the softening of hard hearts

As the voracious efforts of a generation fade and stain with time, as they acquire layers of paint textured with chipping & reapplication, as they shrink demurely behind maturing shrubs and filled-out trees, as their results, methods, and even motives are called into sharper criticism, vulnerabilities are revealed; occasionally the feebleness of a life's efforts, and the hurt of a life's work derided, can be glimpsed. In others' aggressive criticism I see my own cruelty, and a hard heart is softened.

Their own hard-hearted declarations seem less severe now, the fearful end which has not come, less inevitable. The shells of a passing generation's hopes stand, disdained, resented by their neoclassical neighbors for their lack of decorum and by their deconstructionist children for their lack of vitality and vigor. But the growth of vocalized opposition has dissolved the veneer of authoritarian domination, and our civic efforts and free-market success render their stalinistic likenesses sheepish, and our fears of them quaint. Tense severity mellows like in a black-and-white war movie.

The eroding concrete of their physical manifestations reveal the pebbles within, and the dissolution of this stern facade has lain the more resolute elements of the human spirit bare: hope, ambition, confidence, commitment, faith in a dream and the united effort of free individuals to build, literally, what they sincerely thought was a better world, a better future for all. The rudeness of the Brutalist concrete, in the presence of this revealed humanity, mellows and a humble texture comes into focus, a timelessness of mass, a pleasant tectonic weight which we are increasingly denied in favor of curtain walls and flying steel with hollow stone veneer. Expansive plate-glass speaks more, now, to selflessness - the greatest expense is invisible, its only function to keep us warm and dry while revealing the world outside - it is utterly about the 'other'. Their heavy steel mullions, warmed by layers of paint, are reassuring - quaint in an age where mullions are optional. All in all, these structures remind me of my childhood classrooms, open to the sky, spacious and modest.

After a century, on a safe and warm afternoon, these old concrete heaps stand steadfast but humbled behind veils of cherry blossoms and dogwoods, as testament to our forebearers who stood strong amidst global disaster and imagined a hopeful future, a clean, clear, affordable, charitable future. They are monuments to hope in a world we, thankfully, will never have to face.

When I think of City Hall, I think of many things - the corbusian predecessor which it falls far short of, it's origins in an open competition heralding a return of transparency and fairness in Boston politics, the impression of some aging soviet beauty queen who has lived to regret her disdainful shunning of her common neighbors, still to proud to reconcile in the face of her demise. But when the warm afternoon sunshine hits it just right, I am reminded of that wonderfully grumpy old pile of stones, the Palazzo Vecchio, that presides over Florence as a trophy of democracy. Let the old girl live, it takes time for hard hearts to soften.