Water separates and connects but keeps a distance. Like history, when we look at it from our shore of the present. There is water between Manhattan and Red Hook, Brooklyn. Twenty minutes of water. We wander on narrow streets, corridors to the past, and face the signs of bygone days. This place has many stories to tell. And we listen. Every building, with its breaches and blind windows, is a narrator. You do not need to meet people. They haven’t seen as much as the trees growing along the road.
What is in the air of Red Hook? First thing you can smell and first thing you can hear is the sea. Its waters used to be busy with ships coming from all over the world and with people greeting them. It used to be one of the biggest ports in the country. For more than a hundred years. But in the middle of the last century ships route changed and the place became silent. Many people left. As they leave the ground which cannot bear fruit anymore.
