Cleveland, Ohio, (post-modernized to be “NEO”) is where I’m at. It’s a region slogging through its post-industrial dark night: post-industrial, ambivalent, self-deprecating, unfashionable, fragmented, and liminal. It’s neither old or new age, nor is it progressive or regressive. NEOland is poor at its heart and wealthy at its extremities. Creative energy moves fitfully through its sclerotic arteries. It’s feudal too; . . . a delapidated city-state, who’s guardians go unguarded. Its crisis is a crisis of arousal.
What’s fascinating is how the short ‘half-life’ of so much in CleveNEO, political celebrity, sports teams, its various articifaces: hall of fame, office parks and malls; industries, night spots and almost every ‘initiative,’ hides a grubby tenacity.
