walking thorugh the outram park underpass to the nel, you always see the clay murals on the walls which show fragments of people and things. i'd dismissed it before as useless and pretentious postmodernism, but now i am struck by its resonance. the murals, in fact, capture the essence of commuting perfectly-- we are all heading towards a certain destination, and our passage through the station is merely a form of transit. nobody is there for the station itself, and thus we make our fleeting passage through its halls towards wherever we may be headed.
an observer on the wings- himself a commuter, would only notice little eye-catching features of his fellow passengers-in-transit, and perhaps toy with the image: whether a motif on a shirt, a bunch of balloons, a poignant nose or the shape of a bum-- for a moment of breif consciousness before tossing it back into the ocean of subconsciousness. thus, these fleeting and incomplete impressions emerging in almost- tangibility out of the clay. some clearer than others, some odder than others. all pedestrian, yet invested with a sense of fantastical absurdity and dreamlike elusiveness.
its a very well distilled caricature of subway life, and perhaps ironic in its status-- in the very tunnel as an observer, equally overlooked and dismissed by people in the way it itself describes. very intelligent, intentional or not. it took me long enough to get it too.
mellie contemplated 6:59 PM
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