Moose Productions Blog

Mike pulls out a sheet of paper, a ruler and a pencil. He has just finished washing the dishes from his new year meal. To ensure that his writing is even, Mike draws lines in pencil across the page. It is cramped in the cubicle, two relatively large men crammed in with all of Mike’s things. I am in a constant state of awkwardness, trying as best I can not to get in the way of the light which is coming from one bare bulb on the wall. Mike is focused completely on the the lines. His face inches from the paper as he draws.

Occasionally, I step out of the room to shoot a wide angle shot. It is now night, the hall of the third floor completely dark except for an exit sign that has the fading red light of a decade old bulb. Every thirty seconds or so a piercing high pitched beep goes off, indicating that some kind of alarm is still functioning properly. At first it is truly annoying, but after time it becomes about as tolerable as the occassional honk from The Bowery.

After drawing the lines, Mike sketches out the letter in pencil. He writes so lightly, that I cannot make out what he is writing. A Japanese film starring a young woman and a young man is playing on Mike’s TV. Occassionally, Mike looks up. For most of the film there is a solo piano playing in the background. The music is sad, almost depserate. As it plays, Mike’s massive frame is hunched completely over, concentrating on the letter. By the time he has finished tracing the letter in pencil, well over an hour has passed.

The next stage of the letter is ink. Mike has all the tools of a master writer. (He doesn’t consider himself a calligraphist, because that is a Western term. Mike considers himself a master writer, so that is what I will call him.) The ink in a small glass vial, Mike wets the metal spade shaped tip of his pen. His writing is breathtaking, a flawless distribution of ink over the page. The letters are in cursive, large confindent loops that demonstrate years of painstaking concentration. As he slowly, moves down the page and toward the end of the letter, I begin to read what is written. It is addressed to the Chan Meditation Center, somewhere in Queens. He thanks them two or three times, adding that he is their humble servant should they ever need him.

Two hours after Mike started to write the one page letter, he is finally beginning to near the end of the process. Each word painfully perfect, so much concentration in each letter. The final couple of sentences surprise me. Mike has written that above all other things, he wishes to have a wife. He writes that because he has committed himself to scholarly pursuits, he is now humbled by poverty and age and is unlikely to attract a woman. It is a very sad letter, what seems to be a desperate plea for love. I begin to wonder what the Chan Meditation Center is, if it is a place where one can be arranged with a wife, or if Mike is simply hoping that the recipient of the letter will pass it along to a woman who is available.

When the letter is done, Mike pulls out a rubber stamp and seals it shut with a red goo. The insignia on the stamp shows up in the goo. This is how letters were sealed hundreds of years ago, I thought. My tape ran out and Mike told me he’d had enough of the camera. I said goodnight and happy new year, and headed for the train.

Mike put on his dark grey overcoat, wrapped his light grey scarf around his collar and headed out. The door locked, he squeezed by me and out the dark hall. It was the day of the Chinese New Year parade and we were headed down to Chinatown. Mike had a bounce in his step, hurrying along because he sensed the parade was going to come to a close.
2005 is the year of the rooster, Mike explained as he paced along. When I asked him what animal last year was, he said he wasn’t sure… that he was more interested in Japanese culture.
Chinatown was abuzz. It was so filled with people, it was difficult to think about anything other than navigation. We got to the parade in time to see a couple of floats, music blaring from box speakers and someone singing chinese into a cordless microphone. Tiny confetti sprinkled the sky and a man dressed as a rooster jumped around. At one point, a dragon slithered by, many men beneath a multi-colored cloth. Five minutes later, the Falun Gong dressed in bright yellow costumes marched by, a man banging symbols toward the front. They were the last of the parade. Mike was clearly disappointed, wanting to have seen far more than 5 minutes of the celebration.
We headed out from the trash lined streets, looking for a restaurant. Mike had told me a few weeks earlier that every new year he treats himself to a sit down dinner. Intrigued, I asked him if I could join. He agreed. We zig zagged around before reaching the place he had wanted to go but when we arrived it was no longer there. Mike was frustrated. It had been a great place, and cheap. “Nothing lasts forever” he said as we waited to cross the street. Mike decided that instead of a meal, he would buy himself a gift. He told me that each Chinese new year he buys himself a little something. We stumbled upon a gift store. Mike found a bowl with a dome shaped lid. It had a picture of a bird painted in blue ink. It was simple. $2.95. Mike left the store feeling as if he had gotten a good deal. And he had.
Along the walk back to the White House, Mike stopped whenever he found a store awning that had chinese characters. He studied them as a fisherman studies fish swimming through a river. At one point we walked by a little boy throwing snap pops against the sidewalk. He was so small and bundled as he enjoyed the little explosions. He threw another and another, never tiring of the process.

