Cultural Vocabulary

I was, as I do, poking around on the internet reading things, and I read a recent newsletter from Jörg Colberg, which you can also read, here.

In the newsletter is a picture, which I will describe rather than reproduce: it's a picture of a bench, in a somewhat dismal outdoor corner. The bench has a plaque on it, which reads:

Robert E. Burke
Valued Employee, Treasured Friend
Sept 4, 1969 -- May 17, 2006

Dr. Colberg goes on somewhat pointedly about what a shitty monument this is. Not only is it a bench in a dismal corner, but the inscription leads with "employee" making "friend" something of an afterthought, and so forth. He expresses a little sadness that Burke died at age 37. He's perfectly on point here.

Baked into Colberg's discussion is the assumption of what the bench with its inscription means.

These little monuments are all over the place in the USA. A bench, a basketball hoop, a tree, a civic flowerbed, whatever. They are, invariably, a little monument to a life. The first date is the birth, the second one a death, and the inscription someone's idea of a little summary of the life itself.

Being me, which is to say "that fuckin' guy," I went and looked up Robert E. Burke of Northampton, MA.

Burke was born on Dec 17, 1947, and died on May 18, 2006. The obit mentions "Thursday" and May 17, 2006 was a Wednesday. The Social Security Death Index confirms May 18th.

What on earth is going on here?

Welp. The obit indicates that he was hired at the District Court (the bench is outside the District Court building) in 1969. The bench seems to have not the dates of his life, but rather the dates of his service at the Court. May 17 might well have been his last day of work.

The inscription changes meaning, then. If this honors his service as an employee, as it appears to do, the inscription no longer feels weird. Rather, the entire bench feels weird, and the inscription fits onto it perfectly.

This does not change the fact that the bench, as a cultural artifact, means what it appears to mean. As a sentence in the vocabulary of our culture, it literally means "Robert E. Burke, born in 1968, died in 2006 and we valued him as an employee and, uh, also as a friend." The fact that this is neither the intended meaning, nor reflective of the true events, does not alter that in the slightest. That is what this bench means.

I am nearly certain that the bench is a monument to the man's service, and I have literally never seen any such thing in my life. Well, I've seen service awards and whatnot, but never in this configuration. I cannot quite imagine what possessed the people of the District Court to come up with this thing, co-opting a well-established vocabulary and making this mess out of it.

As a side note, it is worth noting that this spot used to be a lot less dismal. Google Street View from 2015 shows that that ugly chain link fence is recent, parts of the cement used to be more attractive brick paving, and there are sometimes plants around the thing. I mean, it's still not nice, but when the bench was put in the location was less dystopian.

I consider it possible that Dr. Colberg has walked by this bench any number of times, and was waiting for grass in front of the bench to assume a suitably dried-out and untended look. It's rather a Thing in the school of photography he favors: the futile architecture of Man, as seen beyond or through scrubby, dead, vegetation.

Whatever. This has certain implications for the reading of art generally, and photographs specifically. We are reminded, yet again, that intention and reading need not align. If, in 50 years, the Monument To Service Bench becomes standard, if the meaning of these objects changes, then intention and reading might line back up, who knows?

It's a funny old world, and one is advised to stay alert.