(He shrugs, and looks up at PORTRAIT.)
Look at your father up there. He has realized the tragedy of his generation. He, too, has been unable to sing. He, too, finds himself stranded in a foreign land. He, too, must carry himself to his own grave because there is no succeeding generation to carry him forward. His art will die with him. It is written in a dead language; it is written in Babylonian…And we all end alike—all of us old men from the last century—we all end the same. The rich and the poor, the failures and the successes, those who moved forward and those who stayed behind—our fate is the same! All, all of us must carry our own dead selves to our common grave…We have begotten no sons; we are a lost generation!
Caray, who would have thought we would end dismally? Oh, we began so c
