The Death of Spock and the End of Manny's
Feb. 27th, 2015 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonStrange when I left for work this morning Mister Spock was still alive and the last corner of Virginia-Highlands not designated a douchebag housing zone was still in business. But that's the way the world works. If you're feeling bad though, just remember a good chunk of you are reading this where such things, instead of say contracting Ebola or the attention of ISIL, is considered a bad day.
But alas, Leonard Nimoy is not just an actor from a distant age called TV, but rather has become a late 20th century western world archetype of Apollonian reason. His character on Star Trek served as a psychopomp to a prospective humanity as it voyaged from petty tribalism into space faring voyagers. What people find themselves reacting to (it seems to me) is the death of not just what appears to be a genuine nice guy who was blessed with right combination of work, will and luck, but a symbol of adventurous logic.
On the other hand, the word is that a beloved watering hole of not just our city's bohemian theatre/lit scene but the unofficial headquarters of its Democratic Party is going to be shut down to make way for yet another duplex town-home/condo with a FroYo and some sort of Tapas bar no doubt.
Well, that's how life in the 21st century works. The decades long cultural phenomena of white-flight, where middle-class working families moved out of the cities to the suburbs, ended. A new cultural paradigm emerged, the 90s dream of telecommuting (where middle class office jobs were going to be performed at home) became outsourcing instead. Eventually, a dwindling middle class found it cheaper to live in the city again or found themselves tired of living in a cultural void. So back to the city they've come and all those ghettos the hipsters made 'artsy' are now prospective properties to be developed. And hey, it's not like the developers will have to pay much in taxes or use any of their profits to say improve (or expand) the roads and utilities that will be needed to absorb the population of a small town into a one block area.
Yet, it's not the death of a dream my fellow artists, because if folks could produce works of beauty and truth through the darkest ages of mankind, then believe me when I say we (by which I mean our works) will rise over the cookie-cutter architecture and the cult of mediocrity it houses.
Resurgens, mother-fuckers, a thousand town homes won't stop me from writing the next book or seeing your next play. Every drop of magic this city bulldozes, I will return a thousand fold across the page.
What will you do?
Anyway, that's my Friday night rant I guess, let me end this with this, perhaps Mister Nimoy's finest work:
http://youtu.be/AGF5ROpjRAU
But alas, Leonard Nimoy is not just an actor from a distant age called TV, but rather has become a late 20th century western world archetype of Apollonian reason. His character on Star Trek served as a psychopomp to a prospective humanity as it voyaged from petty tribalism into space faring voyagers. What people find themselves reacting to (it seems to me) is the death of not just what appears to be a genuine nice guy who was blessed with right combination of work, will and luck, but a symbol of adventurous logic.
On the other hand, the word is that a beloved watering hole of not just our city's bohemian theatre/lit scene but the unofficial headquarters of its Democratic Party is going to be shut down to make way for yet another duplex town-home/condo with a FroYo and some sort of Tapas bar no doubt.
Well, that's how life in the 21st century works. The decades long cultural phenomena of white-flight, where middle-class working families moved out of the cities to the suburbs, ended. A new cultural paradigm emerged, the 90s dream of telecommuting (where middle class office jobs were going to be performed at home) became outsourcing instead. Eventually, a dwindling middle class found it cheaper to live in the city again or found themselves tired of living in a cultural void. So back to the city they've come and all those ghettos the hipsters made 'artsy' are now prospective properties to be developed. And hey, it's not like the developers will have to pay much in taxes or use any of their profits to say improve (or expand) the roads and utilities that will be needed to absorb the population of a small town into a one block area.
Yet, it's not the death of a dream my fellow artists, because if folks could produce works of beauty and truth through the darkest ages of mankind, then believe me when I say we (by which I mean our works) will rise over the cookie-cutter architecture and the cult of mediocrity it houses.
Resurgens, mother-fuckers, a thousand town homes won't stop me from writing the next book or seeing your next play. Every drop of magic this city bulldozes, I will return a thousand fold across the page.
What will you do?
Anyway, that's my Friday night rant I guess, let me end this with this, perhaps Mister Nimoy's finest work:
http://youtu.be/AGF5ROpjRAU