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Speed the Plow (But Carefully)
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Speed the plow is an interesting phrase (and, of course, the title of a famous 1988 David Mamet play). Structurally, it's not the same as Felix the Cat, unless there was a plow we don't know about whose name was Speed. Traditionally, it was often expressed as God speed the plow, which makes the meaning clearer. To plow on in this vein, tilling the rocky surface of your day, please click...
Welcome, clickers. You are a venturesome lot. All one or two of you.
I recently parked my car on (I'm pretty sure it was) West 64th Street in Manhattan, definitely between Ninth and Tenth Avenue, definitely on the south side of the street, where a high-rise is under construction facing the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.
I had been driving around looking for a space for what felt like a long time, and I had a movie to make (Amour). So I put some giddyup in my step, but stopped long enough to take a few pictures of the construction site.
(I have always been a sucker for construction sites. Speaking of which, don't miss my story on painter Valeri Larko in the new Feb issue of NJM. Valeri is a highly accomplished artist who paints industrial ruins.)
As to Amour, I came out of the theater and said to my friend, "Wow. I can't imagine Zero Dark Thirty [which I had not yet seen] is any more harrowing than that."
I meant that as a compliment. I eventually saw ZD30, and it was harrowing, too—and usefully disturbing. The depiction of the Abbottabad raid feels like it was shot by a Team Six soldier, or by several of them, as the raid unfolded. An extraordinary feat of filmmaking.
And to think that all of today's Plain Sight mind-corridor wandering was triggered by the RAISE PLOW sign mysteriously posted about 15 feet above the sidewalk at the construction site.
Tags: photography | New York City
