Comments on: Disaster area

By: Natalie

Natalie — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:53:07 +0000

Me, I think those graffiti look terrific right there and then. No doubt time and tide will fade them and make them blend in more subtly.
Funny thing is, if this photo was in a fancy museum catalogue and signed by one of the famous land-artists or graffiti artists, it would be revered and worth many $$

By: David Harmon

David Harmon — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:25:21 +0000

“Spray paint just makes it too easy.”

Yeah, there is that, but still it’s a human universal. Notice how most of it is names (“I was here”). And the obscenities that form much of the rest, can easily be seen as verbalized scentmarks and scat — instead of shitting or pissing on the spot, they write “shit” or “piss”, and so on…. Not so different from the other animals!

I imagine that eventually, some mold or the like will evolve an ability to eat the spray paint….

By: Jarrett

Jarrett — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:41:32 +0000

You make graffiti feel like a force of nature, as natural as scats, tracks, and scent marks.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:24:59 +0000

Yeah, but don’t you think it kind of ruins the place for everyone else? And I have to say that most prehistoric taggers whose work I’ve seen were quite a bit more creative than these yahoos.

I thought the Fred Woods area I blogged about last spring — same geology, by the way — had a much more tasteful form of graffiti: it was all incised. Spray paint just makes it too easy.

By: Two Dishes

Two Dishes — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:29:28 +0000

Let the marks remain!
Like a Skoal ghost on a jean pocket, it is only right to emboss this bachanalia site.
The disfiguring paint is their delinquent Stonehenge, a confession of dissipation.
It’s a kind of honesty.

By: David Harmon

David Harmon — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:09:26 +0000

Joel & Lucy: Graffiti goes back to prehistoric times… further if you count stuff like bear marks as “tags”. Personally, I’m happy enough if it can be limited to particular areas.

By: Two Dishes

Two Dishes — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:27:26 +0000

All the bark at the beginning reminds me that I want to take my biology class out to gather natural fibers. We’re going to make paper out of old junk mail and add interesting natural fibers to it. It’s a break for them from books. And it’s a seque between Ecology and The Molecules of the Body, since cellulose has a foot in both those camps.

“Our tongues taste the wind in stereo”. sticks in my head as much as the poem bear you wrote of this summer past, producing a geyser of debris as he tore apart a hive.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:08:23 +0000

Joel’s right, of course, but you’ve made a wild, bleak heady bit of poetry out of it all the same!

By: Joel Sax

Joel Sax — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:53:12 +0000

Damn, you should do something about the wilderness taggers over there.