Andrey Gorokhov I arrived in Vladimir having taken a bus from Moscow. It was midday, May, 8 2004. The sun was shining; it was hot.
Everything that I saw around me was in the state of an overwhelming catastrophe that had hit the city. The life seemed to be worn out; it was devastation and decline. Hysterically green grass and foliage were the only fresh and vivid things there.
I should confess that the catastrophic state of the buildings and the streets around Vladimir’s bus station did not repel me at all. I didn’t think: “Ugh! What horrible dirt it is!”
On the contrary, I started to tremble with excitement: so familiar those asphalted paths with nibbled edges, fallen down fences and lop-sided houses were. I understood that even real dumps and charred ruins were of a great interest for me. I longed just to take in my arms numerous pieces of red with rust tin, to touch cracked wooden walls and to dig up with a nail paint that was pealing off. Some strange truth of life was there. Or rather, the truth of death.
Naturally, I had enough cynical cense to diagnose myself – it was necrophilia, a passion for everything dying, fading, for ruins and dumps.
It was obvious that all the houses built up in the nineteenth century were declining and in ten or twenty years they would disappear at all.
It was impossible to restore them and I could not find any reason for that – the life, a part of which they had been, had come to its end long before.
Later I had an opportunity to make sure that the houses were inhabited by people, who dreamt to obtain new flats in big houses with central heating so that they could never see their old dwellings again.
I was told about it by an elderly couple, who had been living for more than forty years in the house that I considered to be a miracle of the architecture: it had iron bars in the modernist style and very beautiful window frames, even a narrow side door was decorated with cover plates resembling the capital architecture very much.
However, the house had rotted and living in it was a real torment. There was no heating, in winter inside it was as cold as outside; one of the walls could be easily pierced with a finger. Its restoration was impossible and, besides, no one wanted it.
Even without conversations with the inhabitants it was obvious: the houses were not long for that world. They were rather “dead bodies”.
And they were appreciated just as they were, but not as they had been a century before, when nobody among their current inhabitants could see them; as they could have been provided they had been thoroughly repaired.
It was especially noticeable in ruins and dumps, which had become landscapes.
Just imagine, in the street that goes down to the river three old cars without windows are standing. The grass has grown waist-high there; weak trees nestled up to them. Above the cars there is a house in the state of decline and above it, in the sky, a church dome, as a greeting from a tourist card.
What can be restored there?
The restoration will only kill “it”.
Why are the scenes of decline and aging so charming for us? Why do the wrinkles of an old, dead tree attract us so much? Why do the rust and old painting draw our attention? Why do sagging and spots please us more than clean surfaces?
I have some ideas about it. I have even invented my own ancient Greek word for this phenomenon – “necrogeophily” – the love to died landscapes.
The first explanation. The exotic factor. Old objects (naturally, everything, beginning with a nail in the street and ending with a big house or even a city planning, refers to the term “an object”) are made in a different manner in comparison with the present ones; they have other proportions, other forms. And some dynamic situation arises: an object is known in its form and function, but, at the same time, it is a bit different, this difference has been added to it, it’s “enriched”.
A conservative-patriotic shade is also possible: old things, as they are, possess more character, personality, and impressiveness. The reason for this might be as follows: modern designers and architectures are unscrupulous and mercenary amateurs.
The second explanation: “perceptive”. During the life time corners become obliterated, straight lines “relax”, colors fade and repairs change the form of the original object… In other words, during its service an object keeps its form in general but enriches it with irrational shades.
And we can easily speak about an enrichment of the form: if a wooden wall has been accidentally covered with stains of paint, there won’t be any enrichment. However, if a wall, made of vertical boards has been exposed to the rain for a long period, the colors have been washed away by water running downwards, the wood has become darker following the lines of the streams, all these highlight the verticality of the wall and its wooden origin. The rhythm and the color of the boards become more complicated.
I’ve seen one such wall in Cologne, which is polished by a small tree growing beside it. The wind wags its crown back and forth and it has made a wiped stripe on the wall. A slow speed of life tunes manmade objects up and makes them more harmonious, delicate, expressive.
The third explanation: “neurasthenic”.
May be, a passion for ruins is just a compensated reaction to something, for example, to the domination of everything new.
May be, those who get irritated by novelty, rudeness and clumsiness of a piece of plastic cut at random, will automatically like darkened wood and dimmed metal. Won’t they? May be, those who get irritated by a new life itself, can be consoled by artifacts of the old life. For instance, my attitude towards teenagers is absolutely negative, because they are not able to see and value everything that is beyond their reach. And this can be a precious thing for me. I work on a radio. Radio broadcasts do not leave anything afterwards, everything disappears in a moment. I’m disappointed by this fact very much and my mania to notice every minute hint of men’s activities stems from it.
The forth explanation: “essential”:
Can it be possible than the old objects show and tell us the histories of their lives? The traces left on objects are not at all accidental; they are not a mere decoration; they are the traces of the resistance to the environment.
A wall of a house gradually changes its form, the door can’t be opened and closed easily, hinges break and the angle of the old rickety doorframe resembles a bas-relief made of heterogeneous fastening materials. The bas-relief can look like a horrible composition that deserves to be thrown away, but in fact every interference of a repairman made sense, which is rather easy to notice provided you have some power of imagination.
Similarly, a broken handle of a chisel, glued and wound with a wire round its waist, shows the traces of hammer blows and it even keeps these blows. Having the chisel in our arms we do not see the objects that have been treated by it. But we can see how difficult it was and what it is like now. We can see how the craftsman’s arms have wiped it and how his hammer has made it look ugly.
And this is the very thing that a new object is deprived of. It’s still a question how a new object, a house, a street will “behave” in a harsh environment: will a shield be able to stand blows of the wind, will a door not break after it has opened and closed thousands of times… It seems that a new object can show nothing except for its obtrusive artificiality.
As for the old objects, they, on the contrary, have nothing except for what has stood and not broken. That is why you can look steadily at an old house; its every detail, every trace of the implacable time is a sign of survival and resistance. That is why the old objects are full of sense, they have acquired it during the years of their fight, or they have shown the pure sense that was presupposed by the creator.
The fifth explanation: “existential-eschatological”.
Dying houses and objects remind us of death, about temporality of everything that we consider to be live and present. An empty and neglected house with knocked out frames, with frightfully empty rooms, the floor of which is covered with rubbish, attracts and captivates us. Why? Because everything passes and practically nothing is left. After a house, after a man. Everything that is precious for a person lives with him and fades away after his death and loses not only its sense but also any recollection about it.
Any ruined house or a road, a blunt cutter and a cracked chisel possess some primestructure, primemateria that had been existing long before the man. A room turns out to be just, an empty container, a house is a sequence of these containers and the walls with holes. And a wall is just a plane.
In other words, we notice ruins after we have stopped to take care of them.
Might it be that a sight of a ruin, of rust and of a dump is a sight of the senseless eternity? The house disappears and turns into a ruin, which can collapse even more. However, it is only a quantitative change, because ruins can live for thousands of years. A dump will be a dump, iron turns to rust (Fe2O3), which is very strong, being chemically dead, and it will survive for thousands of years.
Surely a catastrophe will devastate any dump, ruin and even a rusty nail. But a catastrophe is the beginning of a new senseless eternity. A human being does not take a catastrophe into account: a dump/a ruin/rust reveal something that intimidates and captivates us as it is without any external cause, just because the time passes.
In spite of the fact that these explanations seem to be very convincing (mainly due to their massiveness), they are not explanations but means to divert your attention.
The thing is that not all forms “enriched by the time” are interesting. And those, which attract our looks, are not able to keep our attention for a long time (no one can imagine such a situation when they looked at them for hours). Besides, though the process of aging and absorption of the traces of life passing by is objective, it is not a law at all: I do like this old board with the residues of varnish, but others can hate it. Also, the traces of the passed life do not tell us anything special, and if they do, it is one well-known story: “I have been worn out during my service time”. And there is not any clarity and logics even in what concerns me myself.
It might seem that I’m got caught by everything that is old, peeled, scratched and crumpled. I like such music, I’m fond of contemplating dirty cups and if someone asks me a question “what’s dirt?”, at first I’m at a loss and can not find any answer.
At the same time I’m interested very much in old chisels, and much less in hammers, even though they are practically equal in their age and condition.
I think, that my own history can reveal some explanation to my passion for instruments, and especially to ones that treat the wood, and especially chisels, but not hammers or saws. My grandfather, Vasiliy Yanshin, used to be a doctor in the city of Kursk, and my other grandfather used to be a cabinet-maker in the city of Serpukhov. And a chisel is halfway between them: it’s a graceful instrument resembling a scalpel. However, this observation does not explain anything. It’s just a joke.
Obviously, this passion for everything old like any other passion is not easily traced in the mind of a person who feels it, in the structure of their neurosis. I’m inclined to think that there hides a neurosis behind any strong preference. There’s no single logical explanation to affection for classical rock, Mozart, girls with long noses, blondes, cats, doves, stamps or new Hollywood movies.
