My senior government and sociology teacher gave us an assignment on our second week of school (Yes, I know everyone else just got back today. Well, we are special.)
We were to look at the lovely and fascinating pictures on this website: http://www.3situations.com/BillSullivanWorks/BillSullivan.html
(To read about this art installation, please see the website)
Basically, it is a series of pictures of people on their way through the New York Subway Turnstile.
Then we had to choose a picture or two that struck us and create, nay, craft a story about their past, their present, and their future, based on their facial expressions, props, and any other clues we could glean from the pictures.
The following is (hopefully) my picture and the story I wrote.
She saw the man but didn't smile as his camera flashed. Her first instinct was that he was some perv trying to get pictures of the famous Anna Hope Westland but then she remembered that she wasn't 20 anymore. She was nearing 50 and the many art critics and rich old women with their opera glasses who had known her name, who had wept with pain as she danced, who had exclaimed like lovers over the beauty of her form, were all dead of living on the streets or gloriously living still, fucking the newly famous ballerinas, spinning them fairy tales of fames, glitter, and bright spotlights trained upon their fresh new faces. She was nearing 50 and she rarely ever danced anymore, just walked though the wobbly lines of young girls who were too poor for the famous schools but too naive to give up the dream (yet) of that New York lifestyle of love, beauty, and dancing. They didn't see the poison that was this city. She'd given her life, her toes, her youth, her sanity, and finally her beautiful girl to this game and in return they had thrown her aside after one mistake. No, she did not smile but she raised her chin high. She still had the bearing of a dancer, she knew, the long taut neck, the slender wiry arms, the arched back. This man was probably some art student, or an econ major, taking pictures of the poor pathetic subway riders. She would give her old peers nothing to pity. She'd called them her friends but when she'd "had the accident" as the New York Times lied, they'd shown their true colors. They'd kicked her right out. She had danced for the Queen! She was young and naïve she knew but she was not the only dancer that had fallen for that scumbag. She has just been the best. And then she had decided to keep the baby. Everyone told her she was throwing her life away but she insisted. She could feel the warmth inside her, the radiance from her belly. She was hugely overweight and she felt more beautiful than she had ever felt before, even when the scumbag’s hands had been tangled in her hair while they kissed. And she never intended to keep the baby. All she wanted was 9 months off. 7 months to be pregnant and 2 months to recover. She knew she could do it, and she had done it. But when she went to her first audition-oh the disgrace. Annie Hay Westerfield who? She was done for. And the baby was gone. So she got the only job she could find, having skipped college and gone straight to the stage. She hated every minute of that mirrored hell; she hated every shining face filled with promise. She went home at night and lay in bed, dreaming of crowds cheering and young men on bended knees offering roses, purple ones, her favorite. She’d contemplated suicide (who hadn’t contemplated suicide?) but decided she would grow old and tough and wiry and scare little kids who came to trick or treat. She would destroy her girl’s hopes of fame and love in the big city, sneakily, worming her way in. She would be kind, at first, and then shake her head at clumsiness, clucking her tongue (“oh, you’ll never make it with legs like those, you’re way too voluptuous for a ballerina, you need to smile less”). And so she pissed on their dreams. It was for their own good, really. It was the only thing that brought her joy, anymore. She thought, as she passed through the turnstile, “it is really because I care for them. I don’t want them to be hurt. Being a ballerina isn’t easy.”
We were to look at the lovely and fascinating pictures on this website: http://www.3situations.com/BillSullivanWorks/BillSullivan.html
(To read about this art installation, please see the website)
Basically, it is a series of pictures of people on their way through the New York Subway Turnstile.
Then we had to choose a picture or two that struck us and create, nay, craft a story about their past, their present, and their future, based on their facial expressions, props, and any other clues we could glean from the pictures.
The following is (hopefully) my picture and the story I wrote.
She saw the man but didn't smile as his camera flashed. Her first instinct was that he was some perv trying to get pictures of the famous Anna Hope Westland but then she remembered that she wasn't 20 anymore. She was nearing 50 and the many art critics and rich old women with their opera glasses who had known her name, who had wept with pain as she danced, who had exclaimed like lovers over the beauty of her form, were all dead of living on the streets or gloriously living still, fucking the newly famous ballerinas, spinning them fairy tales of fames, glitter, and bright spotlights trained upon their fresh new faces. She was nearing 50 and she rarely ever danced anymore, just walked though the wobbly lines of young girls who were too poor for the famous schools but too naive to give up the dream (yet) of that New York lifestyle of love, beauty, and dancing. They didn't see the poison that was this city. She'd given her life, her toes, her youth, her sanity, and finally her beautiful girl to this game and in return they had thrown her aside after one mistake. No, she did not smile but she raised her chin high. She still had the bearing of a dancer, she knew, the long taut neck, the slender wiry arms, the arched back. This man was probably some art student, or an econ major, taking pictures of the poor pathetic subway riders. She would give her old peers nothing to pity. She'd called them her friends but when she'd "had the accident" as the New York Times lied, they'd shown their true colors. They'd kicked her right out. She had danced for the Queen! She was young and naïve she knew but she was not the only dancer that had fallen for that scumbag. She has just been the best. And then she had decided to keep the baby. Everyone told her she was throwing her life away but she insisted. She could feel the warmth inside her, the radiance from her belly. She was hugely overweight and she felt more beautiful than she had ever felt before, even when the scumbag’s hands had been tangled in her hair while they kissed. And she never intended to keep the baby. All she wanted was 9 months off. 7 months to be pregnant and 2 months to recover. She knew she could do it, and she had done it. But when she went to her first audition-oh the disgrace. Annie Hay Westerfield who? She was done for. And the baby was gone. So she got the only job she could find, having skipped college and gone straight to the stage. She hated every minute of that mirrored hell; she hated every shining face filled with promise. She went home at night and lay in bed, dreaming of crowds cheering and young men on bended knees offering roses, purple ones, her favorite. She’d contemplated suicide (who hadn’t contemplated suicide?) but decided she would grow old and tough and wiry and scare little kids who came to trick or treat. She would destroy her girl’s hopes of fame and love in the big city, sneakily, worming her way in. She would be kind, at first, and then shake her head at clumsiness, clucking her tongue (“oh, you’ll never make it with legs like those, you’re way too voluptuous for a ballerina, you need to smile less”). And so she pissed on their dreams. It was for their own good, really. It was the only thing that brought her joy, anymore. She thought, as she passed through the turnstile, “it is really because I care for them. I don’t want them to be hurt. Being a ballerina isn’t easy.”
1 comments:
that was very good. the character is very bitter and has the right to be, but it was sad that she trys to crush girls dreams who dream of being as big as she was.I feel it made it very interesting though i really liked it.
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