Old New Message?

Why keep the old when you have the new? Well it never fails to surprise me here in Manchester how every back street, back alley, out of the way avenue or edge of the city route keeps coming up with a new announcement. Like today we have an area near my new apartment named Spinningfields. In this district it's very state-of-the-art, very futurist with construction that makes me say WOW! If you walk behind Armani, past Nicky Clarke and Flannels you come to an old red brick building that has the words engraved in stone above the top that declares, 'working men's church'. Next to it is a newer construction site that surely will be more glass, more steel and more 21st century living. Yet I wondered for a moment as I look up and see the old buildings. I see the men on cloth caps, hammering, loving, shaping, molding the building the way it should be. They would carve etchings like the name, like faces, like flowers into hard timeless stone that had been quarried from the hills of Manchester's surrounding areas. They would add a window because it had to be there. They would make a door a certain way because it felt right. They would create stone entrances because stone just looked amazing and felt powerful. They did things because in those older days, it felt right, it just had to be. Cars were designed to attract the eye. Motorbikes were designed to look cool. Clothes were designed to be what they were and look good at the same time. The old had its place, it just was and so were those that created the old. Yet when I look at the new with wonderment, when I sit and watch the men building with headphones in, listening to whatever they listen to, taking instruction from the designer of the glass box, the new-age constructs it all feels so robotic, not built to last, built to be replaced at a later date. The men know that so they just do the job, it feels like its not there forever, it feels like a statement of fashion rather that a statement of mans life itself. But can the old exist amongst the new? Of course, the old is left to stand, un-noticed but as a reminder of what was, it shares it stories, its lessons from the past, it history, it's chitter-chatter of the long gone men that once sat on its beams eating cheese, bread and drinking red wine. Those days are reflections of times been, times past but they leave lesson, messages for us. They remind us of pace, of change of the semi-permanence of life itself and how the old will pass. Yet the old was once new and the new will become old. The only real difference it appears today is the pace of Zoomanity is fast, racing like a satellite out of control yet looking like it has real purpose. Why keep the old when you can have the new? It's obvious isn't it, you can see it can't you? It's not for the purpose of looking back and wishing for days of old, no, rather to remind us and share with us how things, men, minds were at certain times and how change comes. Change is certain, it always is, it always has been and it always will be. Some world powers see themselves is invincible yet so did world powers of old. Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome ... they saw themselves as lasting forever ... where are they now? Tiny places that people go on holiday to. This is not to say they are not important, they are I am just illustrating that change happens and will happen again. Can your Zoomanity last, will it last, will change come to you so fast that you simply don't expect it? Life and time share with us messages from the past. Old vs new... there is always a message. Just a though, just an observation. I'd love to know your opinion, let me know what you think. Alan Forrest Smith www.EscapefromZoomanity.com