The NY Dogwalker
 

Roy Orbison sang to us of California's blue skies. Jim Jarmush showed us the blue utopia of the ocean, the river mouth, as they merge between Staten Island and the tip of Manhattan. As the ferry boat with the tourists and New Yorkers crosses the blue distance, they repeat the journey of immigrants, from the US quarantine station to the land of the free. In "The NY Dogwalker", the blue is seeping into the streetscape. "The blue puddles that mirror the blue sky," I think for a second. No, the blue tristesse, mingling with the blue hope of the immigrants as they cross the last stretch of water on their way to a new start, a new promised land. The blue is a blue note, and the blue note jazzily meets an orange note, a yellow note, a dark red note slowly about to turn violet. Violet, with a brownish tinge. The music is there, the jagged rhythm of blues protrudung into the orange, the orange yellow... The sky is not calm. Two towering buildings, partly lighted, are piercing its dark blue. The dogwalker hurries on, past an object that may be a US mail box. Look at it! A stretch of sidewalk, only. A group formed by the pack of dogs and the dogwalker. Isolated, before the big city background. Like a brief, hallucinatory glance. Like a sound of a saxophone in the street. Sad, and yet determined.
 

(Jan. 25, 2007)
 
 

          go to  ART IN SOCIETY #  5   (CONTENTS)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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