Musical accompaniment: Heartaches by Al Bowlly

 

Do you ever imagine what your life would be like if you lived in another time? I have a well-known preoccupation with the early 1900s.  But I might be even happier living in the 1930s, if only for the indoor plumbing and those incredible cars they drove.

The 1930s are not a decade most people associate with happiness, but in my version, it would be glorious. I would hang around with John Barrymore and Barbara Stanwyck. I’d fraternize with James Cagney and Dorothy Parker. I’d marry Orson Welles and shun Ernest Hemingway. I’d live in a palatial estate.

As an actress, I could take or leave Kay Francis. However, I would love to borrow her evening gown. It looks like the kind of apparel you could wear once only, but I would challenge that. Checking the mail? Chit-chatting with the neighbors? Not without my floor-length metallic evening gown, I’m not.

It makes me wonder, why don’t we make beautiful things now?

Take buildings for instance. We spend plenty of money on construction. Buildings often take a long time to erect. But then the results are underwhelming.  There’s no new building that cause me to think, “The splendor of this building is truly worthy of a metallic floor-length evening gown.” Or even one that demands a feather boa. As long as we’re building expensive things, why don’t we make them beautiful?

Last week I was on Haight Street in San Francisco. I passed these gorgeous old Victorian homes with curved bay windows and porticos, and gables and balconies and decorative trim. They were probably built around the same time but they’re not alike. You’d never find a Victorian home quite like these anywhere else on Earth.  Someone designed these homes to be monuments to a beautiful world. They were built with craftsmanship and patience. They’re distinguished.

Directly across the street are another group of homes.  They too look like part of a set. There’s nothing wrong with their appearance and I should say I’ve lived in places that didn’t look as nice as they do. But the comparison must strike even a casual observer forcefully.  They’re flat. There’s no ornate detail, no decorative molding, no spindle work. You could find a house exactly like it in any other city.  It looks like they could have sprung up overnight.

It didn’t occur to me to take a picture but Google Maps had it covered.

Anyway, what was this post even about? Ah! I wanted to show you a picture from 1894 by one of our resident photographers here on Old Spirituals, the prolific Alfred Stieglitz.  He called it “A Wet Day on the Boulevard, Paris.”

Could you imagine living in such a place? I don’t mean Paris, because that city suffers from the same problem we just examined in San Francisco. When the buildings fall into disrepair they’re replaced with modern construction. I meant the Belle Époque.

This gives Stieglitz’ photograph a frozen quality, like a fly in amber. He managed to capture a moment in time that is closed to us forever.  Look at the carriages, the clothes, and the spotless streets. How I wish we could bring this lost world back again.