Back at the White House, Mike unwrapped his gift. There were instructions with the bowl. He carefully lifted the paper to his eyes and read for close to 5 minutes. I had trouble imagining what directions could possibly come with a bowl. After finishing, he dismissed the directions as useless. He pulled a couple stalks of broccoli out of the small refrigerator, removed the pink rubberband and put them into the steamer. As the broccoli cooked, Mike pulled some lettuce, tomatoes and onions out of the fridge for what he called his “two minute salad”. He sliced the onion, taking care to keep the slices thin. By this time, the broccoli was done. Mike mixed the broccoli with some leftover pasta. Together with the salad and a quart of milk, he had quite a meal. I stood there, camera in hand, timecode rolling. In some ways, it was sad to watch. A man in his early 50’s, alone, celebrating a new year that no one else around him even knew existed. But Mike seemed fine, chewing his food, watching a japanese film and chuckling to himself.

After his meal, Mike walked to the end of the hall and into the bathroom where he washed the dishes. There was a massive crack in the mirror. Back in his room, Mike pulled out a piece of paper and a ruler.

They run in packs – relying on each other for safety and reassurance. Nobody will harass them for being lost if there are in groups of twenty. No nightmarish, unseen vagabond will pluck them up and introduce them to violent, urban horrors when they are using the buddy system, en masse.

And none of them feel lost when every street corner requires a group decision. With enough heads working on the problem of getting from here to there, they have a better chance of success, even if it means moving slower.

To keep themselves from getting too lost, they don’t go far at night. They are a gaggle of swooping, hollering art students, going door to door in search of a bar or club that will let in minors. Arms wide in imitation of toy airplanes, they run up the sidewalks. One, named Adam, skips across the Bowery, hopping from corner to corner. Another, Jacinthe, clutches around her friend Stephanie and watches, sometimes laughing loudly and encouraging them. Their stop and search strategy leads them into dark, backwater bars, poetry clubs and, eventually, to the tourist destination of the disaffected, CBGBs.

The point is: they are clueless. And with the right kind of eyes, a group of clueless kids (on holiday, with disposable income and a predilection for art) is not a gaggle. It is an audience and a market.

And while the Ottawans are running around the hotel, getting ready for the night, Shadow has, all the time, been sitting in his corner of the lobby, shoveling up wilted spinach and chomping on it like a sacred, Hindu cow. He eats out of a clear plastic tray using a white plastic fork, and in between bites he quizzes the students on their life goals.

The giant man speaks in a high pitched voice that makes you flinch for all it’s surprising raspiness, like the sounds a teenage boy might make. Why is his voice so sour and stunted? Has he eaten too many citrus fruits?

One girl tells Shadow she is studying education. No hesitation. Shadow is preaching, letting whatever words enter his mind exit through his mouth without any thought except rhythmic continuity.

“You don’t go to school for education. You’ve got to Be a teacher. You can’t go to school to learn that. You got to be that now and always. What do you teach? What are you teaching me right now?”

