on graffiti-writing – a meritocracy

Design an image, crafting it lovingly from the ether; make it pretty to look at, and fill it will subtle meaning; then, after so much gentle and loving effort, venture out into the night and glue it to a pole, abandoning it there. This is the life of the street artist. Once her picture is up and her work is done, she vanishes into the darkness to wait and see how the Universe will respond. As a seasoned veteran of the streets, she operates cunningly and without ado, but, occasionally, she will struggle with memories of earlier agony.

Oh how she would sweat when just starting out, and quiver, her knees shaking on the way to check and see if her image were still up or if it had been scraped down or covered over in the few hours since it was born. Oh how she would wallow in sadness at finding her own tender little piece plastered over with another person's art, or, worse, hacked off and carelessly discarded by one of the roving Artwork Desecration and Destruction Teams. The cause for our street artist's early trepidation is this: once it is stuck up or otherwise applied, graffiti stops belonging to just one person and turns into the common property of all who might look at it; it enters into and becomes one with a harsh and tumultuous meritocracy.

If the graffiti artist is interested in keeping her sanity, she will realize quickly (by delving deeply into her soul-space and maintaining there a proper equilibrium) that her street art, along with that applied by the next vandal, is just one segment in a giant, shifting mosaic applied by selfless citizens (i.e. SDUBS, or self directed urban beautification specialists) intent on enlivening the otherwise colorless and visually barren phaltscape. She will realize quickly that by covering only a portion of her piece instead of defacing it entirely, the other street artists will have deemed her art edgy, unique, or beautiful enough to merit its continuing existence on the wall or sidewalk. (Unless, of course, her work is so terribly lame as to be worth not time nor effort to cover over, or if she is particularly good at putting her pieces in places few others might reach, which in itself would prove her merit.) As long as she keeps herself in the graffiti game, she shall, in time, develop a vandal's eye of her own, which will allow her to judge which pieces to cover over, which to incorporate into her newest work of art, and which to not touch at all.

Hers is a dangerous game of applying and fleeing, watching and forgetting, weeping and re-applying. Hers is a world in which her city destroys her art nearly as quickly as she can apply it, a world in which her work must stand not only the test of time but also the test of subsequent sticker-applying hellions bent primarily on destroying the phaltscape. She contends not only with meddlesome and ever-watchful cops; she contends for the most prominent and choicest display spaces with some of the finest and the brightest artists operating today, artists who plaster over poor and inferior works of art mercilessly and without hesitation. Such is life in the pure meritocracy.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit