Ghost Dance

Kids today don’t understand irony. In my studio, many of the students have inspirational messages situated near their work areas. Many of these are biblical scriptures. I made a little poster to hang over my desk which says: You’re not fooling anybody you lying sack of shit. The kids just don’t get it. They ask me about it all the time. I have a super-huge ego, I tell them, my friends, my family, my therapist and my pastor all agreed that this is a message I need to read every day.
Our professors in Landscape Architecture are always asking us, what emotion do you want people to feel when they come into this space? The kids always say the same things. Tranquility. Joy. Blah blah blah. The other day I told my professor: unspecified dread. The Ghost Dance. The sense that some Native American spirit has returned to bury us all under a mile of topsoil, for as we drag our carts over the bones of the dead, the reckoning draws nearer, and the balance due will not be reconciled by our worthless notes but only by the blood and flesh of our babies.
The professor just said, OK, develop your design element matrix in such a way as to express that concept with forms and materials in physical space. Finally, someone who understands.