:: Electric Psychedelic Pussycat Swinger's Club ::

:: Sunday, June 27, 2004 ::

nighthawks

One of my favourite paintings is Edward Hopper's, "Nighthawks".

It is said that it was inspired by a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue. His paintings are usually characterized by themes of isolation, melancholy, and loneliness. Nighthawks is no exception.

It depicts an all-night diner in which three customers, all lost in their own thoughts, have congregated. The four anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as separate and remote from the viewer as they are from one another.

Whenever I've viewed this painting in the past, I always wonderered what these four people could possibly be thinking. The couple seems to be together, but only in a physical sense, which can also be said about the group as a whole.

I've always loved how the faceless stranger is positioned so that his back is turned away from the outside world. He's the type that's secure enough to go to a diner and eat alone. He likes to get lost in thought, about where he is and where he's been. He takes strolls around the neighborhood at two in the morning just to clear his mind. And he listens to jazz; often.

The man behind the counter, however, serves more of a utilitarian purpose for the customers. But not in the sense you're thinking. Sure, he's got his own problems. He's a struggling artist trying to make ends meet by working part-time in something flexible enough to allow him to make his auditions during the day. Or perhaps he's taken on a second job to help out with the mounting money problems at home. But my guess is that he's been thrown into the mix to function as a mirror for the others, that they may be able to verify their existence through him.

When I think about nights like tonight, I always come back to this painting. I'm in a crowded bar where the music is turned up much too high. So high, in fact, that the singles mixing it up have to shout in order to be heard, despite standing face-to-face. But no one seems to mind. I stand in a room full of people who are socializing and seem to be having fun. Some dance to whatever top 40 hit is popular at the time. Others sing. We drink endless bottles of beer and sip on our highballs, and occasionally we wait in long lines for the bathroom.

But there's something missing, despite all this human interaction. That something was clearly missing in this diner as well. What was it that turned these perhaps once well-adjusted patrons into social pariahs?

The City. More specifically, New York City.

It's not merely a place of residence, I tell you. This place is a breathing, heart-pounding, bleeding entity. It is alive.

NYC can bring you fame, while simultaneously leaving you paddle-less in the sea of anonymity. It is the cultural mecca of all things urban, but it also eats its young. It preys on the weak, but can also make you strong. But whether it makes you or breaks you, one thing is true: it eventually forces you out of the shadows to discover who you really are.

Maybe we meet the faceless stranger and the couple in the painting at such a moment in time. After years of partying, socializing and the rat race of success, they're beginning to come out of the shadows. Again, they look to the man behind the counter for reassurance of their existence. But one day he will no longer be there. At that point, they will have to start looking in to confirm who it is they are.

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