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Showing posts from October 21, 2018

on the decline of storytelling

As I went out one evening – not really just one evening, but a dateable dusk, with my son, Adam, here in Paris, October 14 – I came across a number of photographs pinned to a brick wall on Rue des blancs manteaux. It was a warm Sunday. Rue des blanc manteaux always has a crowd going down it on Sundays, when the automobiles are banned,   and this always brings out a number of buskers and beggars as well, looking for pocket change or at least an audience. Adam was interested in this scene. We passed a harpist entangled in his reverb and speculated about the difficulty of moving his huge instrument – which towered over his sitting figure - around the city. We passed a painter, or at least someone who painted vaguely impressionistic street scenes, the kind of thing spawned by such memories of impressionism as those sustained in the heads of tourists, who might think that this school of art is still of current interest. And perhaps, I thought, their interest in the work might be their r