Everyone is Watching (19 page)

I’m not doing what I thought I would be doing, the young woman says. I don’t know what I’m doing but that’s all right. I don’t have any money but that’s not
the problem. I need time to think, that’s what it is. Every day something new happens here, and I feel new because of that. I don’t know how many people I’ve been since I came
here. I don’t suppose that really matters. I don’t know who I’ll be when I go home.

Do you have to go home? the woman says with a smile.

They quit their apartments to rent a small studio together in Prospect Heights. They often walk together through Prospect Park. The new friend tells the young woman all about
the plants growing there. They spend many Sunday afternoons walking through Brooklyn. The new friend likes to read literature aloud. She says it will inspire the young woman to write. She reads
extracts from poems from the screen of her phone. They like to walk through Cobble Hill, where there are trees and the streets are quiet. They walk to Brooklyn Heights and look across the river at
Manhattan.

Walt Whitman used to live round here somewhere, the new friend says. I don’t know where, exactly.

They eat fruit in the Cobble Hill Park and watch the couples and women with strollers walking through. When they come here at night they eat slices of pizza and watch the fireflies dance.

They don’t have a lot of money but they know all the cheap places to eat. They avoid the organic grocers and they buy food that’s past its use-by date. They
don’t have a TV and so don’t pay for cable. They use the Internet for free at the Brooklyn Library. When they go out with friends they order a beer, which they share, then they top the
bottle up with liquor brought from home. They go to museums when the entrance is free, and never at any other time. When they are out walking they take a packed lunch. There are many free concerts
in the summer. The young woman does not write as much as she used to but when she does write she is pleased with the improvement. Her friend reads out the young woman’s writing as they walk
through Brooklyn. Sometimes the young woman forgets that the writing is her own. The young woman sends work to magazines and a couple of pieces are published. When bills are due, they cut right
back, preparing as one might for battle. They stock up on food and make it last. They turn leftovers into soups and bulk meals out with bread or rice. They are boosted by the changing of the
seasons. The streets that have become so familiar transform, and so do they. They can’t remember a time when they didn’t know each other. They watch movies for free on the High Line in
the summer. They take up dancing by copying couples in Central Park. When they walk through Chelsea they always walk along 23rd Street. They laugh about the artist the new friend used to know. They
like to describe how much the city has changed throughout their friendship, as if the city didn’t exist before this event. The new friend explains it like a scientific formula – certain
conditions need to exist before change can occur. All love is a product of changing environmental forces, the friend says. And art can’t exist without love.

Between 1955 and 1969 Robert Moses builds the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He brings together the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts and the Juilliard School.

To build this centre he evicts over ten thousand people. Moving this many people isn’t easy. There are many protests and petitions, but Moses gets it done.

You theoretically ought to negotiate with every individual until he is happy, Moses says. Do you imagine building anything under those conditions?

After the centre is completed, the real-estate value in the area soars.

You can’t tell me that the neighbourhood isn’t happy now, says Moses.

Walt changes his position in the carriage, following the angle of the sun. He remembers scenes from his past. The war is over. His mother is dead. And he is here on this train.
He is travelling to New York. They will arrive there soon. His friend is writing another book. Bucke has written many pages. He has torn the pages from his notebooks. They are placed beside Bucke
upon the seat. Walt’s whole life, written by somebody else, is lying there.

I want to talk about Long Island, Walt says. Now listen to me, Bucke. I stood on the shoreline where shipwrecks littered the sand. I watched the men who were bathing there. I sat in the sun. I
took off all of my clothes. The men were bathing and diving into the water. They were so alive. I watched them. The tide was coming in. It would be a good hour before it reached me, but it would
come. I ripped the sheet from the book, folded it and tucked it under my pile of clothes. I remembered my ancestors who I have never known. I had the impression that life was eternal. My life
stretched out before me like a never-ending line in the sand and I could sense the universe. I walked out and waded in the ocean. I went out further and began to swim. I swam until I could not
touch the ground. I floated and looked up at the sky and back at the beach where the bathers were dressing.

Walt once visited Bucke in Ontario. Walt never kept his room tidy. Instead of folding his clothes neatly in the drawers, he laid them out on the bed and chairs. He set his books and papers out
on the tables and on the floor but never in the bureau provided. He spread himself throughout the house. He slept very late. When he woke he took an age to rouse himself. He did not dress until the
afternoon. He walked about the house in his underclothes then he demanded lunch. He insisted that everyone come out for walks outdoors even though their days were already well established. They
followed him through the garden and out into the pasture, over fences, through brooks, into the wilderness. The world was suddenly alive. The flowers smelt sweeter and the sun was hotter. The brook
was icy cold. The season, always summer. Walt ripped pages out of books and stuffed them into his shirt pocket. This was to reduce the weight of what he must carry.

When is he leaving? asked Mrs Bucke.

I don’t know, said Bucke.

Haven’t you asked him?

Bucke wanted to say, I would have him here for ever if I could.

He can’t stay, said Mrs Bucke. I can’t stand it. He’s always lying about the house and ripping up our books. This man is unashamed of his reproductive organs. And I don’t
think he’s much of a poet.

Bucke found Walt crouching over the remnants of books at the bottom of the garden. He was trying to get at something. Whatever it was, it was something he was not getting.

I need to speak with you, said Bucke.

I can find no order here, said Walt. I would do better in the middle of a war where nothing is certain.

How Bucke wanted to keep him there with him. What makes us want to possess the things we love? He has seen it in the daguerreotypes and photographs, images of loved ones framed and worn on the
person or hung on the wall – a mother, a father, a deceased child, a soldier. He has seen photographs of Walt. These images depict his friend yet they do not adequately communicate his
animated form. The Walt who is alive is always moving and changing. These pictures only show what existed once.

