Sharon Brogan wrote:
>First one must find a concept
>large enough to contain the entire
>city: 'Saffron', perhaps, or 'Gate'.
>The horse pulls its head into
>its neck, making its body an
>S below the gibbous moon.
>Cover the river in grey silk. Let
>the building reinvent itself
>in soft satin curves. Owls
>resent this impersonation
>of their essence, feathers
>cloaking coldness and no
>blood. Let mice run beneath
>the strutted floors, the gilded
>ceilings arched like stars over
>nothing. Nothing in this sky
>is identified, so let it be
>that.
>--
>Sharon Brogan
>http://www.sbpoet.com
>
>
Be assured, Sharon, your poem was infinitely better than the Gates
themselves. The prevailing opinion in New York seems to be "What a
wonder." I don't share it. We went up to the City yesterday, my S.O.'s
birthday. Better to have gone into the Museum and walked through the
Rubens drawing exhibition. There was a great sense of so-whatness about
it. Sheets of very attractive cloth (it felt like tapestry) hanging
from poles. Maybe the point was magnitude: 23 miles of anything by
itself is impressive. Yet Central Park itself is a wonder sans Gates:
people, dogs at play (count the breeds, win a prize), horses,
iceskaters, snow covering the lawns and ice partially covering the duck
pond...which answers Holden Caulfield's ever-popular(?) question of
where the ducks go when winter comes: they quack their freakin' brains
out and the water-dogs like Labs want to get at them. I admit I took a
bunch of pictures (digital cameras=instant gratification+lying exposure
readings) which I may put on my website when I offload them from the
camera.
It is supposed to be off-limits to ask what an artist's intention was,
but I'm asking anyway. I gather Christo and Jean-Claude have done a lot
of international wrapping in years past; I simply found myself unmoved
except by the sheer size and expanse of the thing.
Hardly a lost day. We headed downtown to The Blue Note on West 3rd
Street. Someone had given us free tickets to sit stand-side and listen
to Eddie Palmieri's band. Nothing indifference-making about that: the
music was fantastic. I may recover some of my hearing later today but
I'm not taking any bets.
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
|