In unplanned, organic order, the Ottawans take turns at Shadow’s table. Sometimes he is asking them about his art – which drawings do they like, why, rank the art, 1st, 2nd, 3rd – and sometimes he is bending their heads around a corner they hadn’t imagined. He sits, a little slumped, encouraging his more reticent guests with a nodding head and an occasional, “Um hmm,” or, “Oh yeah? Really?” And he sounds surprised when he says these things.

He has the look of a man with no sense of his own size. In ancient times, stories would have been written about the giant black ogre who will seize a person in their tracks just with the sound of his voice…adventurer heroes, who we would call vagabonds, would warn each other about the losing your momentum as you pass him…if he catches your eye, if you pause to look at the lines and colors on the walls, he will stop you and unravel you with the rhetorical talent of the mystic sophists.

The question is, does he know what he is doing? This giant who swaggers and dresses with dapper flair must know he has crafted a complicated character in the form of Sir Shadow. He never hesitates, sometimes because he is just repeating himself, the same as a skilled salesmen; but he muses as well, always consistent in his descriptions of the world, but looking at people with precision. He uses no barbs, but he cuts to the bone.

How different is Sir Shadow from the Pied Piper? Here he sits, surrounded by younglings, all paying Big Money to learn art, and the man, who has learned only the most basic uses of pen, paper and paint, sits in the middle of them, talking, and there is a buzz. He has laid the weight of planetary gravity on the landscape they thought was theirs to roll around upon.

******

The Ottawan art students go to dinner at Acme, a southern style theme restaurant Shadow recommended. They are eager for the night, but a little exhausted by the day. They eat heavy portions of spicy gumbo and ribs. They flirt and try to guess the musicians playing through the speakers. They have a few beers on the table, but none of the students drink like professionals.

Back at the White House Hotel, Shadow has changed into loose fitting, yellow clothes. He has a table set up where he was eating, and has begun covering canvases with horizontal brush strokes, layering the paint into bright patterns of green/yellow/red, or pink/white/orange. The colors look like the landscape of a Caribbean beach town. He spends time looking at the canvases, thinking on where to apply color, and then attacks with a variety of brushes (including a shoe shine brush). He dribbles paint on the canvases in left/right swoops, and then mashes the paint into the mix. The end result couldn’t be more dissimilar from the one-line art. It is figureless, abstract, and moody.

Shadow: I’m working with some people to try and market my stuff. We could put this on bath towels and ties and shower curtains, you know? You like these patterns? Could you see yourself with some bedsheets with that yellow pattern on them?

A couple is standing next to Shadow and the girl says yes. Is she being polite or is she serious?

Shadow: Oh, I like you. Yes. Hmm. Which pattern would you like to see on a scarf?

This goes on for some time. Shadow is doing what might be best described as market research. When several people say they like his dark red painting, he takes their advice seriously. Tonight, when everyone has left, he will experiment with a 6 panel painting that is a deep, sensual red. He says he wants to sell the patterns and retire from the money.

Shadow: I used to make these kinds of paintings in San Francisco. They used to hang in galleries and I made a lot of money doing that. It’s time to get back to that so I can cash it in.

Now, the Ottawans are filing back in. They head to the back. They filter into every corner of the White House Hotel. They sit in their rooms, tired, asking each other where they will go tonight. They all pass by Shadow, as he paints or talks to them. By the time they are ready to leave, some good and drunk, they have all clustered up in the lobby… a small reservoir on the side of a major river…and Shadow, expecting the audience, is in the middle of it, smiling…

******

The lobby of the White House Hotel is not an art gallery. It is a public space. People walk in from the streets, permanent residents sit and read the paper or look out the window, tourists stop here, on there way somewhere else. Its uses are unlimited, but you would have never thought it was an ideal location for a performance unless you were standing there, in a circle, surrounding Shadow.

He says hello to those who have sat with him. Having heard that he is the author of the drawings on the walls, more people ask him how he started. Will he draw for them? Will he talk to them? Will he speak?

