oh, i absolutely love your invention. it's beautiful. and so clever.
i once had a very strange and upsetting dream that someone had made his way into my flat in budapest while i was working for the european roma rights center, and painted vulgar racist graffiti on the walls in deep blood red. there is something so violent in that kind of graffiti, the kind emerging out of hate, or the desire to destroy an object of public interest. i got so angry when i saw someone had painted the face of anonymous in the varosliget.
i have ambivalence about the other kinds, when it is a creative image that appears on a blank concrete wall. i appreciate the subversiveness of it, and the transformation of an increasingly privatized world into a public forum for expression. the title of this post comes from a documentary film about graffiti called "Graffiti Verite" that we watched in the Anthropology course I've been teaching.
Dear friend, thank you for stopping by. I'd love it if you'd SAY HELLO! -- please don't be shy. And if you haven't the time to read, feel free to skip over the bla-bla and just browse the pictures. :)
Or, if you're feeling spunky, you can even call me.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. -- Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) (Walden or Life in the Woods)
Listener up there! Here, you! What have you to confide to me? Look in my face, while I snuff the sidle of evening; Talk honestly—no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; (I am large—I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh—I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? Who will soonest be through with his supper? Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late?
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me—he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable; I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me; It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any, on the shadow’d wilds; It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the runaway sun; I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love; If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean; But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged; Missing me one place, search another; I stop somewhere, waiting for you.
2 comments:
This is soooo cool. And so funny. When I worked for a local human rights group I documented hundreds of racist grafiti, mostly saying:
Neger raus
which means
Negroes out.
Then we came up with the idea of painting them over with:
NORWeger VOraus
which means
Norwegians ahead.
So your link was very much apreciated...
oh, i absolutely love your invention. it's beautiful. and so clever.
i once had a very strange and upsetting dream that someone had made his way into my flat in budapest while i was working for the european roma rights center, and painted vulgar racist graffiti on the walls in deep blood red. there is something so violent in that kind of graffiti, the kind emerging out of hate, or the desire to destroy an object of public interest. i got so angry when i saw someone had painted the face of anonymous in the varosliget.
i have ambivalence about the other kinds, when it is a creative image that appears on a blank concrete wall. i appreciate the subversiveness of it, and the transformation of an increasingly privatized world into a public forum for expression. the title of this post comes from a documentary film about graffiti called "Graffiti Verite" that we watched in the Anthropology course I've been teaching.
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