What the Hell Are They Thinking

The grand, half-ruined Parthenon, once a sublime, Doric grace, Even now, in broken, stone blocks, always takes my breath away. The rich, classical detail, fluted columns without plinths, to imagine what it once was, the mind can’t even begin… That towering Coliseum, the great masterpiece of Rome, even half gone it’s staggering, to be so tall, but made in stone. Go down to the domed Pantheon, still so perfect to this day, these are not just random buildings, they stand with something to say. And those long, Gothic cathedrals, so ornate and yet so light, stained glass alone is enough to make these churches a sight! But all of that fine tracery, those magnificent cravings, the rows of flying buttresses, inspire the soul to sing. The Byzantines and their tiles, Tudor masonry and wood, Romanesque with its arches, Art Decco looks oh-so-good, Baroque with all its fussiness, Victorians with their quirks, Renaissance sports Italian flare, Palladian’s subtle pleasures… And yet in Albany, New York, there stands the featureless ‘egg,’ That’s its name and its resemblance, I am not pulling your leg. No decoration, no windows, as it stands there in the sun, people call it ‘modernist,’ I call it ‘concrete abortion.’ Worse is the post-modern trash, theaters shaped like hunks of cheese, painted pink, spattered with portholes, a mad-man’s monstrosity. That is the product of our skills? That is how we would inspire? By building things that look like they have been melted in a fire?! They bulldoze down our heritage to throw up more of these things? And the big-wigs who approved this, what the hell are you thinking?! If these buildings of the future are to have no beauty or class, then you can keep ‘modernity,’ I’ll gladly live in the past.