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"[...] The story she likes to tell is that she saw me across the dance floor, but as I remember it we were introduced by the photographer at a friend of a friend's apartment. The apartment was about to be gutted, and everyone was allowed to draw something on the walls. I don't know why this was so exciting, but it was. I was given a piece of white wall in the hallway near the kitchen. It didn't get much light, but otherwise I was happy with it. I didn't know anyone at the party, and so the photographer looked around for someone to introduce me to. Just then my painter walked by. The photographer called her over and handed out our names. Then he went off shaking a can of spray.
[...] we were all given a little piece of white wall and the chance to draw on it however we saw fit. Unlike my painter, I am not an artist, nor have I ever wanted to be one. But I'd gotten it into my head to paint a jungle on fire, and wild pigs running out of it, sparks on their feet. The idea came from one of Shiraishi's poems. In it the wild pigs are afraid of humans and always run away from them, until one day a fire breaks out in the virgin forest and they come crashing out of it towards the human beings who they have always been right to fear. I started by drawing the jungle licked by flames which looked fine, more or less, but when it came time to draw the pigs they had none of the speed of terror I'd pictured in my head, and could have passed for dogs or even rats as easily as pigs. What had begun in excitement ended in disappointment, as has been the case with so many things in my life, and because the wall was quite large, and I could do nothing to hide the pigs, I felt embarassed, then humiliated. I decided to abandon it and wander around the rest of the apartment to see what other people were doing, and simply hope that the fiery jungle and the wild pigs or dogs wouldn't continue, in the minds of the others, to be associated with me.
As I remember it, it was then that my painter and I firts began to talk, and I realized, at some underpass in the conversation, that we would be seeing each other again after that day. [...]"
Nicole Krauss, "My painter", 2007
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"[...] The story she likes to tell is that she saw me across the dance floor, but as I remember it we were introduced by the photographer at a friend of a friend's apartment. The apartment was about to be gutted, and everyone was allowed to draw something on the walls. I don't know why this was so exciting, but it was. I was given a piece of white wall in the hallway near the kitchen. It didn't get much light, but otherwise I was happy with it. I didn't know anyone at the party, and so the photographer looked around for someone to introduce me to. Just then my painter walked by. The photographer called her over and handed out our names. Then he went off shaking a can of spray.
[...] we were all given a little piece of white wall and the chance to draw on it however we saw fit. Unlike my painter, I am not an artist, nor have I ever wanted to be one. But I'd gotten it into my head to paint a jungle on fire, and wild pigs running out of it, sparks on their feet. The idea came from one of Shiraishi's poems. In it the wild pigs are afraid of humans and always run away from them, until one day a fire breaks out in the virgin forest and they come crashing out of it towards the human beings who they have always been right to fear. I started by drawing the jungle licked by flames which looked fine, more or less, but when it came time to draw the pigs they had none of the speed of terror I'd pictured in my head, and could have passed for dogs or even rats as easily as pigs. What had begun in excitement ended in disappointment, as has been the case with so many things in my life, and because the wall was quite large, and I could do nothing to hide the pigs, I felt embarassed, then humiliated. I decided to abandon it and wander around the rest of the apartment to see what other people were doing, and simply hope that the fiery jungle and the wild pigs or dogs wouldn't continue, in the minds of the others, to be associated with me.
As I remember it, it was then that my painter and I firts began to talk, and I realized, at some underpass in the conversation, that we would be seeing each other again after that day. [...]"
Nicole Krauss, "My painter", 2007
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