After reading The Handbook To Drifting (extracts) (Smith, 2010) I tried to look at the Grandstand in a new way. My intention was to forget about the sentiment and memory contained in the site and look at it with the point of view that if I wasn’t part of the Grandstand’s past, why should I hold it so dear when trying to feel a response from the site. The third instruction in this ‘guidebook’ was to use your senses, to “walk slowly and look for meaning in everything.”
When you explore the exterior of the Grandstand it is more achievable to think about what you can see and how your senses are engaging in terms of the present, however when you explore the interior there is one particular spot where you can’t really forget the past.
The RAF emblem over a fireplace in one of the main rooms leaves very little else in your mind when trying to place the grandstand in terms of its meaning. The meaning that you find here is that the grandstand played a part in the war and assisted the Royal Air Force in the Lincolnshire area. You can understand the difficulty I might have in trying not to think about the past.
Another instruction in the guide to drifting particularly interested me and that was number 22: “When you encounter strangers, LISTEN to them.” I think it would be very interesting to go out and ask people what their opinions on the grandstand are and yet this would also counteract my new found ideal of not dwelling in the past. I think what I’m trying to say is that people can not form an opinion of the grandstand if they don’t know what it is, or where it is, or if they’ve never seen a picture of it. In order for them to express their feelings they have to know it, and this inevitably means knowing about its past.
I like to think that my attempted ‘drift’ in which I had an aim (not sure that’s exactly the point) failed to a point that I now understand more than ever that without the past we literally wouldn’t have a thing, therefore why on earth should I try and make any of that past irrelevant?
Works Cited:
Smith, P. 2010. Mythogeography. Axminster, Devon: Triarchy Press.