Leningrad, 1978 -- a typical Soviet docu-propaganda fare, to be sure, which is why, in some sense, those unable to understand the voiceover narrative here are at a certain distinct advantage in comparison with those unable not to understand it yet unwilling to turn off the elegiacally muzak-ey soundtrack completely. And yet -- a beautiful city, where I was born and spent the first thirty years of my life -- which means, in a way, that I spent my entire, whole first life there, and have been on my second one for a while now; which, needless to say, is quite a bit of a luxury and a privilege. When I was a little child, I remember, I thought -- while walking, or waddling, next to my parents at Leningrads eternal and ever-lingering pre-sunset jour along the Neva embankment at the latters most picturesque and gazing at the eerily serene and generally otherworldly man-made confluence of water and stone -- how unlikely it would be for any bad people to be born or at least to continue being bad people for any length of time in a city that harmoniously beautiful and ennobling from the perspective of one individual immortal souls enrichment... Well, you know, I was a little child then, as I said, and had no idea it is in the most overtly beautiful of cities that the worst of humanity does flourish -- in part, as an unworded, unformed, reflexive protest of an inherently stunted soul against the onslaught of beauty on its silty, swampy shores. I mean, just look at Putin... or dont. But oh man. What a beautiful city it was in which to be young.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 23:48:10 +0000
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