Soon I'll be shooting a set, after I get my new black and green dreaddies. Keep watching!
When I lived in Los Angeles, I had many jobs at once. I worked as a model, which paid well but unpredictably. I had a part-time stint in a very upscale children's clothing store, where I wrapped Bat Mitzvah gifts and met Carrie Fisher. I worked in a seedy bar and was fired for threatening a patron. And I worked as a political advocate, canvassing to collect signatures and memberships for one of the leading public interest groups.
The canvassing involved going door to door in neighborhoods from 2:00 to 8:00 PM, following my map marked out in highlighter by Manny, my supervisor. Manny was a malnourished but attractive vegan who was too mild to be seriously called 'punk'. He bleached a spot in his bangs back in 2000 when that was still a slightly bold statement and gelled his thick, dark Latin hair straight up. When he was drunk, he spoke passionately and incoherently about world hunger and corporate greed. I still have a strange poem he wrote on a napkin from the bar where we took Scotty, our manager, for his birthday. Manny and I had too many Tequila Sunrises, and he managed to mangle Tchkung! lyrics together with some thoughts about the holiness of cows in handwriting that belied the drunkeness of its wielder.
During the six months I worked canvassing, I learned perhaps more about people than at any other time in my life. Each neighborhood I visited was different. Sometimes I knew from the start; we never canvassed Jewish neighborhoods on Friday nights, lest we get no answers to our knocks while they awaited Shabbat. We knew which neighborhoods were high-end, and thus which people we could knock up for greater and greater amounts of money.
But it was the things I didn't expect that interested me the most. Each face answering the door told a story instantly. Someone's reaction to the sight of a stranger on their stoop tells a lot about them, and I knew which houses I would rather not be at in a time of personal need. Some people wouldn't even open the iron grating that covered their door - a popular security feature in Los Angeles - and acted as if talking to me through mostly solid metal was totally normal. Some people invited me into their houses, though I seldom took them up on the offer. Once or twice, I felt secure enough with their face and the world I saw beyond their door, and I chose to briefly enter their lives.
One short but impeccable woman led me back through her stunning Spanish Mission-style courtyard - complete with Joshua Trees, cycads, and a small-but-deep swimming pool - and into her guest house, which she used as an office for her music promotion business. While she signed her large check to the organization, I admired her wall art. The display included a huge plaque with all of Metallica's CD's artfully arranged around a 'thank you' engraving. Afterwards, she offered me coffee, and I resolved to remember that not everyone in show business is a heartless bastard.
A gangly blond man with three spaniels made me wait several minutes just inside his open door, inhaling the very doggy scent of his apartment, while he talked on the phone with his friend back home in Sweden. "Yes," he told his friend, "I am writing a big check (under $100, in reality) to her group right now! Yes, she's very cute, and my dogs like her!" Not once did he make any real kind of eye contact, and never during the conversation did I feel threatened. So when I, on my way down the hall of his building, overheard him tell his friend that "yes, now she is taking her shirt off", all I could do was laugh and shake my head.
My favorite was a young woman with large, dark eyes who offered me a seat on her wooden futon while she searched for her purse. Her apartment was one of the small quadplexes near Santa Monica, long and narrow and all wood. She had covered all her lamps with red and orange fabric, giving the room a soft (and undeniably sexy) glow. Her sewing equipment and dressmaker's dummy dominated her living room, sketches for clothing ideas taped up all along the wall facing the door.
Most people, however, didn't invite me in - and I don't blame them. Nobody wants to be interrupted in the middle of their dinner or evening television shows by a bleeding heart liberal asking for donations to promote a bill for sustainable energy sources or dolphin safe tuna. I got only brief glimpses of their homes as I stood in their doorway. Each one was different. As the evening wore on, it was easier and easier to see into their houses, with the dusk behind me and the lights on inside. Some houses were clean, some were dirty. Some obviously were put together from decorating magazines and interior design consulting, while others had quirky personal touches like bright yellow walls. Everyone was doing something when I rang their bell: paying bills, watching Friends, talking on the phone, making dinner, or just on their way out to hit the clubs.
The doors themselves told stories, too. Some had doorbells on the side, some had knockers, some had punch-button doorbells centered on them that used the door as an amplifier, and some of the oldest doors had odd turn cranks that made a wacky buzzing sound on the other side as they hit a series of small metal tabs.
