NPR: Rotting Beauty: a Dying Art

Rotting Beauty: a Dying Art

Most of the gardens I'm seeing in the neighborhood look like hell, particularly my own. I'm tripping over birch tree limbs and slipping on slimy, unraked leaves. And my banana tree is truly death warmed over.

I typically take offense at its apres-frost limp, brown foliage (bananas die back to the ground here and come up anew in spring). But after seeing Sweeney Todd yesterday — so unimaginably glorious! — I'm feeling a certain fondness towards rot, death, decay.

And so I offer you, on this dark gray Erev Yontif (roughly translated from Hebrew/Yiddish, it means the night before the holiday, in this case Xmas Eve!), a sad and somehow celebratory You Tube video of rotting as art.

11:55 AM ET | 12-24-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

fascinating film. i once saw this idea on a newspaper's store front in berkeley. a piece of fruit rotting day by day.
i would like to see a close-up of this and get all "fractalled" out

Sent by steph | 10:09 AM ET | 01-01-2008

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