Tilting at Windmills
28/04/2010 3:48:00 p.m.
WELLINGTONIANS need to hold their tongues.
I think we’re a headstrong bunch and every strong head is full of strong ideas. And when there’s a public debate about anything, like “what to do with the broken wind turbine up in Brooklyn”, then people here just open their mouths wide and let the wind blow their tongues around. And that can be dangerous in a place like Wellington where rooftops, not just puny tongues, can sail through the air on a bad day.
I must admit that in discussions about the wind turbine, my personal view was if it’s stuffed and out of date then tear the damn thing down, or get the Army to blow it apart with explosives, and then come up with something decent. I felt annoyed when people called it an “icon” and wanted to keep it “for all eternity”. To me icons are things like the earliest human art, scratched on a cave wall in South Africa 70,000 years ago. Yeah, keep that. In contrast, the turbine is 17 years old. An icon? Gimme a break.
I trudged up a 20-minute goat track in Polhill Reserve in order to confirm my views. The Brooklyn Turbine stands in a bleak, lonely place whipped by cold winds. Up close it’s a big beast, a pristine 30-metre-high peroxide-white tower with an engine-house thing at the top, and a propeller with three long blades. The blades look like colossal tongues nailed together at their roots. Paralysed – and silent – it stands tall in the face of everything the world can throw at it. Later, strolling round Brooklyn shops, I discovered beautiful blue glazed tiles of the wind turbine inlaid in the footpath. And there’s a “Windmill” bar and cafe, too. My hard heart began to soften. I felt a bit like Don Quixote, that short-sighted, anorexic man in his 50s who took his lance and galloped full-tilt at a windmill in La Mancha, thinking it was some horrible giant. He and his horse got hoisted into the air on one of the mill’s blades and then dumped heavily on the ground again, where he began to see reality (finally).
So, dammit, my mind has now done a complete turnaround. I now think the turbine should just be kept and repaired. After all, it generates enough power for 80 houses and has strong local support; and, hey, the first blonde airhead to make good! On its own, though, the turbine’s a tedious, clinical thing to look at. It needs something else with it. Something that fits the cultured, learnèd milieu of nearby Brooklyn. How about a sculpture based on what the Nobel committee called “the best work of fiction ever written?” Yes...
Just imagine a full-blown bronze statue of Don Quixote sitting astride his horse Rocinante, and, lugging along on his donkey, his oafish but honest (“What giant?”) Squire Sancho Panza. When tourists get wind of that, we’ll have a real money-spinner.
I think we’re a headstrong bunch and every strong head is full of strong ideas. And when there’s a public debate about anything, like “what to do with the broken wind turbine up in Brooklyn”, then people here just open their mouths wide and let the wind blow their tongues around. And that can be dangerous in a place like Wellington where rooftops, not just puny tongues, can sail through the air on a bad day.
I must admit that in discussions about the wind turbine, my personal view was if it’s stuffed and out of date then tear the damn thing down, or get the Army to blow it apart with explosives, and then come up with something decent. I felt annoyed when people called it an “icon” and wanted to keep it “for all eternity”. To me icons are things like the earliest human art, scratched on a cave wall in South Africa 70,000 years ago. Yeah, keep that. In contrast, the turbine is 17 years old. An icon? Gimme a break.
I trudged up a 20-minute goat track in Polhill Reserve in order to confirm my views. The Brooklyn Turbine stands in a bleak, lonely place whipped by cold winds. Up close it’s a big beast, a pristine 30-metre-high peroxide-white tower with an engine-house thing at the top, and a propeller with three long blades. The blades look like colossal tongues nailed together at their roots. Paralysed – and silent – it stands tall in the face of everything the world can throw at it. Later, strolling round Brooklyn shops, I discovered beautiful blue glazed tiles of the wind turbine inlaid in the footpath. And there’s a “Windmill” bar and cafe, too. My hard heart began to soften. I felt a bit like Don Quixote, that short-sighted, anorexic man in his 50s who took his lance and galloped full-tilt at a windmill in La Mancha, thinking it was some horrible giant. He and his horse got hoisted into the air on one of the mill’s blades and then dumped heavily on the ground again, where he began to see reality (finally).
So, dammit, my mind has now done a complete turnaround. I now think the turbine should just be kept and repaired. After all, it generates enough power for 80 houses and has strong local support; and, hey, the first blonde airhead to make good! On its own, though, the turbine’s a tedious, clinical thing to look at. It needs something else with it. Something that fits the cultured, learnèd milieu of nearby Brooklyn. How about a sculpture based on what the Nobel committee called “the best work of fiction ever written?” Yes...
Just imagine a full-blown bronze statue of Don Quixote sitting astride his horse Rocinante, and, lugging along on his donkey, his oafish but honest (“What giant?”) Squire Sancho Panza. When tourists get wind of that, we’ll have a real money-spinner.
