Bids for Attention: Love and Graffiti 1

After I crash landed myself on the other side of high school, I hopped in my car and high-tailed it out of Hollis. A straight shot down 95 to West Palm Beach. I did not pull the glamorous "Small town Maine girl meets wealthy Palm Beacher and settles into a life of affluence" trick. No, I went right to the bottom, where The Wild Things Are, to see what I was made of. Turns out I was made of malt liquor, blunts and insatiable curiosity. I lived in my car for a while, and had a group of friends so true that we still keep in touch and cheer each other's successes to this day. I didn't come from money by any means, but I had a tight family, and small town poor is different from city poor. In a small town even when you are failing you are somebody who is somebody's cousin or uncle. There is space. There is community. You have a voice.

I saw a different kind of poverty for the first time, excruciating and lonely. Hard drugs had just only started to make their way to small towns back then, here I saw generations of drug use and its effect on families, check cashing and housing projects. I had fallen in love with hip hop when I was twelve and I listened now as intently as ever:

You and somebody's daughter rising y'all own young'n
Now that's a beautiful thing, that's if you're on top of your game
And man enough to handle real life situations (that is)
Can't gamble feeding baby on that dope money
Might not always be sufficient, but the united parcel service
And the people at the post office, didn't call you back because you got
Cloudy piss, so now you back in the trap just that, trapped
Go and marinate on that for a minute

We were little jits. These were my dawgs, my tribe. And as I struggled I marinated.

My first apartment had two large speakers from Rent-a-center, record crates to play cards on and no other furniture than a king bed, which we crewed up on about five a night, head to toe. Everyone was welcome, and I was mostly happy. I had belief in possibilities, not only because I hadn't lived in this environment long enough to feel trapped, but because we were bright, creative little jits ;) I got turntables and would play music while the crew sprayed.

Inside the apartment.

I knew we could paint over it, and we did daily.

For the friends that were still in school, I would try and incentivize studying, getting a good grade meant we got more paint and had a party to celebrate (although we usually celebrated any way). We had a practice room, we called it the crack room because it looked so crazy. None of our little gang did hard drugs back then, but neighbors and parents did, so we joked about the devil to keep it from bringing us down.

These guys were really good, we ended up with some great pieces in the living room, made a couple shirts at Kinkos and talked about starting a clothing company.

We were surround by billboards and dreamt of renting one and putting a great group piece up. 20 years ago, people didn't really let graffiti artists paint their businesses, it was all rail cars and highway signs... and, of course, straight up defacement of property. I actually used to really get mad and argue with them about tagging someone's store or building. Why are you ruining other people's property? We can find other ways right? We could invent spaces, hustle an outlet so to speak. I got a couple clubs I dj'ed at to let them come in and paint, and it was a win-win. We got free paint and a canvas, and the clubs got some great art. (I have loads of pics buried somewhere, I wish I had more of the club art to show)

Here's where I started to see a bigger picture. When you are really poor in these environments, have minimal education, not a lot of opportunities for earning a living (you can work yourself into the ground and still be poor, so I don't want to hear about 'people need to work harder' ), you are born and exist in a world that is dictated to you. There are stores and houses and you can't own any of them. Your parents can't afford dental, and stressful living takes a toll on your appearance. Sales people at the mall follow you around, treating you like a thief. Outside of your hoods and cliques, you feel embarrassed, impotent. And this is without having drug use be a part of it. We were not addicts or shoplifters or part of any violence. We were a mixed group, and the cops were always harassing us just for walking around places. We weren't even homeless, sleeping in people's doorways, we were just existing. I always had an option out, I could go back to my family for help, they were always willing to try and help me go to college (which I did a few years later), but I could see the hopelessness in these friends I loved so dearly. I could see the anger in my neighbors. They felt they had no power. The disrespect from police and stores was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the retaliation was vandalism and theft. Destruction was the only power they saw. I started to see tagging their name on every stop sign and dumpster for what it was: a desire to be seen, the need to be acknowledged.

The king of the lost boys, Banksy said it best :

"People are taking the piss out of you every day. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs."

1. Top photo: Martin Luther King Jr.
2. Quote from Spottieottiedopaliscious by Outkasts
3. Banksy qoute from 'Brandalism' in the book 'Cut It Out' (inspired from Sean Tejaratchi's piece in Crap Hound No.6, July 1999.)