Thought of the Day 04.21.08

Okay, I’ll admit it. I don’t understand graffiti. Oh, I understand the early French impressionist appeal of dressing up bland boxcars in floral lettering. “Look at the pretty colors.” It’s almost a Martha Stewart thing. But if the real purpose of tagging is to mark a gang’s territory, my mental block is that I have trouble being scared of anyone who stakes claim to a piece of property secretly under the cover of darkness.

“Look at how tough and powerful we are. We sneak around and pretend we own this place by finger-painting the walls. Fear us.” The act of tagging so perfectly communicates the impotence of gang authority that I’m amazed this irony escapes the vandals. Even worse, it’s hard for me to know who I’m supposed to fear since I can never read the stuff anyhow. Bad penmanship is just no way to run a secret government.

And two kids running through a neighborhood with a bottle of spray-paint hardly strikes me as a serious contender for an alternate social order. But, maybe in embracing the rules of a civilized society with interdependent accountability, I’ve naively missed something.