What intrigues me is that it does not seem like English is the artist’s first language but he or she expressed their sentiment in that language because it is the first language of most of the people who might see it. It is an argument for the intent of this lovestruck and lonely artist’s writing on a wall being a case of strongly motivated self-expression, powerful and inescapable emotion that needs to be explained so the one experiencing it can at least have an illusion of being understood; it is an outpouring of frustration and love and grief — it’s in stabbing distance of Wordsworth’s definition of poetry, really. I mean, say what you want about some graffiti, but this man or woman needed to share and they needed it badly enough to work outside their linguistic zone of mastery to do it. That is impressive, and achingly human. Everyone around us at the grocery, or on the bus, or in the library, has a sentence like this that they are secretly screaming in their heads all day long. What have we done in the world that’s cut us off so much from one another, that we howl in paint and print instead of to one another about our loneliness? Is that why the increase in liberated negative space? Or just better paints and busier cops.
Tags: art, english, images, It happens, Liberated Negative Space, liberated negative space o'the day, Liberating Negative Space, linguistics, loneliness, love, only assholes write on walls, paint, photography, Pictures, poetry, poets, quotes, revolution, san francisco, Self-audit, stills, the city, the spontaneous outpouring of powerful emotion (recalled in tranquility), William Wordsworth, writing
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