Follow the Rabbit

As you’re aware, I have a great joy in capturing street art, be it graffiti or otherwise. Every place I go, I try to get at least one or two shots of what people deem worthy of public display. Sometimes, it’s prurient, and at other times, it’s delightful in subtext and drama. However it presents itself, it’s again the sign of a living, breathing organism that we call “society,” and I’m grateful to be able to record it.

Each alleyway and byway in Barcelona has its application of art. From stickers such as what you see above to the manic scribbles of ink, pain, and paint elsewhere, there’s an awareness that this city is a living, breathing canvas, not a static embodiment of gothic or medieval character. If the architecture doesn’t scream this reality, the various artists that have resided here, from Gaudí to Picasso, certainly do. The streets, corners, and walls do the same, crying out with their voice, their measure of importance to rage against the machine of capitalism and corruption, religion and rebirth, and the sensuality of human experience.

Indeed, there’s an audaciousness, bold and unabashed, that confronts you. These are, after all, designed to upset the delicate apple cart of assumed experience and force a recognition of what we’ve always considered a binary state of existence. The messages are clear: “fuck the establishment, find your value,” and the methods are consistent. They’re torn edges, oblique references to The Matrix, and gremlins tattooed against the will of the towers upon which they’re displayed. There’s a righteous indignation to them as if to point out that your feelings of order, cleanliness, and appropriate behavior are not appreciated here in the world beyond the cloistered stone and pews of the sacristy. They’re not wrong because faith, reason, and humanity play a more significant part in our story than just between the altar and the door.

We’re messy, you and I. We’re prone to the gross over-exaggeration of presence and place, to the dispassionate display of wealth and accumulation, and the sensuality of love and lust bleeding from our fingers along the porn-fringed hallways of a digital hellscape. We imbibe in the best and worst of what this world and each other have to offer because we feel it’s our sacred obligation to “know as we’re known,” something the Apostle Paul would probably concur with in theory but run screaming in praxis. And, the women on ice cream cones, dripping with the hedonistic offering of carnality, would undoubtedly be an altar many would pray at. This is the theatre these streets offer: a mirror held brightly against the fleeting shadow of who we are.

I don’t know their stories; these nameless artists and goblins are hidden amongst the proletariat of Barcelona. As a tourist and visitor, I’m ascribed a specific social function, a role to play in the economy and troubles of this state. I am both the admirer and target of anger and explanation, an unwitting exploiter of the economy and people who, albeit willingly, are tied to the tent pole of tourism in some sadistic capitalist punishment. I’m grateful for the freedom of the streets, but I’m mindful that for every store I step into, every purchase I make, every comment laid bare at the foot of a Yelp or Google Review, I’m part of a problem that governments refuse to solve.

The streets are signboards, messages to a populace, and people who shoulder heavy burdens. They’re covered in the millions’ sins, successes, punishments, diseases, and travails. Everything is distilled from a root of foment, a growing unction to change the social gyre, move their world forward in space and time, and recapture some of their vainglorious history while simultaneously managing to keep society balanced and fair.

There’s a certain equity to these messages too: all are welcome be they anarchists or totalitarians, separatists or republicans, guerillas or politicians. All are welcome at this canvas to tell the stories they wish.

I offer these words as my tattoo on history and place. I offer them in mutability, understanding that my current understanding may be wildly different in the future. That who I am today, writing these words, may not be who I am on the morrow. Time will wreck these bones and ravish my mind. Society will force me to conform in ways I don’t yet understand. The money will dry up; the moments will disappear into the neurological ether. Yet, from where I sit today, I’ll have the indelible markings of a person’s history, a story that perhaps my kids and grandchildren can read and ponder.

May your streets be covered in the art of humanity, and may your stories be as vibrant and colored as the ones you see here. Don’t be afraid to color your world a bit differently than the others, for, as you know, your story carries the immense weight of importance to those you come in contact with.

May it ever be so.