Bucke is reading alone in the carriage. He is taking a break from his story. He tries to think of his wife and his children. He will be very happy to see them again. He has lived away from them
for too long. They are his family, his flesh and blood. But when he sees Walt standing in the corridor laughing with the porter his heart beats wildly. He thinks about Walt writing those letters
for the soldiers during the war, sitting in their tents and writing the words of other men, writing down their hopes and dreams. How lucky they were to have him so close.

The walls of the Foley Gallery are lined with prints of abstract swirls and lines in colours of brown, black, white, grey and gold.

The artist Edward Mapplethorpe is telling an interviewer, I am able to achieve the colour by scattering light. It is all about process.

These pictures do not depict anything from Edward’s real life. These Mapplethorpes are organic forms.

These pictures have more in common with painting than with photography, Edward says. Here, one is observing the process of art and not just its final presentation. Here, there are no faces,
bodies or landscapes. There is nothing recognizable. There is only colour, form and process.

In the centre of the room, Patti Smith is giving an interview to a journalist. She is explaining that she always knew Edward would become an artist. When she and Robert visited him in Floral
Park, she talked to Edward about art and his future.

Edward says, These pictures are made by using the photographic process as the subject. Not just as a way to develop the photograph. In effect, this is not photography at all because the process
is not complete. There is no camera here and there is no subject. There is only methodology. This is all done in the darkroom. Here, there is no reality to depict. The shapes are confusing. They
are a product of the process, he says. Here, there is nothing more to see. There is no story to describe. There is no story.

I had the idea on September 11th, says Edward. It was something to do with seeing the towers inside out. I saw colours, shapes and process. I saw all the subjects I had ever depicted in my
photographs and suddenly there was a definite thick black line between then and now – I decided I wouldn’t go back. I would replicate something of this effect in my studio.

He remembers how it all began.

Riding the subway into Manhattan, staring out the window at Queens sailing by, the fading fall light, the pink hue of apartment towers, the train plunging deep underground, Edward’s face
reflected in the window, a shadow of Robert’s.

Edward thinks, We came from the same place, Robert and I. These photographs do not depict Robert but Robert is contained within all of them. On the information pamphlet Edward blocks out the
word ‘Robert’ and reads ‘Mapplethorpe’.

When he stayed in Robert’s Bond Street apartment, he felt misplaced. The chicken-wire cage cast a shadow across the floor. Streetlight flooded the room. He bathed in dirty light. He was
planning his own exhibition then. He could see it all perfectly, his own crisp, clear style.

Robert once asked him to change his name.

They were eating together in a diner. Edward named everything he could see –

table,

glass,

pitcher,

brother.

It’s not such a big deal for you. It’s not as if you are anybody yet, said Robert. Why don’t you take another name? Take Mom’s name. Why don’t you take Maxey? Take
Maxey. No one has done anything with Maxey. You’re not going to screw this up for me. I have worked too fucking hard to make a name for myself. Don’t you want to be independent?
Don’t you want to do something on your own?

But it’s my name, Edward said.

You should take Maxey. Maxey suits you. Mom would want you to have it. Look, everyone is happy with Maxey. I can’t change my name. I’m already a Mapplethorpe. I was a Mapplethorpe
before you were born.

When Edward wrote a college thesis about his brother, he adopted an objective, critical tone but he never could separate himself from the name. When Edward walked into the diner that morning he
was Edward Mapplethorpe but he walked out of it Ed Maxey.

I saw it on the news, says Edward. A dirty cloud falling on New York. It did not settle on the ground. It did not end. I tried to breathe. My breath mixed with other fragments in the air, all
the elements and particles, all the dirt and lint that had been swept up from the ground. There is only ever process. I saw it in the swirls of dust. I saw it in the way that every part was falling
as it should, as its weight allowed, every desk, chair, every shard of glass, every piece of paper, every handbag, shoe, was falling completely in accordance with the laws of physics, and I was
looking at the result of those laws, the result of how things collide. There would never be an end because the dust would never settle. No one would ever be able to trace the lines back, to find a
beginning. And there was no end. Something shifted in me.

Edward says, I am getting my life back on track. This is my time now. There is so much I want to do. I went off the rails there for a while. But now I’m right back where I should be. There
have been ups and downs, sure. I was an addict. But that’s all in the past. I have put all of that behind me. I am working harder than ever, creating, you know? I’m Edward Mapplethorpe
again.

Photography is interesting, Edward says. Because it shows something that once existed. A photograph preserves a moment in time. A photograph is a window into someone else’s life but that
moment no longer exists.

What was it like being Robert Mapplethorpe’s brother? the interviewer asks.

The videotape lies on top of the VCR. The handwritten label reads
The Perfect Moment
. Robert looks at his silhouette in the television screen. There is his outline in
the glass but not the detail of his features. Dandruff floats down onto his lap. He licks his dry lips.

You wanna watch a film? his assistant asks.

She puts the tape into the machine and switches it on.

What message do people have for Robert? What do they think of Robert Mapplethorpe? What do they want to share with him?

Man: He’s sensuous. Of our time. It’s great to see Robert’s work. Best wishes.

Woman: I’ve seen your work for many years but I think they touched me most tonight. Thank you for everything.

Man: I applaud Robert’s courage in realizing his own vision, and I applaud his aesthetic, which is impeccable. One of the greatest photographers of this century.

Woman: One of the sexiest people that ever existed.

Group: Robert, congratulations, and our thoughts are with you.

There is a shot of Robert’s self-portraits – the skull cane, Robert’s eyes, Robert with the whip up his ass.