The former Church of the Redeemers off Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn. Once proud, and popular even as to have the local subway stop named for it is a sad wreckage now. A jumbled mess of dry rot rust, and broken stained glass.
I've always felt there was something especially gloomy about an abandoned place of worship. That, and run down or abandoned play-lands or fair grounds.
I mean in both there was so much human emotion invested. So much energy imprinted on those stones. Hopes, and yearnings in the church thrills, and release at the fair grounds.
Where is it all now?
Did G-d leave when the last worshiper was evicted?
You bet it's creepy.
This sez that one day our cathedrals will be empty abandoned ruins. "Dust to dust". All of the saints prophets, and scriptures forgotten. The same for the Malls, and fair grounds.
Our gawds fantasies, and our cultures blips on the screen.
How fragile we, and all our makings are. We may be the only animal stupid enough to live in the past the present, and the future.
This is why we're so nuts.
Maybe we should live in the now, and revel in the now like everybody else.
Sermon over.
Btw if ya going to start a church make sure you stay relevant to the times, and your parishioners. Pay ya damned tax's too or you'll end up like the poor bastards above!
Ya got some nice posts goin' here Uncle. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAs you know I want to build a Temple of the Beautiful Boy. The first problem is that it takes major financing, including real estate with the attendant burden of property taxes, materials and construction, and arrangements for long-term maintenance. It really calls for some sort of institution. Basically you need a substantial community of supporters to make it happen. Where am I going to find enough like-minded backers to make that a reality in some fixed geographical location? Second, given that we seem to be entering a dark age, the likelihood of vandalism against or state suppression of such a venue would be astronomically high. Third, institutions, however well conceived at the outset, tend to eventually turn into an ossified fossilized drag. Fourth, you've given an excellent example of what eventually happens to expensive temples and temple complexes: they ultimately turn into abandoned crumbling ruins. We'd probably be better off using forest glades or somebody's living room as gathering places, or maybe a tent - the original catafalque - like itinerant ancient Jews.
ReplyDeleteSo here's what I'm thinking. If we want to create images that glorify boy-beauty, and conserve them in a form that can make it through the bottleneck of a dark age, then we might be better off going with smaller artifacts that are relatively easily preserved: drawings, prints, small paintings or sculptures, and especially books. That's how the remnants of Greco-Roman culture were chiefly preserved through the western Dark Ages.
I'd like to believe that we could help nudge the world in the direction that I'd like to see it go right now, but at this point I doubt there's much possibility of that happening. The entire industrial world appears to be on a downward trajectory, the United States especially so. Morris Berman among others is very eloquent on this topic, and I find his arguments persuasive. So to my mind William Blake and Ralph Chubb are the models, not the builders of Eleusis or Chartres. Which is too bad, cause I really woulda like to build that temple.
Zaek
Thanks for the high five Anonymous. Also Zaek yeah in these times building, and maintaining a Temple to the Holy Boy might be a problem. Not unlike laying the corner stone of a new Synagogue in Berlin in 1938.
ReplyDeleteSo as the Church Fathers have always said, but never really meant. The Church is not it's grand buildings. It lives rather in the Hearts of it's believers. In our special case this must be our Truth.
Btw I reprinted a fantasy about visiting such a Temple as you propose. This from the former,and current radio active ruin "Juno 2012."
That's right Sidney. But we still gotta do that art work. It'll be our erotic bible, our Homer and Hesiod and Strato. Especially Strato. It's our musa puerilis contribution to a sexually enlightened civilization in visibly palpable form, like Donatello's and Caravaggio's. It'll be a collection of cultural time capsules cum-splattered all over the planet, ready to detonate orgasmically upon discovery!
ReplyDeleteZ.