A passion for everything new is just the same thing. There isn’t any natural law that new is better or more interesting than old. And I do not dare to speak about the fact that it’s very difficult to make a definition of what is new. Nevertheless, there are a lot of people who would like to possess everything new, or even brand new, though they do not have any single idea about how this “new” looks like.
A passion for new, like any other, contains some selectivity, which very often turns to petulance; so, not everything that is new is right. The thing is not about the novelty as it is.
A confrontation of new and old in Vladimir is so striking because the space between them is filled with nothing: there’s no third road, anything neutral. Only horrible ruins on the one hand and horrible novelty on the other hand. A limited and dirty dump against a new and shining one. And nothing in between.
That very absence of neutrality shocked me most. Because it turns out that nothing but trash exists in our life. We can use this word not only when describing the contents of garbage bags but also when we speak about cheap and bright goods of a low quality.
I’ve seen so many of them in Vladimir. New buildings, new playbills, new shops and clothes at the girls, even the expressions of their faces could be called “new”.
Here “new” means not “freshly made”, but “made without any obligations to anything else”. Without any history, brand new, as if no “yesterday” and “tomorrow” could be.
It seemed that only I could feel the temporality and naivety of what was going on in the city and its inhabitants were not aware of it. I was eating soup in a huge plate, sitting at a table in a karaoke-cafe at a new street G.Moskovskaya.
The walls and the ceiling had been repainted lots of times. There were two main colors – red and yellow. Nothing brighter can be found in the nature. A big TV set suspended under the ceiling was showing a concert of Sher.
Fifteen minutes after my arrival a stout waitress asked politely if she should switch down the volume. She asked only me though other tables were occupied by visitors, mainly parents with children. I assured her that I did not mind and liked the concert.
Singing one song Sher appeared at the stage wearing a costume of Napoleon. Seminude boys slowly took her cloak off and the singer stayed in a spangled dress of a soviet champion in rhythmic swimming and a cocked hat.
Sher was singing only about love. The music was very loud and she was drawling the lyrics.
I was paralyzed. Suddenly I realized that Sher perfectly matched Vladimir’s central street, that the young audience resembled her very much and that she was the incarnation of everything new, interesting and free. In other words, Sher had come to take the place of ruined houses.
As for me, I regarded her performance to be old-fashioned and of nasty taste. The glam style of Las-Vegas that practically had not changed at all since the time of Moulin Rouge in Paris a hundred years before.
So, Sher’s performance was of the same age with my ruined houses. It’s only conditionally “new”. And such a loud music had been known for more than thirty years.
Glam or glamour is what has been made out of bijouterie.
Bijouterie is not brilliants but their plastic substitute, which due to a low production cost presupposes a lot of creativity, i.e. kitsch. If we imagine bijouterie in the form of clothes, make-up, behavior, music, lyrics, i.e. a simulation of aristocratism and luxury as a whole, we will have glamour.
In other words, it is as witty to shout that Sher is a charlatan as to stand beside a counter with bijouterie and shout that it’s not real brilliants but a dump.
Brilliants are not real, but their price is very low, and girls like it.
And you have to decide what you’ll choose: real brilliants or girls.
As for me I understand, that I have chosen girls.
Just recently I have been against any showing off, artificial passions and airs.
But let’s imagine such a situation: modern Vladimir’s inhabitants fall in love listening to Sher’s songs. A girl loves with all her heart. Then a young man leaves her, she listens to Sher for the last time and commits suicide.
It looks like she has given her life for a nuisance, and that’s why all her life and love were not real.
The same thing happens to bijouterie: hard working women have absurd wages (be it Paris of the 20s or today’s Vladimir) and they do not buy “real values” but some bright shells. They pay with their lives for a shining cover, don’t they?
Yes, they do.
And if they pay with their lives, than they are right, even if they are tasteless and poor citizens of a third world. First of all, they are people, and if people are ready to pay with their lives, to waste their lives for such a cover, than this shining cover possesses a real truth of life.
Of the same type are phenomena – like notorious dolls Barbie and fast-food McDonalds. Certainly, someone gains a lot of money by them as by any mass production of cheap things, but the problem is in fact that Barbie, MacDonald’s, Hollywood films and glossy magazines, soap operas and Sher are reclaimed by the miserable, coursed and sweated third world, by the world, sentenced to the hopeless provinces.
