Panorama with Hood Ornament

Panorama with Hood Ornament

by Rafael Sánchez

Jersey City, 1995
[Originally published for the exhibition catalog, "Boston School", Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1995, Lia Gangitano, Editor]

Never knew I what calm was in the soul,

Although I have seen the elements still'd

-Byron, Cain

Once… you and I… out on a ledge… floor eleven I think, of that haunted place. We hold on and your fingers pierce. The eyes of your face, deep, serene pools of horror, assure me of the gravity below. Beckoning. A step stirs and we spiral.

Nicéphore Niepce, The World's First Photograph, 1826.

Courtesy The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

The hospital is pale and fluorescent; a reminder of the taunting buzz we might find in limbo. I am a stray herald beside your bed, and you a solitary bridegroom, crushed by your very sustenance, stained in white. We try our best to decorate the moments. Yet between tropical shakes, a Balinese shadow dance, and Sade, we know that it is soon and sure that you will go. Now it seems so far away that a little black box of ashes has broken my heart. So I raise a heavy pen to Mnemosyne aflame and send you a long lost letter… since I never quite got your new address.

We were so young and poised the night I came down to see your pictures for the first time and the only light we knew was on us and the deep red of your vinyl sofa. It's funny how thinking of you feels like traveling through the atmosphere of your photographs. Maybe they always had this at their core… a way of staging a pretext for memory. You handed me a print that seemed to have a distant origin, like some early photo experiment from a hundred years ago. But lonely Bird was instantly more than this. Through its haze I imagined that we may have inherited a derailed photographic past. The horizon splits the world in two equal parts, earth and sky. The bird belongs to both but rests momentarily on our ledge, triumphant, like a weathered biblical messenger, or a beacon perched before eternity. A view from a leap into the void.

Mark Morrisroe, Untitled, undated, collage, spray paint, tape, acrylic on glass.

(Courtesy Rafael Sánchez, New York and The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur

I drift there as you recall surviving an intentional overdose in a lonely room in the city of light. Your voice is lapsed and there's all this scrawling around the picture. "This is my ode to Diane Arbus," emerges as I weed through the lines. The scene falls into place and dissolves again. How many suicides were there anyway, Mark? This one was supposed to be your Westbeth… your "last supper." Then the world came back with the morning on its wings and even Paris looked pretty good.

How many birds flew by Niepce's primitive lens when he managed to take the world's first photograph? How many were absorbed by the eight hour exposure? Initial proof, you might say, of how photographs lie. As in Atget's ancien regime. The sun rises beyond a cloudy dream… a ray of hope as an inverted cry.

Life has a funny way of bringing fate to your doorstep. We first met when you came up one day to borrow a neighborly cup of sugar. It was the beginning of a conversation that continued, with many twists and turns, through your last four years. I admit that during some of my early visits to your place, I'd hesitate by the doorway when greeted by the monumental odor inside. "The strange grossness" of your habits somehow paralleled your inspired ambition. At the time it amazed me how hard you'd work at making a good impression against such a fetid backdrop.

Plastic bags blocked our the window of the kitchen, which doubled as a darkroom. It was a sticky, stinky, greasy, gritty, boozy, cat pissy hair ball, roach infested ordeal. Nice try, but lacing the air with Saint Anne Spray only coronated the stench.

Mark Morrisroe, Lonely Bird, 1985,

Negative sandwich / C-print, photo dyes, ink, 20" x 16",

(Courtesy Brian Clamp, New York and The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur

 

Eventually I came to appreciate your little atrocities as features of your cave. Classically, caves are places of wonder, mystery and majestic beauty where poets and alchemists associate with the muses. Nature boy in a darkroom cavern, you played freely and beyond the possibilities of your medium. Despite a ranting desire for celebrity, you were always the true alchemist whose work towards The Work* is a consequence of deeper spiritual journey.

Aubrey Beardsley once said, "I am nothing if not grotesque." Like Beardsley you relish the grotto, giving prominence to your distortions; mannering them with love and awe. The dusty, brailled complexion of your photographs radiates as light rubbing up against the surface of your life.

Aubrey Beardsley, Hermaphrodite Among Roses,

from Le morte d'Arthur, by Thomas Malory, Sir (15th century) first published with Beardsley's illustrations by J.M. Dent & Co., London, (1893-1894), Gramarcy Books, New York, Avenel, 1995

You've left us many gifts… broken souvenirs from a hard, fast drive. A bawdy panorama tattered and silently mystic.

So, in honor of your reeling gait and a pile of worn-out shoes, I champion our vain talks on prolonged strolls to the check cashing place and to the A&P. Here's to broken tea cups and bouquets in the sink. To Lili Marlene, Bruce Willis and crackling Liberace records… and yes… Thanks for the memories.

 Footnote:

*Here the wording of: whose Work towards the Elixir, as it appeared in the original draft, is changed to: whose work towards The Work as it has always bothered the author since its original publication. The phrasing, however, remains interchangeable.