Practice, practice, practice. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Take
the subway. Jump off at Seventh Avenue and you won’t have to walk too far.
Reach, clutch, deploy.
On the corner of Seventh and West 57th you can stop for a corn dog, maybe a soda. At the right time of day, you’ll see career dog walkers with their packs, being towed like two-footed ploughs along the sidewalk, casting glances like seeds to the left and right: awareness isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.
What you see comes in layers, each sweeping glance peeling away more until you’re fully alert to everything that’s around.
They say that ten eyewitnesses will present ten different opinions about what they’ve seen. A single male suspect can become a woman with a pram or a couple holding hands. A skinny kid skating morphs into an elderly guy with a cane. Dusk or dawn change the colours of a man’s complexion as surely as they shift the skies – a porcelain-white guy with red hair can become a black man with a shaved head under the yellow streetlamps – just depends on who’s doing the observation.
Same with vehicles. You’d think it would be hard to confuse a square-backed SUV with a regular sedan, but the tricks of the mind and memory can transform what we recall.
Gunshots. The flat blat of a shot is unmistakable, but is it a volley of two, three or four shots? Did an engine backfire at the same time? Did the sound of the shots echo against the walls of an apartment building to multiply them? An army vet will swear blind at the source of a shot and the weapon that discharged it. Heard it a thousand times before. An athlete will recognize the kick of the starter’s pistol and a sailor will know the bark of a flare. Many simply assume that gunfire is just construction work or perhaps a motor vehicle pileup.
Point is, what do we really see or hear in the snapshot of a moment?
Reach, clutch, deploy.
It’s about repetition, muscle memory. Engrams of the flesh that produce reactions faster than the mind can comprehend. Drop a glass fifty times and you’ll get better at catching it.
Ever been to war? So much waiting around with nothing to do and then you get spat out into action, no time to fight back laziness or exhaustion. In seconds you can go from being a dozing nobody to a hero, before your brain even registers that you’re awake.
Or you could be dead.
Routines, patterns, habits, conditioning.
The shine of a boot so glossy that you can see up your own nose if you look down.
The crisp fold of a pressed shirtsleeve.
The animal scent of a shining leather belt.
Everything has its place.
Until it’s displaced.
Don’t look for what’s always there, look for what’s out of place, what doesn’t fit in, and you’ll get it. A hair on the collar, stain on a jacket – a puddle on a sunny day.
The incongruity of conflict.
The subjectivity of inspection.
The ambiguity of experience.
Stay clear of the platform...
On the corner of Seventh and West 57th you can stop for a corn dog, maybe a soda. At the right time of day, you’ll see career dog walkers with their packs, being towed like two-footed ploughs along the sidewalk, casting glances like seeds to the left and right: awareness isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.
What you see comes in layers, each sweeping glance peeling away more until you’re fully alert to everything that’s around.
They say that ten eyewitnesses will present ten different opinions about what they’ve seen. A single male suspect can become a woman with a pram or a couple holding hands. A skinny kid skating morphs into an elderly guy with a cane. Dusk or dawn change the colours of a man’s complexion as surely as they shift the skies – a porcelain-white guy with red hair can become a black man with a shaved head under the yellow streetlamps – just depends on who’s doing the observation.
Same with vehicles. You’d think it would be hard to confuse a square-backed SUV with a regular sedan, but the tricks of the mind and memory can transform what we recall.
Gunshots. The flat blat of a shot is unmistakable, but is it a volley of two, three or four shots? Did an engine backfire at the same time? Did the sound of the shots echo against the walls of an apartment building to multiply them? An army vet will swear blind at the source of a shot and the weapon that discharged it. Heard it a thousand times before. An athlete will recognize the kick of the starter’s pistol and a sailor will know the bark of a flare. Many simply assume that gunfire is just construction work or perhaps a motor vehicle pileup.
Point is, what do we really see or hear in the snapshot of a moment?
Reach, clutch, deploy.
It’s about repetition, muscle memory. Engrams of the flesh that produce reactions faster than the mind can comprehend. Drop a glass fifty times and you’ll get better at catching it.
Ever been to war? So much waiting around with nothing to do and then you get spat out into action, no time to fight back laziness or exhaustion. In seconds you can go from being a dozing nobody to a hero, before your brain even registers that you’re awake.
Or you could be dead.
Routines, patterns, habits, conditioning.
The shine of a boot so glossy that you can see up your own nose if you look down.
The crisp fold of a pressed shirtsleeve.
The animal scent of a shining leather belt.
Everything has its place.
Until it’s displaced.
Don’t look for what’s always there, look for what’s out of place, what doesn’t fit in, and you’ll get it. A hair on the collar, stain on a jacket – a puddle on a sunny day.
The incongruity of conflict.
The subjectivity of inspection.
The ambiguity of experience.
Stay clear of the platform...
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