One is not the loneliest number. Eight million is. There are so many people in the city: Strangers, with their own voices and stories hidden behind stony urban exteriors. We don’t know them, but we see each other, on tos and froms.
One day the pregnant lady is there, then she’s gone. Then she’s back, and smaller. The older lady is crocheting a baby blanket, the next day she’s reading - is the blanket done? Is it wrapped around her granddaughter? Newspapers, new clothes, new tattoos, new boyfriends and girlfriends sharing seats that were empty yesterday. An engagement ring, a suitcase, a wrapped present, a gym bag. A cloud across a face, a cellphone conversation smile...
...and more again. We see each other enough to notice changes, and in recognizing these changes, we become more familiar, less strange. We still don’t know each other - still don’t talk - but inside, we do. We connect, and we imagine. We extrapolate, supplement, and fictionalize - decontextualizing details, and recontextualizing them into our own story.
Zed to Marbell:
"I’m reading a magazine article about this photographer, Christian Waeber - he’s up in Boston, does a lot of figure stuff, some arcitecture, some landscape. Anyway, he says, and I like this, ‘I started to connect with the strangers who once drove where I was standing. I imagined their lives, their origins and destinations.’ "
No comments:
Post a Comment