#34: Why do we love the patina of time?
Okay. So, I had to look up ‘patina’. Had never heard this expression before. If you’re in the same boat, here.
I present you:
The Patina of Time
Now that we’re all caught up: why do we love the patina of time?
That’s a pretty good question, albeit once again loaded. Maybe some people don’t love it, but I suspect that many do, even if it’s not something they really think about.
We don’t love getting old. We don’t love rust, decay, corrosion, oxidation, or calcification. If any of these things happen to our belongings, we don’t oooh and aahhh over it. So what is it about the patina of time that we as a culture seem so romantically fond of? What gives?
Perhaps a good starting point is realizing that time doesn’t erode, but rather, it fades. Better yet — it evanesces. And in doing do, it loses the immediacy — the urgency — so often associated with the present. Since it is no longer of any practical value, the old (the ancient) becomes beautiful in our eyes; it leaves the realm of the tangible, and crosses over to that of art, nostalgia, and sentiment.
When you buy a new computer today, or a new car, there is a reasonable expectation of high performance. You wouldn’t buy a PC running Windows 95, and you wouldn’t buy a car with a carburetor, but it’s sure nice to see one from time to time. Slow internet connection is a bane today, but it’s still oddly beautiful to hear this.
Nothing beats the quality, convenience, and accessibility of digital music, but people will fight you if you diss their record collection. Electric books are (and will be) the new norm for readers, but you just can’t help buying that 1,100 page hardcover.
So it is with the patina of time.
Interestingly, many people seem equally romantic about the past as they are about the future. It is the present that dulls them, bores them, sends them wistfully down the lanes of remembrance, or hopefully up avenues of imagination. The world was a simpler place, a more beautiful place, in the past. And it will — it can be — a beautiful place again, in the future (a future that never arrives, perpetually stuck in escrow).
But today? Now? Jesus. What a clusterfuck. All five ways from Texas.
That is why we love the patina of time, why we love walking through an abandoned warehouse (so we can take pictures and apply filters and post them on instagram). That’s why we love the word vintage.
