Congratulations, twist, on the occasion of Doom’s 3rd anniversary. I’ve been here off and on since almost the beginning, and hope to hang around on the sidebar and with the occasional (mostly non-opinionated) post for a long time to come.
We and our housing blogger colleagues have had some luck recently playing at being minor Prophets of Housing Doom, but our efforts are nothing in comparison to earlier masters like the poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973). In 1967 he wrote one masterpiece titled "City Without Walls" [1] that reads more clearly now than it ever did 42 years ago:
…
‘A key to the street each convict has,
but the Asphalt Lands are lawless marches
where gangs clash and cops turn
robber-barons: reckless he
who walks after dark in that wilderness.…
‘The week-end comes that once was holy,
free still, but a feast no longer,
just time out, idiorhythmic,
when no one cares what his neighbor does:
now newsprint and network are needed most.‘What they view may be vulgar rubbish,
what they listen to whitless noise,
but it gives shelter, ……
‘Quite soon computers may expel from the world
all but the top intelligent few,
the egos they leisure be left to dig
value and virtue from an invisible realm
of hobbies, sex, consumption, vague‘tussles with ghosts. Against Whom
shall the Sons band to rebel there,
where Troll-Father, Tusked-Mother,
are dream-monsters like dinosaurs
with a built-in obsolescence?…
‘if all has gone phut in the future we paint,
where, vast and vacant, venomous areas
surround the small sporadic patches
of fen or forest that give food and shelter,
such home as they have, to a human remnant,‘stunted in stature, strangely deformed,
numbering by fives, with no zero,
worshipping a ju-ju General Mo,
in groups ruled by grandmothers,
……
‘Still monied, immune, stands Megalopolis:
happy he who hopes for better,
what awaits Her may well be worse. . . .’
________________________
Notes and References
[1]: W. H. Auden: Collected Poems. ed Edward Mendelson. Franklin Center, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1976. pp. 562-565
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John-
Auden can make words sit up and beg. This is as good a description of most MSM stuff as I have read:
To a large extent I believe that we have been trying to do here at Doom is to battle the “pernicious foe of whitless noise”. We may not be winning, but at least we are in there swinging.