Drop Frame

Notes from New York II: Reflection on a Man Selling Knit Hats on the Street

07 January 2006

written for the Goldring Arts Journalism Program's
New York City Immersion;
edited with input from Tim Griffin,
editor and arts critic, ArtForum Magazine

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The man speaking behind my right ear at the corner of West 49th Street and 6th Avenue Wednesday afternoon had only one thing to say. "Buy a knit hat. Keep your head warm. You keep your brain in there, somewhere."

I was walking back to my hotel from a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, so I had art on the brain. I noticed something in the man’s performance of his one scripted line: with every reading, he gave it a different life, a different twist.

Like inexplicable sadness. "Keep your head warm," he said. Long pause. Then, much quieter: "You keep your brain in there somewhere."

Or comedic loss. "Keep your head warm. You keep your brain in there." Long pause. Then, as an aside. "Somewhere."

Or with bravado like a Surgeon General’s Warning. "Keep your head warm." Immediately, loudly: "You keep your brain in there somewhere."

And so on, over and over again.

Exactly one year ago this month, sound and video artist Bruce Nauman had an exhibit in the massive Turbine Room at the Tate Modern in London that incorporated twenty or so stereo speakers. Playing separately on each was a word or phrase or dialogue. Repeating. Over and over.

A person standing at any significant distance from any speaker heard only a loud, echoing, and abrasive noise. When a person moved close to a speaker, that speaker’s contribution cut cleanly through. But after a short time, those words also became indistinct. Noise again.

The exhibit, as I took it, expressed how various sounds filling a room are first indistinguishable and then ignorable. Even though the individual stereo speakers contained important words like "work" and important conversations like a couple fighting, they did not matter when one took the Turbine Room as a whole. And ultimately – most importantly – the noise in the room faded into the background. In other words, the noise went away.

The effect is experienced by every New Yorker every day, when the honking from several passing taxis go unnoticed or the words said by a person talking on his cell phone are ignored.

But the man selling hats on the street corner Wednesday delivered, without his knowledge, an artful performance. For an instant, he was captivating. A voice not part of the noise but in control, imbuing in its one phrase an ocean of meaning. It stood out, if only for a few repetitions: a voice in Nauman’s speakers.

I crossed 49th without ever looking at the man, preferring he remained only a voice in my head. As the voice itself faded into the noise, I almost (note almost) felt a regret for the money spent visiting MoMA. Art is all around, it seems, if you keep your ears open.

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