A few old time buddies meet for coffee and doughnuts to chat local politics. A pair of filmmakers toast bar beers over neighborhood tales. A crew of highschoolers spray paint a lesser-used bridge abutment with profanity. A family talks about their day over dinner.
Does this list include a pattern break or conversational continuity?
Public facing surfaces covered with unauthorized images and messaging have many names; Graffiti, vandalism, gorilla art, advertising, murals, etc. Most of those tags are saddled with stigmas and the ones that aren't usually stipulate a creation presented under certain conditions. All, however, are part of a neighborhood's culture and represent pieces of an active conversation.
What community places are yours enough for comfortable self expression?
Abutment Message Board, South Entrance, February, 2020
Some of us like morning coffee. Others prefer evening beers. Some of us enjoy late night shadows. Others favor dining room light. Communicating within each frame carries social obligations and requires investments of participation, an exchange of resources, dedicated places, and groups of people choosing to spend time together.
Not everyone likes coffee or is old enough to legally drink or goes outside at night or regularly eats with their family, however. The collective shares enough for kinship but is made up of differences. Each needs their own share of shared space.
The old railroad bridge abutment turned tunnel near Honesdale’s Park Street Complex is one of those spaces. Every year, it fills up with conversational remnants, gets reset with a blank slate of fresh paint, and then the pattern repeats. The cycle is a beautiful sight to behold. Like a bivalve village’s lung, filtering our thoughts and exhaling deep local¹ signage.
Sure, bits of the conversation include problematic and grotesque messaging that, on average, isn’t kid friendly and, in some cases, isn’t particularly comforting to see but within the chaos you’ll find instances of reflective self policing. Vulgar, counter-notations sprayed atop gang references and hearts shoehorned in among hateful visuals are both part of an ongoing narrative.
In a general sense, the discourse can be encouraging, even when elements of the dialogue are discouraging. Layer by layer, there exist examples of community course correction. It’s like a remixed town hall meeting. Ideas are shared and considered and an evolution of understanding evolves in public view.
Abutment Message Board, West Side, December, 2019
Abutment Message Board, East Side, December, 2019
Room for opinion diversity means people feeling free to share what's important to them. Opinions aren’t held by all and some should be immediately challenged but space within which to freely express opinions is vital for every community.
Part of the East abutment image above features the statement “F*ck This Town.” That’s a simplistic notion devoid of constructive feedback but somebody wanted to say it so it’s worth knowing it exists.
Might it be just as important to have a high profile, town-celebrating mural at a prominent intersection as it is to have a town-deriding message, shared with a limited audience under a bridge?
Both carry notes of truth to be aware of as community members in common and represent concepts expressed on both ends of a spectrum. We can balance out the messaging by favoring positively lit stories through increased scale, support, reach, and fanfare so it seems entirely fair to have a few platforms reserved for everything else.
More room can be made for sentiments that build things up instead of those that tear things down² but it’s probably healthier for the full breadth of our ideascape to exist than for that existence to be stifled with regulated favoritism of one delivery form over another. Topics like permission, vulgarity, and misdemeanor tend to lead the way when someone draws a penis on a wall but enforcement from the top doesn't stop stories from bubbling up near the bottom.
Isn’t there value in knowing the scope of perspective of neighbors in the neighborhood?
Democracy includes people using their voice. Sometimes that means we hear inappropriate or profane things. We can't know what someone has to say until they say it and we can't control all channels in which something can be said. What we can do is consider what's presented to us, decide what we like best, and, as necessary, offer alternatives in reply.
When we see a gorilla offering of words and pictures, we could see an illegal act of norm defiance or we could see an illustration of neighbors staking their claim in the neighborhood by picking a place and sharing ideas. And when a commemoration of a harsh drug gets painted over by another toasting an objectively less harsh one, there’s view of comparative truthes in action. A wall-unfolding debate is not unlike countering points of view in newspaper editorials. Both are open discussions, they’re just happening across different media.
Community conversations are constantly breathing all around us. Staying informed means keeping our ears peeled, irrespective of the source. Letters to the editor, public meeting comment, and wall scrawls are all kinda the same thing. We’re trying to read as much local writing as possible and recommend tunnel strolls when en route to the Stourbridge Project.
¹ Great phrase borrowed from John Roos.
² Something podcasting pals at Uhh Yeah Dude say a lot.
Abutment Message Board, Dirty Footprints Restarting the Discussion Cycle, February, 2020