Member-only story
Stop Trying to Be Remembered
Instead, fight for what you believe is true
“They have to be there!”
Alan Sorrell was deep in an argument with his team. He knew homes were buried underneath the sand in the Star Carr Metholithic site in North Yorkshire, England. He knew it. So, he put them in his drawings
Can you imagine what it’s like to know you are right and be shot down anyway?
Sorrell was no novice to reconstructions of architectural sites. Nor was he an amateur at art itself. He’d been trained for this. He’d practiced for this. What he’d put on paper was perfect. At least, according to him.
It wouldn’t matter. When the argument was over, the master artist had no choice. He retreated to his office. He erased the buildings. The “experts” told him to leave them out.
Fame is a cruel and mean thing. It recognizes with a flash in the pan one moment and forgets with a bolt of indifference the next. Others artists who created similar work to Sorrell’s carved their name in history. Sorrell himself never did. Was his whole life a series of incidents like the one above? Did the “experts” keep him on the back burner?
I wonder if he ever worried about that.
