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>> BERMAN: Grace Paley, one of
the great New York writers, has
a story written early-'70s
South Bronx.
And one of the characters, who's
like a community organizer
there, says, "The buildings are
burning down on one side of the
street, and the kids are trying
to put something together on the
other."
And this could be a parable of
one of the great achievements of
that period from a lot of the
neighborhoods that were most
devastated in New York.
The earliest form in which most
people who weren't part of that
neighborhood saw it were the
graffiti that appeared on the
subways in the '70s.
And this was on a very rickety,
decaying generation of gray
trains, they painted enormously
exuberant, colored names and
reliefs and mottoes.
And you can see many films now:
a gray day, a gray neighborhood,
an El train.
And suddenly, the El train, it's
like a rainbow!
And it's thrilling.
The next incarnation was rap.
The earliest form that people
saw would be there would be one
kid rapping with small speakers
and a drum track in the subway,
you know, with a hat open for
money.
And, you know, these are
parables of a city that's being
ruined, that's being destroyed,
and that's saying, "We can rise
again.
We come from ruins, but we're
not ruined."
And, I mean, in 15 years, it's
become the basic form of world
music.
So it's a thrill, but it's
important to understand that it
came from totally burnt-out,
ruined districts, and that's
where it was born.
And that it was born out of this
suffering and misery, and that a
lot of the creativity that New
York has always had has come
from the cellars, from the
ruins, from how the other half
lives.
So an important part of sharing
space and living city life is
being able to live through the
ways in which the city itself is
torn down and is consumed and is
destroyed, but also consumes
itself.
You know, if you can do that,