The third world is not press kitsch, glam, ersatz and glop on, no, the third world wants them sincerely and devotedly, and as a rule provides them for itself.
And I am not able to say “no”.
As my heart belongs to the third world.
I began to consider quickly who at most stands against Sher?
Van Gogh was the first I took into my head.
Wait, Van Gogh was a trasher of painting, a dauber, all nuances and conditions didn’t matter a lot for him. His works were not considered as high and elegant. They were just wild and botchy, brutally rough forgery of impressionists’ works and French artist Francois Mille. So we can observe there the same scheme of bijouterie. Van Gogh, suffered from alcoholism, epilepsy, schizophrenia and depression, wasn’t an elegant dandy at all.
As it is well-know, he paid with life for his skill.
What is the difference between Sheê and Van Gogh?
In the fact that Van Gogh was a charismatic and whip-cracker, he rushed and lived intensively, all his life he worked hard and sloped for the sake of art. Evidently Sher doesn’t work hard and doesn’t slope (in a visible manner of her production).
But let’s suppose that I’m a girl in tight-fitting checkered trousers, who is walking on holiday May evening along B.Moskovskaya Street in Vladimir.
How can I know who Van Gogh was?
How can anyone know it?
If I read that he was a genius, a madman and charismatic, even I don’t know such foreign words, what will be then? So it is not clear what is the discussion about, there’s no Van Gogh, there is no one Sher could be compared
If I have a little charisma and a little madness, I will understand that this is value, and I have my head and different interesting ideas, and I like Sher; we live only one time and this day is so wonderful (Van Gogh also felt these things), so it comes out…..if we sum up Sher and her suffering an loving fan-girls from Vladimir, we’ll have got Van Gogh. It seems that fan-girls are closer and more own to Van Gogh than the worships of this great artist’s paintings.
Is Sher Van Gogh of nowadays?
Feeling uncomfortable I went out of karaoke-bar to hot and dusty asphalt of B.Moskovskaya Street (after Sher examination, that I felt, I decrypted this name as “Babylon Lady”).
Prostitutes live in the hell, under the edge of humiliation and desperation; they spend their money, got by self-tortured, on a one-day scrap-heap – pop music, sweets, Hollywood films, cosmetics, kitsch and trash.
In the teeth of death a man chooses a scrap-heap.
According to the legend Van Gogh cut his ear covered into the duster and carried it to his lover in the bawdy-house. Most likely he didn’t cut his ear, but just scratched the ear soaking and with the tied noddle came to the bawdy-house, he visited it regularly.
For distracting from catastrophic thoughts, I tried to understand better what the difference between Sher and Van Gogh is
Van Gogh stood at the very beginning of a certain process (he had died before it began). The handcrafter Van Gogh went on blindly and understood a little, what he did and how. He searched an exception from the rule, the exception which would be right just only for him. It was like German says Sturm und Drag, the period of storm and strong pressure. Without being charismatic, getting involved into storm and strong pressure is useless.
Speaking about Sher we deal with overdo case, with an infinitely tightened final. Some uncles made Sher music; they know what effect they should attend. However we can’t exclude the fact that Sher not only likes her own music, but finds it innovative (the computer programs, which distort and fix up her voice, didn’t exist exactly some years ago).
The Van Gogh Sher is obtained from adding to music listener’s own existential situation. Paradoxically there is more Van Gogh streaks in Sher than in his works. The viewer of his picture doesn’t invest any anger or hurt or rejoicing into the Van Gogh work, the viewer trusts the culture which asserts that Van Gogh invested into his works maximum of life, hurt and horror. We like the picture from the distance, like vampire sucking the truth of life, hurt and horror supposedly involved in the picture.
On the contrary, the Sher song is in life. It exists for the listener, because he compares it with his life experience.
Sher’s song – in view of its complete existential helplessness – requires the listener to introduce into the listening to the music with his own existential drive that means to become in some sense someone like Van Gogh.
The matter of fact is not in primitivism: the art of modernism is the art of 20th century, and wanted to be simple, rough, aggressive, insulting and accessible, it means art not high, but low.
The picture of Matisse in comparison with the picture of Michelangelo is primitive and wretched. If you have illusions on Matisse, you should look at the works of German expressionists, for example Kirkhnera or Chekelia. This is a real scrap-heap, trash.
But Michelangelo was also a completely simple and realistic guy, he drunk, revealed corpses, bargained rich orders, deceived customers and attempted to counterfeit the Greek statues, which were dug that time. Michelangelo was also involved in the process of bijouterie manufacture.
