Spray paint on the splintered frames of Parc Avenue by risa
These pictures were taken by my interns this week. They’re of some of the most beautiful graffiti in Montreal, some of which was commissioned by the city and almost all of which will be torn down during the reconstruction of the mountain this summer.
There is a sense of emptyness that remains now that we walk cement hallways and tarred roads and change nothing. It’s tough to leave a mark here. Once, humans bent branches, tamped the ground, muddied water. Something in us remembers when the paths we took testified to our existence. So we scrawl our names on metro stops, above highways. We write poetry, scream in red and blue across blank bland grey slates, return the image of animals to the land, turn amps up too damn loud, make all kinds of art, and blare our way through eachothers eyes and ears and solid tissue- hoping to somehow carve out the strange shape of something that will remind the world of what was once unique in us.
Kids disapear in this city. They melt into the landscape because nobody wants to see a problem as complicated as the one they represent. Or because somebody noticed them too much. Or because they can’t see themselves in the world anymore: the idea of themselves, and the people they know, and the world, has gotten too huge and it blocks vision and filters and distorts everything going in and coming out.
I told all this to Tom, plus elaborate hand gestures and passionate ineloquence, in the Cafe Sarajevo six years ago. And for that one night we were gorgeous mythmakers, translators, clairvoyants. In that smoke, those muddy coffees and bad wine, words sparked images and the carved, ancient, spintered frames of the world were almost visible.
Then we left, I was so tired I could hardly see and he laughed at how often I yawned on the short walk home. The cold quiet air cleared the streets. He kissed me goodbye and, happy as I was, I could see the old sadness and long, sceptical distance slipping back. I loved that he laughed at me because he laughed, but his laugh slowed.
Then next day he called from six hundred million miles away. He can’t tell me why so I can’t tell you, but as of that day he’s been so far away I can barely hear him. And the memory of that night is slowly fading. And I wish now that I had left some sort of spray-painted mark, like the ones being torn apart, up the street from Sarajevo, along the overpass beside the park.
May 4th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
ok, sorry folks, comments are now closed on this post. the spammage got out of control, plus it’s old.
May 17th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Woo!! comments are back baby! we have a snazzy new plugin that asks spiders and robots and other mindless creeps an incredibly difficult math question before allowing them to post a comment. and it blows their minds and sends them packing, or at least that’s the idea. we sure have had less spam since the plugin. and by less i mean NONE. so please, comment at will, the doors to this post are open once again, the way we like ‘em. the doors to other posts never closed, because they weren’t dealing with the same problem as this one for some reason. en tout cas… just a heads up.