Morbid
April 6th, 2002More than once I have caught myself in a morbid monolog about the 11th of September. It happens when I entertain those visiting NYC. I begin to sound like my grandmother, so prone to prattle on about World War II.
It happened again at lunch as Catherine and I dined with three librarians from the Bibliothèque Centre Pompidou. And then I returned to my desk to find Launch New York City: After the Fall, another multimedia site by photographer Geoffrey Hiller. Hiller’s site moved me to look for Bill Biggart’s Final Exposures, the final work of photographer and NYC resident Bill Biggart, who died while making pictures of the Towers just after the attack.
The dark ferocity with which we cling to these events astounds me. I don’t think we do it because we are afraid of forgetting; I think we do it because we can’t quite integrate these experiences into the rest of our lives. We are trying to make them fit, and they just don’t. That is why I drone on, and that is why I look at photos.
OK, enough already.
Happier things:
- Michael McGrorty’s exhibit of library cards from public libraries throughout the USA. Fearing that physical library cards will soon be obsolete, he has a call out for library cards. Send them to his California address, and he’ll make them into art.
- Michael Barrish’s Oblivio.
- Kevin Guilfoile’s First
Rule of Book Club.