And his ceiling of Sikstinski choir is completely glam. On the measures of the Revival epoch Michelangelo made the staggering cover of glossy periodical. It was precisely kitch, and his contemporaries (for example, Leonardo da Vinci) understood it: it is not possible to paint the holy virgin with the muscles of Schwarzenegger, and, generally, your homosexual orientation comes from each picture! But Michelangelo cursed them and meeting them tried to spit to their clothes. And there were corpses with the ripped open stomachs along the winches of Florence in the roadside ditches – permanent Civil War went on. And stench stood incredible.
The origin of bijouterie is, obviously, in the circumstance that there is no enough time, resources or talents for the production of present values in the necessary volume. Therefore ersatz is done, which is only outwardly similar to the real/essential/expensive object, but on the production is really cheaper. In the ideal its production does not require some special talents; it allows straight-line production.
By lapse of time the object is preserved in the culture, the technology becomes better and refines, the taste for delicate differences develops, “high” appears – high mode, high skill, high cuisine, high demands. For example, today men’s coats are extremely expensive. They demonstrate the high style of its owner; moreover, there is generally no other more decent and more worthy man’s cloths, than coat. But indeed the coat is a former frock-coat that was sewn at the factories in order to dress the factory-workers, who didn’t have money and rights to the custom-made camisoles and caftans. So coat is a trash, which for pair of hundreds years worked up a cultural fat and became exclusive. But became not finally: as a fact, Georgian and Uzbek peasants in the Soviet time one and all wear precisely coats. In Pakistan on the streets everybody was in coats. Coat is a neutral man’s clothing of the third world.
By the way, all these crackling foreign words, which fill price to goods in a shameless manner, like “exclusive” – also genuine bijouterie and trash.
Rock-music was borne from the incapacity of the British boys of the beginning of the 60th to make something similar to American rhythm- n -blouse. Rock is the strongly pressing on the brains primitive, admitted mass production and consumption.
Reggie- music in Jamaica is also an example of the self-service of the third peace. Recycling of one and the same music in Reggie, most likely, is the simply forced measure. There are no doubts that Reggie is the precisely sound of the third world. It can be noticed very well in cover of one of my favorite Reggie- albums – “Lamb’s bread” by Walker Silford.
In the middle of the yard, which completely could be located in the kilometer from the Vladimir’s bus station, one fallow danced, He didn’t have several teeth. His torn shoes, rolled to the elbow the trouser leg of checkered trousers, the expression of face – “life succeeded!” !”. The inoperative rusty stove taken out into the court stands next. There is a glass on it, above the glass is a female hand, entire with the watches and the rings.
Electronic music of the last years is also the phenomenon of the same order. People fell greedily upon to the technology of the kitsch production on their undemanding taste. In this case feelings, passions and hopes boiled around this music are completely real.
But in fact, electronic is not more than trash, slop-container. It is Diter Bolen for lonely marginals, who want to contradict themselves against the surrounding mass and do not see that first of all they are oriented to the expression of feelings and happiness of their internal peace like the despised by them dull mass do. Moreover, orient on accurately the same feelings and happiness.
A plastic bottle is a cheap and creative ersatz of a glass bottle. A printed book is a cheap and creative ersatz of a manuscript. A periodical is a cheap and creative ersatz of a book. A picture in a periodical is an ersatz of a text.
It looks like not money rule in the world, but the vital need to attain already known external effect by a cheaper method.
What is the third world?
It seems the world of poverty, tastelessness, without cultivation, culture. All absences of culture, elevation and refinement are usually explained by the scarcity of supplies, simply to say – money. In the third world there is general unemployment and trifle, there is nothing to do there, only to vegetate, toil and stare at the void. To feed by simple fruits of own hands and propagate as duck-weed.
To arrive for warping off in the third world as the rich tourist, to observe nature, old monuments – it’s OK… in the complex conditions to ride across the Sahara – it is extreme, it even tickles nerves, there are Bedouins there, the deserted tanks, filled up by sand, pirates on the jeeps… but to be the inhabitant of the third world – it is the intolerable disgrace. However, the third world is received in vain as the geographical concept. The effect of the third world can appear anywhere.
What is this effect?
