3 a.m. // Often while observing my neighborhood for these writings, I can’t help but observe the cops. They of course also observe, though much more conspicuously. At times I felt an urge to erase these stories from the Half/Life project, to walk to another part of the block, to tell a different story. But on the walks between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. they were so often present, idling at the end of the alley, shaping the psycho-social dynamic of fully a third of the clock hours that this dance of watching the cops watch the street and then watching the street in the place of the cops repeated over and over and became the story.
I found it hard not to feel that my act of observing was cop-like as I stood conspicuously in spots where nobody other than police lingers, writing in my notebook at odd hours. Sometimes, as I waited for observations to strike me, I thought of scenes in detective noir films where the private eye waits under a streetlight. Anything could happen. Will my informant show up at the rendezvous point to whisper secrets? Or did she or he flip, inspiring the mob boss to send thugs speeding this way to spray the corner with machine gun fire? And what exactly does the neighbor peering through the Venetian blinds think when she sees the detective out at random hours again and again? Some passers-by give me a look that seems to question or wonder if I’m up to no good. Do they think I’m a drug dealer, a fence, a pimp? But no, criminals tend not to keep notebooks, or so I would assume. Some kind of undercover agent? If not police then perhaps a city inspector. Bureau of alcohol regulations. Nuisance remediation administration. Vice minding council.
Last night I watched the cops again as I brushed my teeth in my warm apartment with the lights out. A squad car pulled in just then. After scanning the alley it turned around and positioned itself in the familiar spot, hood just barely jutting in to foot traffic. The squad car’s row of rooftop floodlights then lit up U Street with an ugly cold white glare. Antithesis of the sleepy cold November Monday night calm of the scene until that moment. Like florescent lights coming on at a nightclub. A driver innocently stopped at the red light raised his arm and averted his eyes from the painful flood of extreme brightness, his car’s interior suddenly on view to the world. Passengers on a city bus squinted to see what caused the police to activate such hostile tech, but their ride soon moved on. Three officers in black uniforms, METROPOLITAN POLICE in white letters on their backs climbed out of the car. One man lifted plastic bags and set them down on the squad car’s trunk. Another unsheathed steaming boxes and passed them out. A dinner conversation in the cold shadows made invisible by excessive use of light. //
One of 24 posts inspired by Half/Life, on view at H-Space in Washington, DC (on view indefinitely as of this posting). Contact Erik to schedule a visit. Paintings and zine on sale now in the Future Cartographic shop.