Re: What's wrong with this picture?

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

Awesome. Was it bombed out and rebuilt? Torn down and rebuilt? I mean,
the stories aren't the same height any more....

ari

At 03:30 AM 7/31/00 +0000, you 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 ---------------------+
>