Urban poetry

I was walking through Worldwide Plaza on Sunday afternoon when I heard a brass band playing slow mournful music. I followed the sounds and found this, some kind of religious procession (I say procession even though they seemed to have just parked themselves in the middle of West 49th Street; no one was processing anywhere.)

The music reminded me of Michael Corleone's Sicilian wedding in The Godfather -- the church I grew up in had organ music and lots of guitars, no horns -- and the mournful faces and heavy incense felt like a throwback, so incongruous in the bland blocks of gentrified Hell's Kitchen.

These pictures were taken with my phone, and for once the way it flattens out detail into an odd series of facets gives an otherworldly feel that's appropriate for the subject.