i made it out to section 55 today, continuing the gravestone portraits project, with some ambivalence. the ethics of it made for entertaining mental cud-chewing. i thought further about how ethical or right it is for me to seize pictures of strangers and assemble them into something new, this without permisison of themselves (obviously) or anyone else. but before dwelling on me me me i thought instead about the ethics of the photos being there in the first place. who knows if the deceased wanted these photos there? the sepulchral portraits exist in concentrations, it seems, meaning that certain sections (like 55) will have hundreds of tehse photos while other sections will have virtually none. this only suggests salesmanship, and the influence of a certain funeral home or cemetery director — it does not suggest a universal tendency of people to want their photos on their burial sites, nor doe sit suggest that the photos are an especial badge of honor. and what of the young children and infants? certainly they had no input in the matter. whose benefit is served by placing their images on the headstones? i would allow that the images of dead infants and children serve as a siren call to we walking mortals that we should not squander or dismiss as common this enviable gift of life. but we should also not feel sorrow or dismay for those lives cut short when every one of our living seconds presents an opportunity that others no longer have.
but what of death? is it a person’s final triumph, or their moment of final defeat and humiliation? no one escapes this life alive, however proud or accomplished our minutes and hours and months and years. should this final defeat, the expiration of this inferior vessel to causes natural or not, be a monument?
maybe. i don’t know.
i remember how i used to find celebrity grave hunting to be a tacky and selfish pursuit. i still feel that way, but only up to a point. i changed my mind about famous graves when i found Leonard Bernstein up on Battle Hill in Green-Wood Cemetery. such a complicated, lucky, public, and accomplished life as his, but in death anyone could approach him, anyone could approahc the same physical materials shared by the rest of us, identify with the thought of these remains and the difference between these remains and the spirit still coarsing through these veins.
yes, the body itself is a monument, an identifiable source of inspiration. and the portraits create a connection between the mystery of the buried body and the earthly human essence of the life it lived.
that was a long way to go to state the obvious…
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before taking Section 55 i got out my Alan Lomax gear and recorded a few calls from a payphone near the cemetery. this payphone is hilarious. nothing works right. the buttons stick and the toughtone sounds sound whack. i put money in but the phone demanded more, calmlyy and robotically requesting that i re-dial the number i was trying to reach. i dialed, re-dialed, and re-re-dialed, but no joy. the call could not be completed, but thanks for the 50 cents.
but the most hilarious thing of all was the sound of Disney Radio infiltrating the calls. for some reason Disney Radio (and only Disney Radio) can be heard over many payphones in New York, but it is usually only possible to hear that radio interference faintly. on this phone the radio was loud and clear, almost as loud as the touch-tone sounds and the automated messages and other payphone sounds.
so i recorded my attempts to complete a phone call from this payphone. to me it is hilarious, and if we just add a funky beat then we have the makings of a payphone opera.
speaking of which, i looked up the term “payphone opera” and was surprised to find a comopany named “Pay Phone Opera” on 42nd Street in Manhattan. i dug around a bit, trying to imagine how i could not have heard of a Pay Phone Opera company by now. a few seconds of sleuthing revealed that the company was actually called “Pay Phone Operations”, and that some of the WWW directory web sites for some reason truncated that name to “Pay Phone Opera”. that was pretty funny. to me.
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getting back to Section 55… i think i might have been surveilled today. i did something i never did at a cemetery before: i urinated on the grounds. no way did i come anywhere near pissing on anyone’s grave. but when you gotta go you gotta go, and these massive cemeteries are no place to be if you insist on daintily seeking out a toilet. there are none at this place, and i know for more or less fact that the groundskeepers at these cemeteries relieve themselves when and where they see fit. it was the subject of my favoritest-ever New York Post front page headline. the story was about a man goingn to visit his grandmother’s burial site, but when he got there he found a groundskeeper urinating on it. the groundskeeper, it turned out, was 90 years old and somewhat incontinent, and he was not urinating on the grave but into a flower vase that had been placed there.
not a pretty story by any account, but the front page of the New York Post raised the story from what would have been relative obscurity to transcendental greatness. the headline was:
“R.I.Pee”
That’s it! Rest In Pee! To me that is even greater than the “Headless Body Found In Topless Bar” front page.
anyway, i did my business on the base of the BQE. if the cemetery did not kepe its bathrooms locked 24/7 i would not have had to do this. but the bladder calls.
this is one of the few corporate perks i can look back upon with nostalgia: i liked having access to a toilet. i don’t always have that any more. o, lost!
but i don’t think i was surveilled on account of peeing onto the BQE. i don’t think anyone saw that. i think one of the groundskeepers took a long, hard look at me after noticing that i’d been milling around section 55, aisle by aisle, grave by grave, for over an hour, seemingly without legitimate interest in a particular burial site but more motivated (if potentially unethically) than he might have suspected.
whatever his interest i don’t know why he was staring at me, or if i was only imagining it, but i did not even think about until hours later.
the only cemetery i ever got sorta kinda kicked out of was _____. but those security goons are assheads, and i would never, ever choose to be buried there just on account of the assholery of the living that would patrol my burial site.
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o, i have so much work to do. the winter has been mild and i have gone out for long rambles more than i might expect for this time of the year.
i looked up cruises this morning. 3 nights, max, thank you very much. but the penalties for travelling alone are too annoying. you either pay double or you bunk with a stranger, and i am way too old for that shit.
