Re: What's wrong with this picture?

[Lori Cahan-Simon <l_cahan...>]

What I'd like to know is how they made 2 floors into 3.

Joshua Horowitz wrote:

> Budowitz Website: http://www.budowitz.com
>
> Some years ago I was digging around at a local flea market in southern
> Austria, and happened to come across a postcard of Iasi, Romania created
> around the beginning of the 20th Century. I bought the postcard and kept it
> in a notebook at home, sometimes looking at it and thinking that this was
> the Iasi that Goldfaden lived and worked in when so many Jewish artists were
> gathering to take part in his daily productions of Yiddish theater. This was
> also the same Iasi that housed so many klezmorim in the late 19th century
> that they had their own synagogue on Pantilemon Street, not far from the
> square that was pictured on my postcard.
>
> Well, when I last went to Romania, I decided for some odd reason to take
> that postcard with me. Since many of the early European 78 discs were
> recorded in hotels, when I looked at that postcard I sometimes imagined
> klezmorim recording at that particular hotel. I figured if it was important
> enough to make a postcard from, maybe this was where some musicians gathered
> to make klezmer 78s. I actually had no idea that I would be staying at the
> same hotel at some point and didn't even realize it until it fell out of my
> backpack when I opened it and saw the name of the hotel. It was like the
> purloined letter, which you don't see anymore because it's too obvious.
> Besides, I had already decided not to stay there any longer than necessary -
> there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms, the plumbing didn't work and the
> sheets had grease stains on them. I could hear the Securitat (Romania's
> not-so-secret police) screaming at a prostitute in the room across from mine
> with the door open and her on the floor in her underwear. Not the kind of
> place you would take your bubbe on holiday.
>
> When I walked out of the hotel to get a beer across the street, I compared
> the postcard with the actual square and was amazed that it was exactly the
> same place. I ran back and yanked my camera out of my backpack, went out
> into the street and spent a fair amount of time trying to find the exact
> position where the photographer almost 100 years before me stood to take his
> picture.
>
> Well to make a long story even longer, I did get a picture and was able to
> match up the two so that you can see exactly how that square and that hotel
> have changed since the first photo was taken.
>
> But there was more to just taking that picture than just the fun of the
> excercise: There is an implicit analogy to the world of sound there. If you
> heard the music of the cafe across the street from the Hotel Continental 100
> years ago, and compared it to the music you hear there today, you can hear
> the same changes that you can see in the picture. You could build a strong
> case proving that what this century has gained in technology it has lost in
> decoration, but that¹s beside the point. If you look closely enough, you
> could probably detect a lot of subtlety in the modern changes, though you do
> have to look harder.The craftsmanship of the old square is self-evident. The
> craftmanship of the new square in hidden. Take a look for yourselves and
> play the game of "what's wrong with this picture." Go to this address and
> then go to the bottom of the home pag...and don't forget the sound when you
> do....
>
> http://members.styria.com/budowitz/pages/whatswrong.html
>
> Josh Horowitz
>
> ---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org 
> ---------------------+
>