Standing before the Gold Coast Theatre, the speaker and some companions used to wonder whether a concrete mask on its facade was moaning or singing. The building’s ornaments—a violin and bells—struck them as cheap, yet they still poured their need for meaning into the concrete, brick, glass, and wood. The old theater had outgrown its own design to become something larger, a presence. Now those people have scattered, and the speaker is left with memories that work like that mask: they seem to moan, or maybe sing, and it is hard to tell which. What remains is not the building but an inner architecture shaped by loss. The mood is nostalgic and slightly eerie, hovering between affection for the past and the disorienting uncertainty of remembering.
Decoration — Summary
On the Gold Coast Theatre building, a concrete mask pretended to moan. Or sing? We weren't sure which.
We deduced it despised a violin and bells hanging below it, an architect’s tacky gifts.
There was concrete. There were bricks, glass, wood. To these we donated our need of symbol,
our weakness for decoration. Our bodies represented us in front of the old Gold Coast,
which had left behind its design in order to become. We are there no more, have scattered
to a heresy of heres. Our memories are synaptic masks that pretend to moan—
or sing? We’re not sure which. Our memories design an architecture of absence.