A friend and i went on a bike ride, which we started by riding light rail. One of the (many) great things about Seattle's light rail line is that it can extend the range of bike rides. I can do 30, 50, 60 mile rides in the south end that were just not reachable before. I can reach towns and neighborhoods, roads and trails that i could never get to. I even managed to ride to the Carbon River ranger station at Mount Rainier in one day without taking a car. Because of this system I can experience places that were not available to me before. And i can take people with a shorter cycling range to places that i've enjoyed. It's great.
Another great thing about the light rail is the large amount of public artwork that graces the stations. On the recent ride in question, i got off the train at the Sea Tac airport station, and was face to face with an beautiful piece of artwork called Flying Sails.
There are two large pieces, one at each end of the platform. Each is a collection of spinning, mirrored, rectangles making up one of the two eponymous "sails". The individual panels can turn and twist in the wind, since the station is partially open to the elements. Most of the shiny rectangles have a word carved into them. One of the sails, at the north end of the platform, contains mirrored panels that have Pacific Northwest Native American tribe names carved on them.
The mirror panels in the south sail have the names of various cities around the world carved into them.
I really like it!Since i liked the artwork and it is about Salish tribes and about geography, i was drawn towards it like a moth to a flame. I immediately noticed a few cities i have been in. Regensburg, Rouen and Brno, caught my attention first; briefly the thought of their similar latitude in northern Europe went through my head. I lined up the reflected photo of my bike at the top of this post for my friends outside of Karlsruhe, another city i have visited which i know the latitude of.
As i stood staring at it, i couldn't help but notice that there was a man hanging from a harness in the middle of the artwork. He said he was the artist who created it, and he was cleaning it "because it was not intended to be outside". He looked down at us and said, slyly, "Have you figured it out yet?"
Not willing to bite his hook, i just shrugged and told him i really liked it.
He told me the hidden secret was that they were all cities on the same longitude or latitude as Seattle. I quickly asked him why Innsbruck was not there, since when i was in downtown Innsbruck in 1999 i noticed a monument with the latitude on it: 47.2°, which is Seattle's south suburbs (the location of the airport) -- you don't really get any closer than that.
But curiously he said, "no, Innsbruck is way too far south".
There were a lot of cities i recognized. I noticed that Budapest was not there. But Karlsruhe was. I didn't say anything else, but i know that Karlsruhe is not on 47, nor is Brno, Regensburg, Wissembourg, Metz or Rouen. It was kind of uncomfortable, especially for someone who suffers from perfectionism as badly as i do. I was embarrassed for him!
Well, we took a bunch of photos of the artwork and pedaled off and had a great bike ride. But when i got home, i couldn't stop the data geek in me -- i did some research and crunched some numbers. First i took the latitude and longitude of every city on the sail and entered them into a spreadsheet.
The stated idea of the artwork is that the sail contains the names of cities either on the same latitude line or longitude line as Seattle. There are not many cities in the world on 127 degrees West longitude. Sacramento is, but south of there it's all open ocean, and a couple of small towns in northern Canada. Those are on the sail. But my concern was with the latitude cities -- so i graphed only those cities.
So next i put Seattle (green circle) and Vancouver BC (blue triangle) on the graph. I also put a dotted line of Seattle's metro area from north of Everett.to Olympia. And i found a bunch of European & Asian cities that actually are on the same latitude as Seattle, about 47.4° N, i graphed those with a dark red dash.
This graph showed me what really happened. The calculation for determining the cities in the artwork used the latitude of Vancouver BC (49.3° N), instead of Seattle's latitude! He missed by well over a hundred miles. The artist made an error which got literally chiseled into stone!
I imagine he just punched in 49 instead of 47 when he was searching for cities. Easy error. Terrifying to a perfectionist, but not really that big a deal.
(It did occur to me that that perhaps the artwork was originally planned to be in Vancouver, but at the last minute it went to Seattle instead so he just changed 2 or 3 panels. The "not supposed to be outdoors" comment suggests that there was a change in plans, but the tribes would also change And when he spoke to me he was really quite emphatic; he seemed to believe it was accurate. And he told me Innsbruck was too far south. It's not, it's almost as exact as is possible.
The problem isn't that i can't see past the error to see the beauty -- i can, i quite enjoy it; i'm very glad it's there. I'm capable of holding two ideas at the same time. I thrill at the beauty of the art and marvel at the accomplishment of creating it while being frustratingly aware of the error. Too aware, i admit. The whole thing made me think a lot about my perfectionism.
One of the big problems with perfectionism is fear. Fear that prevents accomplishment. This guy jumped in and made something amazing. Yes, he made an error and that error is permanent. But he didn't let worry stop him. He avoided the Brain Crack of perfectionism. And he created something great.
On the way home i managed to get a good photo of both of us reflected in this wonderful artwork.
