You cannot truly know a city, until you have taken a ride on a train. The subway will show you the dark underbelly of city-beasts. It shows a snapshot of the people who live, and breathe, and work, and sacrifice their personal space for their lifestyles, within the city’s zip codes. When you ride the commuter rail, you see what the world is like through the perspective of things left behind. You get a private glimpse into the world of accumulation; children’s toys in yards, abandoned bicycles, old tarped cars and plain old cars. And in abundance, amongst the trash and the stuff, is a large selection of Graffiti.
When you ride the train as often as I do, you see a wide scope of graffiti. People will “tag,” fences, walls, overpasses, buildings, accumulated things, and abandoned things. I had a pseudo intellectual idealistic boyfriend once who swore by the art. How passionate he was about advocating the illegal defacing of private property! I remember sitting there for grueling stretches of time, trying to see his side. He believed that to tag a wall, the artist expresses the ultimate art form; it is emblematic of protesting The MAN and creating new art in a philistine world. The Graffiti artist is one part artist, and one part revolutionary in that they are constantly challenged to work with materials that are unpredictable: how will this color work with this type of concrete? And metal? And Plastic? How does this shape or this imperfection change the shapes that I am trying to create? Graffiti artists, are supposedly, all activists, silently, anonymously protesting their political views! So when the youth spray paint smiley faces and their names in bubbly characters and this person or that person was here, they are actually fighting for their rights. Go forth, my son, spray paint your name every fifteen feet!
I have always had reservations about graffiti. I was brought up in a family that followed the rules, and understood the virtues of laws and more importantly obeying them. Also, my understanding of art has been based on what one can see in a museum. Artist are Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Michelangelo, Renoir, Da Vinci, Vermeer, and even pop artists like Warhol. Real artists are the type of people who painted Adonis figures or Aphrodites. All of these elements are completely missing from Graffitti. Where are the oil paints? Where are the canvases? Where are the places of worship that have blank walls and ceilings? And the water colors? Though Warhol is closer to Graffiti artists than Michelangelo, you would not see him with a can of spray paint, the prefered medium, at the end of a flashlight- beam. For, perhaps six years, I tried to see the virtue, but could not. It was not until I had become a train rider, or here, a viewer of the lost and the abandoned that I have considered, rethinking the art form.
One late afternoon, I sat on the Commuter, heading North. I dozed, listening to music, for it had been a long day at school, though all days are varying degrees of long. With tired eyes, I watched as the train lurched away from North Station. Immediately after the train station is the Boston sand and Gravel CO, where one, presumably can purchase sand and gravel for construction purposes. Next to the company is a set of train tracks where a long link of open topped rail cars sit, presumably used to transport the weighty sand and gravel. I got the feeling that these rail cars were quite old because each one was faded, rusted, and covered in graffiti.
There were two or three carts that were so old that they had faded to a sickly pepto-bismal pink. Perhaps in their prime they were proud cherry or fire-engine red. But the sun, the rain, the snow, the salt, and the cycle of life had worked its will on the carts, leaving them worn and a shameful pink. Even though I cannot read most graffiti, I find myself constantly trying to. I lend as much attention to each one as I can afford to give an illegible, static word glanced from a moving vehicle. I looked, nope, can’t read it, looked, nope can’t read it. Until finally, one tag caught my eye. The artist had made a big tag in bright lime and white, some word which I could not read. Immediately to the right, however, he or she tagged one more thing, almost as an afterthought in the same white spraypaint; “sick of it all.”
I literally sat back in my seat. This got to me. I found myself contemplating “sick of it all,” as a person. I imagined the lonely plight of the graffiti artist, roaming the dark train tracks spider webbing from Boston to the suburbs. I decided that my silhouetted picture of “sick,” was a young person. Graffiti must be for the youth. A graffiti artist must be able to run. They must be able to avoid, and hide from the cops. I cannot imagine an older man or woman having the stamina necessary to outrun the law. Also, they seem to have the need to climb. Riding on the second upper level of the train, I can see several tags that are higher than one would think is logical. How did they get up there? I liked to imagine the artist asking a brave, and faithful friend to hold onto their ankles as they dangled themselves from overpasses or roofs or towers to make their marks on the impossible canvases. The graffiti artist is limited by youth. What does that say about their artform? Do they pine for a spray can when their joints ache and their hair turns silver?
I imagined a world where it was illegal to express myself as a writer. The worst thing that can happen to a writer is to be ignored. Even if a book is banned, or burned, it is successful in that is is able to stir it’s readers. As a student of literature, I feel that Sick of it all and I are kindreds. If you are a student of medicine, or are trying to be an engineer, there are a series of open doors and yes’s. As a literature major, I have only been subjected to closed doors and no’s. I have been told more often than not that I will work at coffee shops for the rest of my life, or that I will literally starve. So when I fight, and really it has been a fight, for my education, and I sit on the train, and I see someone say so simply something that I had been thinking, I realized what this person’s art was. This person had silently cried out in frustration. Writing “sick of it all,” on a train where only passengers would see, was a feeble reactionary response to a slammed door to the face. It was self defense.
I realized that I had a world of compassion for this person. Sick and I are the same type of artist. We are young people trying to create something, despite our peers telling us that we cannot. Only, I feel infinitely more sad for Sick than for myself; my expression will never put me behind bars. This realization made me understand what my ex boyfriend had been talking about all those years ago. In America, and most developed countries, a writer does not jeopardize their freedom when they express themselves. In America, and most developed countries, a graffiti artist jeopardizes their freedom when they express themselves. And likewise, writing is something I can do for the rest of my life, even as my body begins to deteriorate. Sick has a small opportunity to get the message out. Sick is running out of time.
The next time I took the train, heading North, I searched for the rail car, as though “sick of it all,” was a beacon of hope or a small shred of comfort for me. The rail car had been moved, perhaps to fulfill its duty as a sand and gravel transport. Or maybe it was time for a fresh coat of paint.