Michael Woodbury
Sep 8, 2018 · 2 min read

La Ciudad de Los Espíritus

What’s emerging? Guilt? Yes, that’s part of it. Guilt for taking aesthetic pleasure in the scene of post-industrialism painted over with a coat of … I’m not sure.

Gentrification? Yes, there is gentrification, but that’s not quite it. It’s clean, I notice that I like that it’s clean. A bit of guilt with that, too.

‘A pristine 20th century ghost town.’

Milwaukee is a clean, modern ghost town, and, I take pleasure as the witness to something so perfectly presented.

And, something with a reminiscence of the 1970’s – the decade of my birth. Yes, this is the 1970’s of my childhood as it formed through the lens of television. So, nostalgia hangs in the air.

And, also loss – like the fertile black soil of a burned forest.

My pleasurable encounter with Milwaukee is accompanied by my sense of the real loss here. This unnaturally swift emptying has given space for the shadow of’ unnatural emptiness.’

And, I know, this gaze is just a picture in the slide show of my mind. Here now, gone now. While you watch your own carefully curated program on a different channel.

We should embrace the steady movement of the slide show – each moment with its stories, its emotions, its memories, its images.

Here now, gone now. The slide show advances.

    Michael Woodbury

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