And Shadow is all grin. His bottom four teeth jut out from a swollen smile. People are at him from every direction and more are coming in the room, thinking about walking past him, to the door.

So he announces.

“Now here we go loop-de-loo. Here we go again. The story is about to start.” It sounds like singing…

Now I want everyone to get together /
and understand /
that this is the story of a /
lonely, lonely man.

In the middle, the stage is a black plastic chair. Shadow draws, as he always does, from memory. The faces at upward angles, the hands on keyboards, or gripping drumsticks, or raised, potential energy aimed at a hand drum. He starts rocking with the swoops and dips of the lines. He sings sour blues songs. He is not a musician and the music does not come out right, but he sings straight through the songs. The notes are dissonant and mismatched. Maybe they are old standards, but it sounds more like he is improvising.

He finishes the first drawing, a complicated dance scene and holds it up to applause. The room is filled. He says, “Let the bidding begin.” But his audience is made from young art students. They have very little money and when the drawing sells for ten dollars, Shadow is surprised. He expected twenty, and had been charging as much earlier in the evening. His mouth is still open, eyes looking back and forth, gauging the crowd and realizing this will be the average price. The next one comes more elaborate, but still only reaches ten dollars. Now he knows, he will have to sell as many as possible to make some money.

Therefore, whenever one drawing is finished, he hands it to the girl next to him and keeps singing and drawing. The audience will stay for as long as there is a performance. It would be rude to leave a man, singing and performing just for you.

…he falls back into rhythm…it is all one long song…or is it one long drawing…different angles of the same scene…

…but if I could see her again
Maria, oh, Maria…
How you made me fall apart

Dun-doo-dee-dun-doo-dee-dun
What a story this turned out to be…
Now you know, how the blues all start’d
When she stole each man’s heart…

Maria! He sings about Maria! She’s be gone for three months and there is no question that it is not just a character, not just a name he chose at random. I am on the ground, aiming the camera at his face and trying to get good audio. I am close, just at his knees, and he is almost crying the music. I feel ashamed to see him like this, knowing it is not a show. The man pours, pours, leans on the page, swoops up the back line of a woman’s dress, draws to her shoulder, flairs outward, ink shape on black construction paper. He, sitting down, all faces angled down to watch him, below but approaching his zenith, a bright nirvana path of total revelation. What if she could see him? The ogre, singing heartbreak and confession.

Nobody in the crowd would know Maria, but they will all ask themselves what kind of life Shadow has lead. Who are these people, these faces? Do they come from his past? Are they real?

But we know; it is the little German girl, Maria. He is singing loss.

And anymore, it would be rude to think Shadow is just a salesman/mystic. He is a believer; a real, old-world bluesman who touches the dirt.

The lobby, despite the efforts of Shadow, and Lincoln before him, is not an art gallery. It is a dull white room which is occupied because if it’s location between the front door, the lounge, the dormitories and the front desk. This might seem obvious, but I want you to think about it as a small reservoir on the side of a major river. Water passes by and happens to build up, some times settling into a steady pond, and other times swirling heavily, creating a whirlpool. The presence and character of this buildup is unpredictable, and hard to anticipate.

Most of the time, the lobby has a steady, small congregation. Lee sits near the front desk or at a table. Sam shuffles in and out. Two or three couples sit at the small silver tables and look over their tour books. They eat sandwiches and drink orange juice from “Steve’s,” the bodega next door. They talk about museums and fifth avenue and ask how to get to Rockefeller Center.

Tom stands, his hands in the pockets of his black jacket. He nods at everyone near him, makes a joke or tells a story you’ve already heard thirty-five times (“Oh you’re from England? There’s a great fish and chips place up the block called ‘A Salt & Battery.’ Get it? They like me there. If you go, tell them Tom says, ‘hello.’”). He waits for a response and they, not knowing why an old man is at their shoulder, try to act like he isn’t there. They laugh a little to be polite, but Tom gets tired of it and walks out side to have a cigarette.

