Stonehenge

‘It’s only architecture. It’s not religion.’ [Robert Venturi] To go to Stonehenge, and watch the fancy-dress ersatz neodruids stalk from perimeter to center, is to be struck that Venturi has this exactly the wrong way about. Not that it'd be worth mocking the new druids. I daresay their part-researched, part-invented ritualism is meaningful for them; and if it won’t last then there’s no harm in it. Perhaps it seems particularly gauche to perform these invented, evanescent rites under the sightless solidity of the stones themselves; but on the other hand it’s only religion. It’s not architecture.