Street art

Gazing out the window of the temporarily-vacant-due-to-maternity-leave office across from mine is one of my favorite workday pastimes. Which explains (for any of you who might care to wonder) why when we moved to this building a few years back I volunteered not to have a window office. Yes, part of the reason is that I like wall space for project planning – I’m a sticky note addict – and most non-corner window offices are fairly small for the simple reason that pert near everyone wants a window so the planners try to squeeze in as many as possible around the perimeter of the building. Small office means not much wall space on which to lay out my lesson plans. Not optimal but still not the major reason why I opted for a window-free work space.

The big reason why I don’t like having a portal from which to gaze is that I am a devotee of the art of wool-gathering and no better way to practice my art than to have a window handy. The Big Rub being that no employer thus far has expressed a willingness to pay me for staring out at the scene below.

Since I really like things like eating and wearing clothing and maybe being able to pay off bills and retire someday, pragmatism leads me away from the window office. But I can’t help my great affinity for staring and – one hopes – noticing, so since Michelle went out on leave I’ve bowed to temptation for at least a few minutes each day, usurping her office’s fenestral feature.

I watch the scene below which for the most part means wartching lots of strangers going about their daily meanders. I see the bus waiters and the lunch eaters, the walkers with luggage and without. And while there is no intended or definable pattern to the movement there is an orchestration of sorts occurring before my eyes. I like to imagine the music of the street.

Don’t scoff. There is music here that is discernable only to those who are willing to listen without being too focused on actually hearing. The shuffling of the elderly and the skipping of the young create very similar sounds but with quite different rhythms and timbres – one slow and deliberate and announcing arrival, the other quick and carefree and trumpeting departure.  The sounds of laughter, high pitched from the children playing on the big toys, deep and rumbling from the elderly bench sitter reacting to a comment from one of his crones, staccato and worried from the addict trying to ingratiate herself and thus – please gawd – make a deal which means getting through another day.

Street traffic provides the accompaniment, the phrases are metered by traffic signals and the movements flow with the time of day. Taken together, there is a symphony being written, performed and forgotten as quickly as my last heartbeat.

Of course, I can’t hear these sounds from my vantage point on the fifth floor. But aided by the visuals I can imagine the sonic ebb and flow, the art being created and recreated down there.

And isn’t that what art is about – imagining?