Dallas and the Angel of History
Today, Dallas is a wonderful place to be. The locals as well as the visitors can find something to love here, any time of day or night. It’s one of the largest cities in the country, and boasts a multicultural population, making for ongoing cultural dialogues that are always heady and always in process. There are plenty of attractions for visitors of all ages, and there is also a splendid alternative scene, making for daylight enjoyments and a multitude of pleasures after dark. Visiting is very easy, as hotels can be quite lovely, and enormously accommodating.
One of the more interesting intersections here is certainly culture, and one of them is history. Most people remember the Kennedy assassination, or at least are aware that it happened in Dallas. It’s one of those black holes in history, where an event that happens in a place is so stunning, and affects so many lives, that it starts to behave as if it were its own place in time. We always go back to the event when we hear about it, and this creates a strange sense of vertigo, but it always means that we are participants in history. We are able to continue to feel the force long after the event has passed, and this gives our own present an uncanny power.
It becomes even more complex and fascinating when the iconic moment reveals itself as mutable. We remember the Zapruder film, although it’s common knowledge that there are many films of the terrible moment. When new video is released, we may not exactly re-remember the event, but a perspective is added to the weight that we carry in our minds. This suggests that the past has a kind of elasticity, and that the present is something we can participate in, and Dallas today, in its best moments, demonstrates community participation in a way the Kennedy would have liked to imagine.



