Exploring NYC through 26 words
This is a picture of the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) walk to find a cure for diabetes in NYC.
The Square
People gathering at night to enjoy restaurants, movies, theaters
All sorts of wonderful entertainment in one colorful square
A square that would become a celebration point for all America
The VE Day celebrations there would echo around the world
All this can only mean one square the Times Square
Before the New York Times built a new building on 43rd Street in 1904
To give the name Times Square it was known as Longacre Square
Earlier the turn of the century a somewhat dangerous place
A place where only villains and the like would dare enter
– Reginald Stanley Birch
Cars zoom by. People walk purposefully. Motion flows in a collective direction. One stream in a maze of rivers. Full of motion, of life. The life of a city.
Foudroyant
The subway; the train
The whole city, together
For my mystery
Foudroyant
The people are there
Work, shows, places, and the tourists
Will we know where to?
We walk together All at once
Gazing towards the unsuspecting future
Turning In and out, we watch the cognizable politicians
Persuading us with their visions
Talking about preventing collisions
Showing us to the best physicians
They’re doing this for us, not me and not you
Us is another word for we
Not me, we
1 syllable, 2 letters
It’s not a fantasy, it’s a reality
An opportunity
All at once
We live and die feel and cry
All at once
As a diglot, the subway seems to me like the place to eavesdrop, full of conversations I can secretly understand and full of secret conversations I wish I could. I had worked on a short sound piece on this subject during my first semester of film school, and oddly enough I find myself reviving it on my last semester. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhiIPe11p5Q
After spending past five years of my life in Los Angeles, seeing magnificent towers and sea of people on the streets of New York really dazzled my imagination. For the whole time I was in New York, I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t take my minds off from the world around me.
In Los Angeles, big real estate developers are trying to build what they call “Times Square West” in Downtown LA. But, I doubt that it will ever match the fierce splendor of Manhattan .
Welkin… it sounds so strange, yet so familiar. The vault of heaven. I like it. Then I saw the del.icio.us “Wolken” link, with all these skies from around the world—photographed, labeled with location, date and time, as if the skies were classical architecture captured on a sightseeing tour, snapped by someone fascinated with vaulted ceilings. Imagine the joy of that tourist spotting that cloud over Brussels, Belgium, on October 10, 2005, at 4:30 in the afternoon. A welkin touched by a rainbow, touched as if by a seven-fingered hand frantically hailing the bus that didn’t stop, throwing itself up so high, it discovered the texture of Brussels’ ceiling—dissolving disappointment, discovering welkin.
Lynne and I had a wonderful chat about the artistry of “Wolken” and the word almost being welkin. Wolken is the word for clouds in Dutch, my mother tongue. Welkin and wolken—not quite synonymous, but they must be distant cousins. The next day, I went for a walk at lunchtime, with the podcast of the Writer’s Almanac of March 28th in my ears. Garrison Keillor read Gary Johnson’s “Up in the sky the lovers lay in bed…”
(http://community.livejournal.com/poetry_readers/31497.html)
Next time I look up between the skyscrapers of this awesome city, I may just say: “Thank you, welkin. Thank you.”
When I was asked to make a video about the odd sounding, but very
pretty looking word quidnunc for the Abecedariumnyc Project, I
immediately thought of New Yorker Magazine editor and author Ben
Greenman’s satirical “newsical” Fragments from Death Comes for Britney
Spears! The Musical.
Since Quidnunc is a person who seeks to know all the latest news or
gossip, I wanted to make something based on entertainment gossip and
the ever-expanding number of blogs, news programs and magazines
devoted to the cult of the celebrity. I adapted Ben’s rhyming
“newsical” and placed it within the confines of a office where I could
play off the whole notion of gossip and use such signs as the water
cooler, internet, a little bird, gossip magazines, the tabloid
journalist and gossipy co-worker; and fold these clichés into the more
sinister aspect of entertainment gossip. Though a dark parody, the
project is intended to create sympathy for Ms. Spears, and to
encourage a discourse on the gossip industry by which celebrities are
manufactured and then recycled into mulch.
To see the whole project,click here:
http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2008/02/05/britney-and-the-grim-reaper/