The peephole was an constant in my relationships with these doors. No one in Los Angeles answers the door without first seeing who is on the other side. Those few without peepholes are left to forlornly peer through the nearest window, craning their neck to try to see who is down the plane of the wall from them. There is no hope of hiding your presence when you have to ruffle miniblinds to see if your visitor is a welcome one or not. Even the blocking of light on the other side of the spyglass alerts an observant canvasser that someone is there, but doesn't want to talk to you.
The best doors, the ones I stood outside of for a while before even knocking, were in the vintage apartment complexes. Their peephole is really a peep-grate, a rectangular opening in the thick wooden door with a little cage of wrought iron or even turned wooden dowels built around the outside, and a tiny door on the inside for the occupant to open and peer out of. These small boxes offered a new kind of canvas for the creative apartment dweller. They would fill them with all kinds of objects, and each one reminded me of the tiny personal shrines in the courtyards of houses in India, stacked with any object that might be pleasing to the gods or meaningful to the worshipper.
Photographs with the eyes cut out offered a snarky way to view your visitor. Collections of pictures, often from American or Japanese photo booths, offered a display of how many friends the occupant had. Tiny scenes made with Lego people, old toys, and party favors were usually comical, but sometimes solemn. Some of the more extravagent artists extended their creations out onto the door with Christmas trim and magazine clippings.
Looking at these tiny worlds that people had built, not for themselves but mainly for those waiting entrance to their homes, was a thought-provoking experience. Each time I wondered why. Why did they choose that scene or theme? Why did they use the items they used? Why decorate their caller box at all? Why go through the trouble?
I always wanted to ask, but when that door opened and those eyes watched, waiting for some explanation as to why I was there, I never had the guts. I felt suddenly as if it weren't public art, as if it was very private instead and I had no right at all to pry. It was like finding someone just as they finished crying, seeing their mild smile that said 'everything is fine' juxtaposed with their faintly red eyes and damp cheekbones - the part that they want to hide, but can't.
When I lived in Los Angeles, I had many jobs at once. I worked as a model, which paid well but unpredictably. I had a part-time stint in a very upscale children's clothing store, where I wrapped Bat Mitzvah gifts and met Carrie Fisher. I worked in a seedy bar and was fired for threatening a patron. And I worked as a political advocate, canvassing to collect signatures and memberships for one of the leading public interest groups.
The canvassing involved going door to door in neighborhoods from 2:00 to 8:00 PM, following my map marked out in highlighter by Manny, my supervisor. Manny was a malnourished but attractive vegan who was too mild to be seriously called 'punk'. He bleached a spot in his bangs back in 2000 when that was still a slightly bold statement and gelled his thick, dark Latin hair straight up. When he was drunk, he spoke passionately and incoherently about world hunger and corporate greed. I still have a strange poem he wrote on a napkin from the bar where we took Scotty, our manager, for his birthday. Manny and I had too many Tequila Sunrises, and he managed to mangle Tchkung! lyrics together with some thoughts about the holiness of cows in handwriting that belied the drunkeness of its wielder.
During the six months I worked canvassing, I learned perhaps more about people than at any other time in my life. Each neighborhood I visited was different. Sometimes I knew from the start; we never canvassed Jewish neighborhoods on Friday nights, lest we get no answers to our knocks while they awaited Shabbat. We knew which neighborhoods were high-end, and thus which people we could knock up for greater and greater amounts of money.
But it was the things I didn't expect that interested me the most. Each face answering the door told a story instantly. Someone's reaction to the sight of a stranger on their stoop tells a lot about them, and I knew which houses I would rather not be at in a time of personal need. Some people wouldn't even open the iron grating that covered their door - a popular security feature in Los Angeles - and acted as if talking to me through mostly solid metal was totally normal. Some people invited me into their houses, though I seldom took them up on the offer. Once or twice, I felt secure enough with their face and the world I saw beyond their door, and I chose to briefly enter their lives.
One short but impeccable woman led me back through her stunning Spanish Mission-style courtyard - complete with Joshua Trees, cycads, and a small-but-deep swimming pool - and into her guest house, which she used as an office for her music promotion business. While she signed her large check to the organization, I admired her wall art. The display included a huge plaque with all of Metallica's CD's artfully arranged around a 'thank you' engraving. Afterwards, she offered me coffee, and I resolved to remember that not everyone in show business is a heartless bastard.
