Jul 242003
Public art usually manages to offend my aesthetic and political sensibilities at once. (My God, that’s hideous. And I paid for it!) But there are exceptions. A long, heavily-trafficked corridor in the Times Square subway station has eight metal signs nailed to the rafters, about fifty feet apart. If you happen to look up, instead of staring straight ahead as people are wont to do in subway stations, you will read the following, a line at a time:
Overslept,
So tired.
If late,
Get fired.
Why bother?
Why the pain?
Just go home,
Do it again.
I would be tempted to call this subversive if the word had not been spoiled. In any case it’s more entertaining than having Christo wrap Central Park, and a hell of a lot cheaper.
First of all why not take an extra 2 minutes and incorporate your thoughts on the painted bulls? Secondly, aren’t most of the people in Times Square looking up rather that straight ahead as you allege? Thirdly, I think the italics shoudl be on the And. Finally I would have liked a ‘folksy’ reference to the content of the ‘poetry in motion’ stylings of the material. ie:
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.
This is a response to LJ’s comment, then: Yes, people in Time Square are often looking up. No, it wasn’t alleged that they look straight ahead in Time Square. The post is referring to an underground corridor that connects the Port Authority subway station to the Time Square station — and in this corridor, everyone tends to look straight ahead.