This is the normal, standard, average scene inside the lobby. In the day, it is flooded with blue and red light from the forward windows. In the evening, the overhead bulbs give the room a yellowish appearance. It is a colorful place, despite the usual, slow pace. The walls and floors are decorated with occasional flairs – a green 7Up sign, a brown tile pattern, bright, blue doors – and this uneven indulgence matches the noise level of the room: sometimes there is only the radio, sometimes there is shouting which will either yield laughter or a small standoff.

But all the mood of the room will veer towards festivity when the place fills up with a large group of young tourists – as happened on February 19th. They were here to see the Central Park art installation called “The Gates.” They were a gaggle of Ottawan art students. All of them, youthful, eccentric, wearing weird furs and crooked jackets, most of the guys with creative facial hair and the girls with piercings in weird crevices of their ears and faces.

This kind of crowd, they sell out the building. At 8 in the evening, there are no keys on the back wall; everyone is upstairs, running from room to room, making plans for the night, washing up, planning how to get into each others’ pants. This is the kind of crowd that can only happen on school field trips. Everyone already familiar, but now bound together by group activities and long bus rides, everyone bubbling, getting changed together, leaning in each other, giddy with static electricity inside their skin. They are carrying their world from the great, white north down with them, wherever the trip pauses. They are a moving microcosm caravan – Canadian Art Students in New York.

They are giddy tourists, searching New York for the originals works that populate their textbooks. They get loud when talking about the Tim Hawkinson installations at the Whitney Museum. They meet Cristo and giggle. They stand outside and smoke cigarettes, or sit in the back, scanning the Village Voice music listings, talking about the great Miles Davis performances they have on video, collecting and comparing what they know. Their currency could not be experience; they are too young to be accomplished. Instead, it is a competition: who is more clued in to what’s really going on…who is the first to see a trend…who will tell the news of the next wave…and in doing, who will be chosen to embody the spirit of the next big thing…

They pass through the lobby, on their way out to the street, or upstairs with smuggled bottles of rum and beer and they get slowed down by the lobby. Their friends are standing there, looking, waiting. Everyone is expecting something. Where are we going? Where can we eat? I want to untie your belt and put my fingers in the band around your waist. Where are we drinking? Whose room will I end up in tonight?

They stand in line to get their keys and Tom leans against the glass barrier between the clerk and the lobby. He looks at two girls and points to their hat, which reads, “Canada.” Of course, he has a joke for this.

“Oh your from Canada, ey?”
This is Tom affecting a Canadian accent, complete with the ‘ey’ at the end.
“You know how you spell Canada?”
Of course they do but if they said yes, they would clearly miss what is bound to be a great joke.
Tom says, “C-EY-N-EY-D-EY”

Would you laugh? Probably not. And neither did they. But Tom, never deterred by a timid audience just waits until the next patron steps forward and he tries the joke again. Literally, the man just repeats himself.

The two girls who heard this joke must have laughed and Tom, who knows it’s all about shots on goal, has them in the corner of the room. How drunk is Tom now? The girls are trying to open a can of tuna, and he offers to go upstairs and lend them his can opener. They are grateful and now spend a few more minutes with him. Tom, ever the entertainer, is happy to have an audience, especially an audience of two girls, with bright white skin and big teeth.

After a while, I leave Tom and the girls. I can’t listen to Tom’s stories about the Navy anymore. I could repeat them myself, and sometimes do. Later, when I return to see if anything interesting is happening, Tom is onto a new story. I haven’t heard this one, but it’s clear right away that Tom has lost track of who he is talking to; the punchline of the joke is something about a midget with a giant cock. After this, the girls, became conscious of the picture they present – two attractive college girls listening to a desperate old sailor tell dirty jokes…is he hitting on them…are they entertaining an old man…mining the romantic, rusty past…or is he drooling – suddenly uncomfortable, they move to the rear lounge, where permanent residents are not allowed.