jbml thln 22e how can we compare


IN TURN,
THE INFLECTION OF
"HAVING BEEN"
TO ANY POSSIBLE INFLECTION OF
"WILL BE?"

Let's suppose
(I suppose even that this is true,
in the sense that archives would bear the supposition out,
but I think it doesn't matter whether such truth obtains)
that throughout the early 1940s, the lights of Broadway never dimmed
while the gas chambers of Europe were in full operation.
What does it mean to suppose,
to state that,
"now?"

Keep in mind
that confessional rhetoric such as this,
about the failure of someone or some collective
to recognize a threat that was contemporaneous to some past time
(1943 on Broadway, 1943 at Auschwitz)
is not only a JUGDMENT passed on a certain "having been," but also always an implicit statement
about what someone or some collective should be doing, differently, in the present.
How, conversely, should we speak for example of Billy Joel's song "Miami 2017
(The Night the Lights Went Out on Broadway),"
which would have been I guess in the late nineteen-seventies
~
a future imagined in our past
that has never happened
...
yet?

04 mrt 2013 - bewerkt op 05 mrt 2013 - meld ongepast verhaal
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Asih, man, 81 jaar
   
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