stream of conscience
1) Walking east towards the diner for a lentil burger over salad with a friend. On my left an open window allows for passer-bys on the street to witness the scene inside a living room. I slow down. Streaming karaoke on the television. Two lively gentleman sharing the microphone, belting song lyrics. They see me looking at them and, to my delight, wave out to me on the street. I wave back. I am so interested in how we spend our private moments.
2) Travel to new city. Sit in on discussion of psychoanalytical films and feminism. Female versus Male point of view. Recommendation to watch Hitchcock films.
3) Train heads west, back towards home. It is night and I can see into windows close to the tracks. Empty room. Empty room. Empty room. The last room I remember passing is full of boys crowded around a table playing beer pong. It was a Wednesday.
photo courtesy of http://www.cinemasterpieces.com
4) Walk to Blockbuster. Hitchcock marathon night! I watch Rear Window and eat homemade nachos. Rear Window, produced in 1954, was based on Cornell Woolrich’s short story titled It Had to Be Murder. Starring an injured photojournalist (James Stewart) whose broken leg renders him wheelchair-bound in an apartment, Rear Window examines his new hobby: spying on his neighbors. The viewer watches Stewart’s character watch his neighbors through large binoculars and his telephoto lens. The viewer is forced to join Stewart as an interloper. Together, we are both Peeping Tom. Why does the film make the viewer feel guilty for watching — but, at the same time, hold on to attention so intimately that one can’t wait to find out what happens next?
Stranger, 1998
photo courtesy of http://www.photography-now.com
5) I recall a series of images by photographer Shizuka Yokomizo titled Strangers. In the series of 19 images, Yokomizo wrote anonymous letters to her subjects asking them to pose in front of a downstairs window in their home at certain time at night. Writes Charlotte Cotton in her book The Photograph as Contemporary Art,
“We are looking at the strangers looking at themselves in these photographs, for the windows act as mirrors as they anticipate the moment they will be photographed. The title of the series refers not only to the status of the sitters as the strangers to the artist and to us but also to the photographing of that curious self-recognition, or misrecognition, we have when we catch a glance of ourselves unexpectedly.”
6) We are all interlopers? Do we watch other people in order to better understand ourselves? Modernity has allowed for the compartmentalization of our lives. Without shared common spaces, we become curious about each others private lives.