I was at the State Capitol today to sit in on some Utah Association of Counties meetings in the morning and tape a show in the afternoon. Lunchtime found me in the cafeteria and in walks an old time friend of mine, Wayne Jones.
Jonesy and I go way back. Back in the prehistoric day I managed a group of professional and trade associations. Wayne underwrote the group health insurance plans for the associations. I went on to TV and he took over my groups as their executive director. (I might add, he has done a much better job at it than I ever did). Also at the table I was sitting at, was Mike Swenson, a lobbyist for Utah Shared Access, a public land multiple use advocacy and my show producer Derek Dowsett. We all know each other, but not through each other…. if that makes sense. Jonesy and I got talking about how far we go back at the legislature, and Mike, who I don’t see as any younger than I am, started to look most curiously at Wayne and me. I think both Mike and I realized for the first time that we are two decades apart. Yet the mental context in my mind of the building itself and the memories of events that involved both of these guys, decades apart, all happened in a place that looks the same. It is the building itself that makes those events run together.
Think about it… When I walk into the capitol, memories come to me dating back nearly 50 yeas, but they all seemed like they happened last summer… from the time I got a private tour, with a date on a Friday night to the very top of the rotunda. ( I know where the access door is), to lobbying back in the late 70 alongside Wayne, To having the Governor perform my wedding to Ria, last September. But it is the architecture that makes them all fit into one timeless portfolio.
Frank Lloyd Wright said that the single purpose of architecture is to integrate man into his environment and bind him to his surroundings (I paraphrase). But there is another function, to integrate significant events into a single portfolio of memories, all of them recalled in a single moment just by walking through a door.
Chad Booth 