wildwestwind: LS Lowry in New York

Michael's Fáilte

Welcome to these writing warmups, blatherings, rantings, meditations, perorations, salutations, latest and those on time, those narrative, declarative, interrogative, gollywogative and other outdated, belated, simulated musings, perusings, shavings and other close calls, with no disrespect intended, that's why no real names included whenever impossible to avoid the guilt that came in the crib for uttering something that would hurt or injure those in authority, being of everlasting servitude to all and sundry, having chosen the road not taken and the frost on the pumpkin long before the kettle turned black or the cat found its own tail fascinating,
Your humble servant, etc.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

LS Lowry in New York

Out there on the streets the children stand about the dirty town. Above them factories belch their smoke, their exhalations——what am I trying to say? Their filthy breath pours out the chimneys making, making, and the fathers came in from the fields decades ago. They're locked up in bricks and mortar now, making, making. Nowhere to be seen, the fathers. They went to war and then they went to work and all the little people, not children, you see, that gift was denied them, the little grey people hunched and sticklike, a few brave souls wearing red, a brighter red, a poppy red, against the red brick school house where they turn the pages of their books, pick up their pencils, put them down again, hunch down into their desks and practice making, making.

And he watches all this. The watcher averts his eyes for the camera——he does not wish to be the subject matter of this tired story. A couple of days now he hasn't shaved. His hair tousled since time began. He tries not to judge the living and the dead, the factory owner, the mothers standing like stunted trees in January in the street with the youngest attached at one hand, the heavy coat, the faceless hat, heavy with melancholy. He looks down and away, unshaven and unkempt. He doesn't care about anymore. He hears footsteps in the hallway outside his studio. Like a church all quiet otherwise. He keeps his lips together in prayer, without judgment. His face begins to show the lines of the city, the lanes, the avenues, the alleyways and side streets, the dark places like crooked scars where you could go hungry.

It is a day like no other. And yet it is the only day there is. There is no way out of this day, this hour. In his hand he holds the brush and touches the canvas lightly——another child, this time, movement.

Across the river the ferry boats and tug boats break through this scene. Beyond this scene there is no time for contemplation, the guardian rises out of the foundation the first foundation. High above the trees she rises, holding aloft the torch that brought so many to the gates of the city. And the ships come in by night and day. And the people dream of making, making.