Brooklyn Roof: A Retrospective

Empire state building

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Untitled Document

This is an untitled document.  I need to Lorem Ipsum it, fill it with filler text, fill it with something that expresses 2.1 witticisms per minute.  Something that tells you something.

I could start it by writing what I usually write at the beginning of a document, of what could become a blog or a story or something that I toss in the virtual corner of my computer and read it again on March 23, 2034 as I’m transferring my files from a new computer to another.

But this is an untitled document, so it must be filled with something singularly untitled, something that can’t properly be titled with anything yet, because it is only a formless white, untitled document.

But as soon as you write about this hockey rink, this smooth white ice of an untitled document, you leave skate marks, fine ice shaved in neat rows and paths.  Then you’ve written in it and can’t call it an untitled document anymore?  Or can you?  Is it possible to write something that actually merits the title, the titular title of “Untitled Document?”

Untitled documents by their very nature are an endangered species, because a document that is untitled will not remain one for long.  And those that remain untitled are usually banished in the cold, dark emptiness that lies behind the computer screen, the place where dying light photons gather around warm orange fires in rusty barrels.

Then when untitled documents stay Untitled they gain a new respect among their brethren, for doing the impossible, for doing the wondrous, for growing up without growing up.  While everyone else has an adult job as some other kind of document.  Some have tattoos, some have wedded, and some have even had little templates running around, offspring of a mad night with Normal.dot.

But not the intrepid Untitled Document, no.  It would remain that way until it’s closing day, the day where it passes into nothingness, the file pointer that was God’s light shining on it, would turn its eyes elsewhere and everything would be blissfully black once more.

Bang

Hat tip to Amanda!  Try writing a poem or something with the word “bang” in it.  Here’s my result.

bang

bang it out she said
so i did and so i did
later that day i did
bang it out she said

so then later we did
bang against the did
i wanted to he said
oh so did i she said

across desk we slid
do write it bang did
insert it in the said
ohh its done she said

Art & Looking

I’ve been thinking a lot about art the last few weeks, after traveling to Europe and seeing all kinds of breathtaking art, from vistas to paintings, sculpture to architecture.

So it was with all kinds of pleasure I hit up two museums here in New York City.  One of them, the Whitney Museum of American Art, had an exhibit by Charles Burchfield that I really enjoyed.

His art was bold and stunning.  A lot of the time, especially at the MoMA, I just walk through the galleries and not really feeling it.  I’m finding my groove, and Charles Burchfield fits quite nicely in it.

What’s your groove?  I like bold paintings that have a surreal touch, like these and Vincent Van Gogh’s work.  In fact, this next painting reminds me of Van Gogh:

There’s nothing like watching a master at work, to evoke an incredible sense of FEELING about a place versus a photograph or a book.

Then there is real life art, the soft curve of a woman’s neck or the strong lines of a male figure.  Sculpture tries to capture this, but there’s nothing like sitting in a busy plaza, piazza, square, or intersection and watching life imitate art.

New York City

As you walk the streets of the City, people pass by you; a older man in khaki pants and a fast walk, a little girl with colorful clothes running and skipping, a shapely woman in revealing evening clothes, a man in uniform, with kind eyes; you also pass by them, and you are a smiling man walking with slow appreciation, thinking fast sad thoughts.

These thoughts also walk a City of their own, a City full with possibilities, dripping with potentials.  One step, a loud step on a metal door (that leads downward under a Chinese restaurant, where bright rows of dingy shelves hold chickens and white packages) is all it takes.  Another step takes you on the stairs (serious, gravelly steps that shoulder many burdens and work tirelessly through the night) into the subway and into other places with their own metal doors in the ground and more thoughts.

Everything and nothing is possible, you will not get laid but you will sleep with someone every night even though you are alone.  Your mind will be full but you will feel empty.  Taking another step down the street towards the bar, subway behind you, your mind reels at the dizzying skyscrapers of human thought, only to be brought back to earth by a pint of organic beer and pizza.

Writing back and forth with strangers in the night, communicating in the space around you that there are two, three, four people and they are talking, but they do not know each other, and will never know each other, yet they know each other in a way that nobody else ever will–for they shared that moment together.

Jumping off the building of thought and landing on the pavement below never felt so good, and the ride on the subway, shaking with everyone else with each brake, playing solitaire and being solitary, I joined the City and the city joined me.