A gangly blond man with three spaniels made me wait several minutes just inside his open door, inhaling the very doggy scent of his apartment, while he talked on the phone with his friend back home in Sweden. "Yes," he told his friend, "I am writing a big check (under $100, in reality) to her group right now! Yes, she's very cute, and my dogs like her!" Not once did he make any real kind of eye contact, and never during the conversation did I feel threatened. So when I, on my way down the hall of his building, overheard him tell his friend that "yes, now she is taking her shirt off", all I could do was laugh and shake my head.
My favorite was a young woman with large, dark eyes who offered me a seat on her wooden futon while she searched for her purse. Her apartment was one of the small quadplexes near Santa Monica, long and narrow and all wood. She had covered all her lamps with red and orange fabric, giving the room a soft (and undeniably sexy) glow. Her sewing equipment and dressmaker's dummy dominated her living room, sketches for clothing ideas taped up all along the wall facing the door.
Most people, however, didn't invite me in - and I don't blame them. Nobody wants to be interrupted in the middle of their dinner or evening television shows by a bleeding heart liberal asking for donations to promote a bill for sustainable energy sources or dolphin safe tuna. I got only brief glimpses of their homes as I stood in their doorway. Each one was different. As the evening wore on, it was easier and easier to see into their houses, with the dusk behind me and the lights on inside. Some houses were clean, some were dirty. Some obviously were put together from decorating magazines and interior design consulting, while others had quirky personal touches like bright yellow walls. Everyone was doing something when I rang their bell: paying bills, watching Friends, talking on the phone, making dinner, or just on their way out to hit the clubs.
The doors themselves told stories, too. Some had doorbells on the side, some had knockers, some had punch-button doorbells centered on them that used the door as an amplifier, and some of the oldest doors had odd turn cranks that made a wacky buzzing sound on the other side as they hit a series of small metal tabs.
The peephole was an constant in my relationships with these doors. No one in Los Angeles answers the door without first seeing who is on the other side. Those few without peepholes are left to forlornly peer through the nearest window, craning their neck to try to see who is down the plane of the wall from them. There is no hope of hiding your presence when you have to ruffle miniblinds to see if your visitor is a welcome one or not. Even the blocking of light on the other side of the spyglass alerts an observant canvasser that someone is there, but doesn't want to talk to you.
The best doors, the ones I stood outside of for a while before even knocking, were in the vintage apartment complexes. Their peephole is really a peep-grate, a rectangular opening in the thick wooden door with a little cage of wrought iron or even turned wooden dowels built around the outside, and a tiny door on the inside for the occupant to open and peer out of. These small boxes offered a new kind of canvas for the creative apartment dweller. They would fill them with all kinds of objects, and each one reminded me of the tiny personal shrines in the courtyards of houses in India, stacked with any object that might be pleasing to the gods or meaningful to the worshipper.
Photographs with the eyes cut out offered a snarky way to view your visitor. Collections of pictures, often from American or Japanese photo booths, offered a display of how many friends the occupant had. Tiny scenes made with Lego people, old toys, and party favors were usually comical, but sometimes solemn. Some of the more extravagent artists extended their creations out onto the door with Christmas trim and magazine clippings.
Looking at these tiny worlds that people had built, not for themselves but mainly for those waiting entrance to their homes, was a thought-provoking experience. Each time I wondered why. Why did they choose that scene or theme? Why did they use the items they used? Why decorate their caller box at all? Why go through the trouble?
I always wanted to ask, but when that door opened and those eyes watched, waiting for some explanation as to why I was there, I never had the guts. I felt suddenly as if it weren't public art, as if it was very private instead and I had no right at all to pry. It was like finding someone just as they finished crying, seeing their mild smile that said 'everything is fine' juxtaposed with their faintly red eyes and damp cheekbones - the part that they want to hide, but can't.
giablo69:
when I was younger (16) I sort of did the same thing except it was selling nic naks. oddly enough I never really saw it from the perspective that you have. now older and hopefully wiser it all starts to make sense, I really enjoyed reading this.
boneflower:
I'll buy your knicknacks if you'll sign my petition.