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                                             January 15, 2009

                                              Quoting from
                                              "Greenwich Village" (1917)
                                              by Anna Alice Chapin,
                                              [ref]
Anna Alice Chapin, writing in 1917:

  "Yet, after all, it isn't the food and
  drink, nor yet the unusual
  surroundings, that bring you back to          DUSTY_MYSTERY
  these places. It's the--well, one has
  to use, once in a while, the
  hard-worked and generally
  inappropriate word 'atmosphere.' Like
  'temperament' and 'individuality' and
  the rest of the writer-folk's old            She also makes an odd analogy:
  reliables, 'atmosphere' is too often
  only a makeshift, a lazy way of              "Dick says in 'The Light That
  expressing something you won't take          Failed' that an old device for
  the trouble to define more expressively."    an unskilful artist is to
                                               stick a superfluous bunch of
  "But this is a fact just the                 flowers somewhere in a picture
  same. Nearly all the Greenwich               where it will cover up bad
  Village places really have                   drawing."
  atmosphere. You can be cynical about
  it, or frown at it, or do anything                 I can't imagine why you
  you like about it, but it's there,                 wouldn't consider that
  and it's the real thing. It's an                   a valid technique...
  absolute essence and ether which you               if you do it right, the
  feel intensely and breathe                         flowers retroactively
  necessarily, but which no one can put              become an integral part
  quite definitely into the concrete                 of the overall design.
  form of words. I have heard of liquid
  or solidified air, but that's a                       The jazz musician
  scientific experiment, and who wants                  repeats a mistake
  to try scientific experiments on the                  to make it part of
  Village which we all love?"                           piece.


                                               ACT_ONE


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