| I screwed up the text, by printing the first section twice. It's a good section however, and worth repeating. I'd print the rest of the poem below, because it's one of the great diatribes against REASON and RATIONALITY, but it seems I can't because it's too long. There are copies of it on the internet, however.... The background is the stairway in a typical, classic Parkdale WELFARE HOTEL. It's been renovated recently, but the walls still sweat nearly a century of madness and despair. The soundtrack is from Mahler's LIED VON DER ERDE, "The Drinking Song of Earth's Misery," with demented apes howling on broken tomb-stons under the full moon. It's a very classic performance by Bruno Walter with the Philharmonic in 1930s Vienna, a doomed city, certainly a doomed orchestra (because it was largely Jewish). All very appropriate, very Parkdalian (a doomed neighborhood).... This clip especially needs to be redone, because the text is also too crowded. I like the stairs, however. I'm sorry the new landlord removed the ash-trays from the vestibule, since they added to the grittiness. The stairs There's something purgatorial about the stairs - no elevator in a walk-up. The daily, probably several times daily, punishment, just for living there, just for LIVING.... Many clients did, some still do. More would, but even this DUMP has been GENTRIFIED. "TRANFORMED!" Where WILL the people GO? |
