Quiet illuminations from London.
(“Before Sunset” OST)
Now we are together, sitting outside in the sunshine
But soon we’ll be apart and soon it’ll be night at noon
Now things are fine, the clouds are far away up in the sky
But soon I’ll be on a plane and soon you’ll feel the cold rain
You promised to stay in touch when we’re apart
You promised before i left that you’ll always love me.
Time goes by, people cry, everything goes too fast.
Now we have each other enjoying each moment with one another
But soon I’ll be miles away and soon the phone will be our only way
You promised we’ll never brake up over the telephone
You said our love was stronger than an ocean apart
Time goes by and people lie, everything goes too fast.
Let’s not fool ourselves in vain, this far away trip will give us pain
We’ll have to be so strong to keep our love from going wrong
Distance will make us cold, even put our love on hold
But soon we’ll meet again and soon it’ll be bright at noon again
You promised not to loose faith in our love when i’m away
You promised so much to me but now you’ve left me
We go by and then we lie all this time we wasted
Time goes by, people lie everything goes too fast.
Time went by, and then we died, everything went too fast.
We live on the shores of history. Once in a while, elements of the past come back to us as waves, splashing about everywhere, only to retreat quietly and fuse into the sea of things already known.
Such a wave hit us last week. With the release of more than 300,000 historical images (800,000 digital content if you include videos, sounds, maps) from the Municipal Archives of the city of New York.
With a city like New York, where buildings are replaced faster than passing clouds and where neighborhoods change at the speed of immigrations, it is almost like discovering a foreign country. It seems that life was so much easier and pleasant, even if it might not be so true.
Nevertheless, we tend to navigate those images as if , somehow, they reminded us of a paradise lost, even if we didn’t live it. What happens then when we mix the present with the past ?
That is what Russian photo enthusiast Sergey Larenkov dared to investigate. His inspiration, the Russian State Documentary Film & Photo Archive, Krasnogorsk. He took images from the archive and merged them with photographs taken in the present. The result is stunning. Mixing, mostly photographs from the second word war with its contemporary location, he manages to brings to light how life goes on, even after the most dramatic event.
It seems, by looking at his images, that we are haunted by the past. While the contrast of events depicted is brutal, peace and war mingled, the result is eerily familiar because of the perfect blending of the environment.
We are reminded how quickly we forget, how we move on with such ease, and how, regardless of the damages we return to a state of inconsequential business. Both collection, one by its sheer volume and depth, the other, by its powerful message, remind us how we are locked with our past.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/gallery/home.shtml
http://pmelcher.bo.lt/russiahistorical
L’echec - Yann Tiersen
And nonchalant
The smile in place
We’ll sure we
In the familiar streets
To a point in the city
An unknown location
Find here our failure
And its shadow.
