There’s a metaphor here somewhere. Art in the interstices of the rent gap. According to Google Street View, this space has been vacant for years – even before the pandemic. The last time a business operated out of this address, it was Zipcar, itself a symptom of a recomposed post-crash economy. Platforms for recirculating value. Prints and misprints.
I’d like to say I read this, but it was a video on my feed. The Romans chose January 1 as the new year because of Janus, the two-faced god of the threshold, at once looking forward and back. But they didn’t want a calendar to self-reflect. They wanted to know when to tax people and they wanted people to know when they’d be taxed.
There’s romance in the urban experience; it’s easy to forget the actual romantics hated it. It’s even easier to forget why the city was victorious.
Here’s an excerpt from a poem by the Reverend George Crabbe titled ‘The Village’:
“I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms For him that gazes or for him that farms; But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace The poor laborious natives of the place, And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray, On their bare heads and dewy temples play; While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts, Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts: Then shall I dare these real ills to hide In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?”
I read this in a book on ecosocialism. I think we’re yet to fully disentangle the nostalgic tinsel from our critiques of modernity.
Let it be resolved: more fun this year. More day trips. More sights, more sounds. More color. More joy.
Let it be resolved: clearer purpose this year. More balance. Going where the energy is. Better distribution of time and effort. More community. Smiling at strangers. Saying hello.
“No, cast by Fortune on a frowning coast, Which can no groves nor happy valleys boast; Where other cares than those the Muse relates, And other shepherds dwell with other mates; By such examples taught, I paint the cot, As truth will paint it, and as bards will not: Nor you, ye poor, of lettered scorn complain, To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; O’ercome by labour and bowed down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruined shed? Can their light tales your weighty griefs o’erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?”
(George Crabbe, The Village)