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mermaid parade '01
DURATION: 02 min. 58 sec.
Summer solstice. André and I shot these video footages on a lark, without any idea of what we would do with them. Not surprisingly there wasn't enough there to make a coherent narrative. That was in June 2001. I decided then it was best to shelve the tapes and give it another go the next year. Less than three months later...9/11...and it has rained on every Mermaid Parade since.
Winter solstice. So I dusted the tapes off and here I am looking through them again, the first time in two years. My memories flash back to that day. I see the bright faces, the painted faces, the costumed faces. I see muscle cars and barebacked dancers. I see the joy and carefree strut in everyone's gait. I remember the heat and the humidity. And I also feel the disconnect between the times then and the times we live in now.
Now and then. I must have been the only person with a camcorder living in NYC who didn't try to videotape the WTC as it burned. I didn't even see the towers fall live on tv. And that's just as well. Somehow that has made these video footages of the parade more precious. This video belongs to a different time, a less desperate time. But let's not get carried away. It's just a time slice of that one day, not to be mixed casually with a parade from a different year. Given what I had to work with, I was only able to paint in broad strokes. So please forgive the shaky camera work and edits. Watching it again I can't help but see a hint of sadness in everyone. It may just be the music. Or the mind bridging the times, now and then.
--em 12.22.03
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