May 23, 2002
(late) Risks of the business: It's really irritating to try to recreate an entry that was accidentally erased. In this case, the hasty first draft got uploaded instead of the finished product. Curses.
I brought my camera to work this week in order to catch a favorite piece of graffiti on film. It was written in black marker on the upper left-hand corner of a sheet of grey-painted plywood, part of the scaffolding for a building which is no longer there. Unadorned, but with tangible excitement, it read:
SEB AND MARIE WERE HERE +
FUCKED THE AMERICAN WAY!
It was just nice to see at the end of every work day. I don't know how they managed to achieve what they did right in that spot, because it's not especially conducive. But they did, and they did it the American way. The graffiti was there for at least six months, outlasting union posters and spray-paint alike. The fact that it lasted so long implied something slightly wonderful about the passers-by, that they were choosing to react to the loopy joy that it offered instead of the lazy condemnation as obscene. Well, you can guess where this story is going. The day I brought my camera was the day someone painted over it. Seb and Marie's democratic, truth and justice, red white and blue sex on a street corner was like a butterfly, torn apart by the attempt to preserve it. So it goes. Seb, Marie, thanks for letting me know.
I brought my camera to work this week in order to catch a favorite piece of graffiti on film. It was written in black marker on the upper left-hand corner of a sheet of grey-painted plywood, part of the scaffolding for a building which is no longer there. Unadorned, but with tangible excitement, it read:
SEB AND MARIE WERE HERE +
FUCKED THE AMERICAN WAY!
It was just nice to see at the end of every work day. I don't know how they managed to achieve what they did right in that spot, because it's not especially conducive. But they did, and they did it the American way. The graffiti was there for at least six months, outlasting union posters and spray-paint alike. The fact that it lasted so long implied something slightly wonderful about the passers-by, that they were choosing to react to the loopy joy that it offered instead of the lazy condemnation as obscene. Well, you can guess where this story is going. The day I brought my camera was the day someone painted over it. Seb and Marie's democratic, truth and justice, red white and blue sex on a street corner was like a butterfly, torn apart by the attempt to preserve it. So it goes. Seb, Marie, thanks for letting me know.