Sunday, March 28, 2010



This is a little bit of graffiti done in nail polish on a light post in Manhattan near the corner of W 20th St and Tenth Ave. It reminded me of dripping blood; and because of the grey background, Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 "Bram Stoker's Dracula" as well (I must be remembering some advertising from the film that looked similar).

But back to the graffiti, there's something about the look of the dripping blood red nail polish that projects pain when combined with the message. Had it been pink (or yellow or orange) nail polish it might have looked hippie-ish or fun, but it's not. So although this was probably nothing (maybe just school girls goofing around with nothing else to do), it seems like a dramatic cry for help. And the blistered, wrinkled, aged and cracked, lifeless grey paint that it's on top of only helps to make it stand out that much more.

So what's the point? I don't know. Maybe that there are little drips of emotion all around us that we never take notice of. It's nothing, but it's also something. We'll never know the real story behind it. Maybe it was just a few kids wasting time, or maybe it was a woman who couldn't cope with a lost relationship and eventually commited suicide. Or maybe it was a man! (Why necessarily a woman?) Maybe it was just someone crying out to be loved. Maybe it was a quickly scrawled joke. We'll never know, but it leads us to ask the question, and that's the art of it. Even if it is just graffiti.

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