I think it is a moment of the explosion-like occurring of bijouterie, which is frequently accompanied by the disappearance of some cultural institutes and practice which are no longer built-in in the daily life. Nothing stand after them – to make pots or carpets in Nepal in the 20th century was already unnecessarily, pottery and weaving factories full markets by their production, western ethnographical museums and universities had got the pair of models, why further pull cat for the tail? In the villages masters of potters and carpet makers rapidly lost themselves into drinking, the craft disappeared for one-two generations. At the moment of its disappearance this craft was received as the annoying survival of wild old times, as something unnecessary, even – harmful, distracting from the survival, prices on pots/carpets felt down, they became worthless goods, rubbish.
This is the well-known feature of the third world, let’s call it a background: efforts no one needs to produce with primitive method some trifles, which has already got practically contemporary nothing equivalent.
The presence of this “contemporary nothing equivalent” depreciates all “survivals of primitive old times” in the eyes of inhabitants, effectively liquidates connection with the past, tearing up the chain of the continuity of teachers and students.
The spread of “contemporary nothing equivalent” is received as release, as revolution. Maybe, in the revolutionary epochs the effect of the third world is shown especially strongly: that was earlier given by the labor, now is approachable for everybody and besides almost for nothing!
The excited defenders of old times, the guardians of taste and customs, receive the “contemporary nothing equivalent ” as kitsch, insipidity and trash. As homeric stupidity, cheap plebeian trick. As an automobile instead of a horse vehicle. Or frock-coat instead of the camisole. Or pistol instead of the craftsmanship of battle by silent weapon. Or knavish novel instead of the Scripture. Or convey instead of the handicraft production. Or catering instead of the domestic food…There is no end and edge to this list: Coca-Cola- lemonade instead of the juice or the water, pizza from the kiosk instead of breakfast, taken from the house, school education instead of home, calculator instead of the slide rule… After revolution 1917 the situation of the third world arose in Russia: ruin plus drive of the appearance something radically new and cheap.
The USA was torn from the “old world” (the one destroyed by two world wars) and not obliged to the latter in no way, i.e. old streets and houses, old aristocracy and class prejudices did not press there. The effect of the third world, which did not know natural enemies, was industrialized, after the second world war McDonalds, Coca-Cola, rock-n-roll, Hollywood and all of this type spread all over the world. The industrialized effect of the third world was exported.
Don’t I like plastics? Don’t I like McDonald’s?
Doesn’t electrical lamp appeal? But indeed it was invented and successfully perceived by people, without any regret abandoned candles, gas lamps and splinters, practically simultaneously with Coca-Cola and catering.
What resists the industrialized slop-container?
Rolled by the decades (or centuries) of cultural practice and, what is more important, used now, the product, which earlier was the same worthless forgery.
In the times of strong social cataclysms in our such hurrying time trash can become old, without becoming deliberate and sight.
A monument in Vladimir.
The former Soviet post (today it stands on the edge of automobile parking, near the street leading to the blind alley). Its ferroconcrete part is driven into the ground. To the concrete pig by steel rod attached wooden log.
The laid was posted. There was no force to tear the ferroconcrete stake out of the ground. Therefore the wooden part of the construction was sawn down precisely in that place, where the reinforced concrete begins. The stump remained.
The ferroconcrete stake pressed strongly wooden stump, without giving no opportunity to saw it off and to reject. In the old life the ferroconcrete was received as the groundless caddish, industrial equivalent of wood, after the ferroconcrete – besides its cheapness and strength – nothing stood. Brutal ferroconcrete was something anti-natural, anti-wooden. But here it saved the piece of wood, carried out it, so to speak, on its body.
In the following act of destruction concrete and wooden pig will perish together.
The union of city and village? Men and women? Damp and boiled? New and old?
Generally speaking, this non-fundamentional destruction of old stake is a typical “effect of the third world”. A good bargain.
I catch myself that I can see around generally nothing other, except the dump of different dumps of the different degree of remoteness.
If the civilization care of the coats culture, then this slop-container flowers and grows into the entire spectrum – from the folksy coats to the exclusive ones. If the civilization doesn’t care of something, like for wooden houses in Vladimir, it is pulled down and is converted into the fact that slop-container is called.
Certainly in the case of these infinitely dear and native lopsided houses we deal with a lot of utilitarian production, the standard Russian rural building, which supported a certain minimum level of decency. It was “simply and angry” on the measures of the 19 centuries.
The terrible ones, which are today constructed on the place of the demolishing old houses is simple and angry on the contemporary measures, this is Sher. But people will live here, will love and die.
As it has always been.
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Translation from Russian from the kind sanction of the author.
Author’s site: http://muzprosvet.ru
The primary source in Russian http://www.kulebaki.ru/trash.html
Andrey Gorokhov © 2000-2003 German Wave
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