The Writing On The Walls

Archaeologists believe one of the first written languages took the form of heiroglyphics in Ancient Egypt. This language was found written on the tombs of pharaohs, so that these rulers would have their names visible to everyone. This was a kind of magic spell derived from the human desire for immortality. It is important to realize this in the modern world, where the written language is everywhere. Words have power because humans have given it to them for thousands of years. Every letter is a symbol that means something more than a simple sound. As these symbols join together, they become exponentially more complex. This concept comes to mind whenever I see graffiti written on a public surface. I make myself remember that those letters are sacred to somebody. Then, that reflection brings up memories of my own.  

  When I was nineteen I dropped out of college and spent the following summer living with Tyson, a graffiti artist I met on Craigslist. I had never met anyone who does graffiti. I didn't know what these people were like. My memories of semi-legible balloon letters spray painted along the highway were all I knew of that world. From Tyson I learned that graffiti is a lifestyle. To be good at graffiti takes years, he told me. Often I saw him in his room next to a beer designing an intricate multicolored design of his tag. His friends would come over and design their own tags while they talked and discreetly conducted illegal transactions. It seemed that anything Tyson did involved graffiti in one way or another. As an impressionable young man, I respected that. I saw him put in the hours of practice. I listened to his war stories of beefing with other artists who painted over his tags with sloppy work.

  I listened in dark fascination to his account of the day his apartment was raided by the Boston Police vandalism task force, and how the cops went right for his sketch books to prove their case against him. These investigators had spent months compiling a dossier of photo evidence taken from all over the city with the intent to prosecute the vandal whose tag was everywhere.

  But it's not vandalism, it's graffiti. If Tyson taught me nothing else, he taught me that. Regardless of what a judge might call it, graffiti is art.

  

  A few months ago, I was changing the roll of toilet paper at work. When I removed the old cardboard tube I noticed the wooden dowel had a tiny name written on it. "Why do these new kids have to write their name on everything?" I asked myself. If they had a real graffiti style I might respect it, but this was just chicken scratch.

  Even though it didn't qualify as art to me, I had to respect the ambition. It brought me back. It reminded me of the old days when the idea of my tag being recognized was still exciting to me. Yet even though I empathized, I could not endorse the lack of craft.  

  

  Before letters represented a sound, they represented a word. If you look closely at a capital "A" upside-down, it looks a bit like a bull's head with horns. The capital "R" resembles the side profile of a human face and chest. The original heiroglyphic symbols became streamlined versions of their meaning, only to represent the sound they make. This was a giant leap for the practical function of written language, but it still feels sad, like an important detail was left behind. I realized that's the real reason I like graffiti. It breathes life back into the letters we take for granted every day. When a tag is drawn on a surface, the letters are all expressions of the artist's unique soul, singing in harmony. To me, that supercedes the needy compulsion to just slap your name on something.  

  "Writing graffiti is the coolest thing you can do," Tyson told me one afternoon. I had just come home from a day of working in a research lab, and I was already getting stoned with my roommate. Even though I was fascinated by his adventures in street art, I was not completely convinced of graffiti's legitimacy. Tyson told me no matter where he went, graffiti always connected him to people who knew what he was about and respected his craft. If he ever needed a place to stay or a way to get back on his feet, the community of artists would be there for him. "Sometimes a tag I did years ago on the side of a curb will still be there, and that will be the one that gets a compliment. You keep putting it out there and you never know what comes back." Tyson painted this picture to me as we smoked, and it finally convinced me. That mental image of faded spray paint just above the pavement of a city street suddenly meant something more to me.

  By the time I was twenty-two I had made my way back to my home state of Connecticut. That summer I spent a lot of time with a nineteen-year-old mother of two named Haley, who lived in a one-room sublet with her babies and their father Pedro. Pedro was another unemployed teenager who spent his days in the tunnels of Hartford spray painting stencil designs on concrete surfaces. He didn't talk to me because I was an IV drug user. I didn't care because he was a stencil artist. Using a stencil is a slap in the face to all the artists who hone their craft for years. It's a poseur move which, in my opinion, wasted space that could be filled with real graffiti. My contempt for Pedro only fueled my appetite for self-destruction. It allowed me to abandon the belief that crafting a symbol for myself meant something. I could just shoot speedballs and the world could forget I was ever here.

  

  "You have to practice your tag every day," Tyson told me one day when I was hanging out in his room. One of his graffiti friends was there buying weed from him and decided to stay for a while. "You can't do your letter E like that," the friend pointed out as he watched me practice. "That's my signature E. If you steal it from me, that's biting. You can't bite." They both laughed as I scratched out my design. In response, I asked them how I'm supposed to invent my own letters. The friend suggested that, to get started, I use stencils. Tyson stopped him right there. "Nah man," Tyson protested. "Do you really want another stencil artist out there?" His friend paused, then contorted his face into an agreeable shape. "Yeah, you got a point," he finally responded.

  

  Last week I watched a new friend of mine use a green Sharpie to color in a large graffiti design he drew on his work station at the warehouse. It was one of many that have appeared since he got hired. The supervisors were so busy keeping up with the constant demand for Ramen noodles and honey buns that none of them really minded a little tagging. Clearly some of us saw this as an opportunity. I took a closer look at what my friend drew. The outline was crisp, the letters had styles that came together as one, yet each letter could still be a symbol of its own. His work wasn't as good as Tyson's, but the design showed promise. It was nice to see someone invest their time in the craft again.