Next decision -- what to show? So I read Howl by Allen Ginsberg and decided on 3 paintings of the East Village that evoke the poetry and wild side that is still sometimes present, but mostly fading into the mists. Reading Ginsberg's words from 1956, they are still as risque and cutting as they were back in the 50s. Perhaps we have come full circle, down into the maze of urban bohemian "angelheaded hipsters" "smoking in the supernatural darkness of coldwater flats" "contemplating jazz" and back to an uptight society pretending nothing's wrong. Business as usual. No global warming here! No threat of swine flu, oh no. We don't even need health care. Let's go shopping!
St Brigid is an 1850s Irish famine church saved from destruction by the people of the East Village in 2007. Ochre yellow, it sits on the southeast corner of Tompkins Square. When it was scheduled to be torn down, the people took action. What finally saved the church was an anonymous donor. Renovation is supposed to begin, meanwhile it is still closed, and still standing!
And for those "who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
whomever come who may, "
--- Allen Ginsberg, Howl
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