useful notes of what he said. Aldrin's answer in this Guardian interview [via Russell] comes quite close to the answer he gave on stage, but it's more succinct:
"People want to know what it felt like. They want us in a few words to generate the enthusiasm that the world had as they contemplated what we were about to do. Well, what it felt like is something that we trained for. We were trying to treat it as calmly as we could and perform to the best of our ability. We tried to repress feelings of exuberance, of disappointment, and be proud and responsible people accomplishing the task that was given to us. That sounds kind of boring. Except that what we did was kind of earth-shaking."
Which reads as such understatement that you don't really grasp the sheer enormity of the achievement, especially if, like me, you were born enough years after the event for it to have entered into our culture as part of history, and therefore out of our grasp. Hearing him talk about it on stage, as he struggled to describe the sensation, and dropped the soundbites out of his conversation, I finally felt it. The idea that only eleven other people had done what he had done. How can you describe a sensation like that to people who not only have absolutely no commensurate experience, but are never ever likely to?
picture by Matt Jones
A couple of days later, I went to the BLDGBLOG book launch at the AA, which seemed quite appropriate, given that blog's approach to, well, everything. If there's one theme that unites all the posts on BLDGBLOG, it's the idea of exploration, and of finding new ways of looking at stuff that has always been taken for granted — which is of course, an idea that I have recently been exploring on this blog, too.
It was interesting launch, with talks by Area Code's Kevin Slavin and, of course, BLDGBLOG's Geoff Manaugh. It was typically as full of fascinating new directions and ideas as the blog itself. Even though I've sworn not to buy any more books until my shelves have some space, I couldn't resist buying the book, and have forgone the two books I was already reading to dive into all the exciting features on urban exploration and architectural speculation. So far (I'm on part two at the moment), it's been a thoroughly stimulating read, although I do have a couple of minor objections about the book's design. It's been laid out along similar lines to a magazine, and while sidebars work in that format, it's a bit frustrating to be really into a piece of writing, and then lose the pace of it through having to turn over several pages in order to get to the rest of one sentence. That aside, I highly recommend it.
