The Age of Jazz, nearly a century past now, is taking on a mystique not unlike the Feudal Age, the Age of Pirates, and the Old West. Like those myth-infused periods of the human past, it has taken on legend and glamor beyond mere historical fact.
And, just as we have Renaissance Faires, Pirate Festivals, and Old West dude ranches, it’s about time we had some themed events and sites celebrating the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. As an exercise in creating a Jazz Age-themed urban park, I chose a particularly self-contained block in Washington just north of historic U Street, famous in the history of jazz music and early 20th Century American culture, and re-imagined it as a sort of historical shopping mall and cultural center called “Villenoire.” Continue reading
My formal training is in Religious Studies. So, while watching the film Django Unchained, I couldn’t help but keep an eye for universal mythic themes that I might have seen elsewhere. The fact that Django’s quest to retrieve his wife is specifically compared to the myth of Siegfried and the Dragon only heightened my interest.