Mining snake skin

I went to see the Sundance Institute's new offices in Park City on Thursday. They recently moved from their downtown Salt Lake City office and I wondered if they were ready to have an open house, but I guess they had to do it before they were too busy getting everything ready for the festival.

When I got directions, I was told to go to the second gray building at the orange construction fence. What I saw when I first arrived were 2 tin-looking buildings, boxes basically, made of the corrugated metal that everyone uses for tool sheds. But it was very aged, faded into different shades of gray.

The buildings were old mining buildings from when Park City was first built for mining. They had been completely gutted and rebuilt inside, but used some of the old wood on the counter and door frames. Inside they were very modern in design.

I thought the juxtaposition of the aged and historic shell with the modern interior was beautiful, in concept and in execution. I love thinking about how things change and what really makes up identity of anyone or anything. If we change the outside does it change the inside? If we change the inside does it change the outside? What degree of change makes an old thing new? And I especially love the idea that everyone and everything leaves a story behind it.

I love Dave Eggers book "A heartbreaking work of staggering genius." In one part he talks about how people change and how they should or shouldn't feel about who they used to be. "These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours, days, or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it's of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it."