But I've Loved These Days...Billy Joel song

The back of a New York City garbage truck stood open, revealing a huge ballroom chandelier. Once suspended above a world of satin, champagne, and easy privilege, it now lay among the things that world had discarded.

To me, it felt like a small apocalypse: the glamour of an age stripped of its ceiling, its grandeur brought down to street level. The chandelier became a monument to bourgeois decadence, still beautiful, but no longer able to disguise its own excess.

There is grief in that image, but irony, too. Even at the end, opulence wants one last toast. One last glittering evening before the lights go out.