“spirtually and passionately alive”
Not new news. But new to me…
I love how this story demonstrates that wisdom and courage can come from the most unexpected sources. I love how it illustrates that practices commonly labeled as “taboo” or “bad” can be used for good. Finally, it’s yet another testament of the power of art and expression.
The Graffiti Prophet of Bois Verna
In the hours after the earthquake struck on Jan. 12, thousands of his shocked countrymen had congregated in the giant plaza, weeping and crying out for Jesus. Jerry Rosembert, a 25-year-old graffiti artist, knew what to do: with a can of spray paint, he turned a map of Haiti into a person who cried and held his hands skyward in prayer. Jerry didn’t sleep that night, and after dawn broke the next day, he sprayed five more crying Haitis in a neighborhood called Bois Verna. Soon after, the symbols appeared all over town…
For more than a year before the quake, Jerry had been spray-painting the city with strange, sharp images. His paintings stood out; until then, most Port-au-Prince graffiti shilled for politicians hardly anyone cared about…
On Avenue Christophe, he had depicted two men with raised forks who fought over a roast chicken and, a little farther down the street, a long line of patients who languished in front of an imperious receptionist, busy with her nails…
Near a corner where prostitutes plied their trade, Jerry painted a woman torn between a john and her child. A goggle-eyed man slipped a rope around his neck. All over town, faces of beautiful young women and old men simply wept…
Much of Jerry’s pre-quake work has survived, and these days it has an awful poignancy. In the camps, the homeless are indeed scrumming over food. In the hospitals, patients wait days to be seen. Young women are forced to trade sex for food or shelter. With no visible end to the crisis, some Haitians have surrendered their last asset: faith in the future.
The other day, a Haitian friend told Jerry that he was a prophet, that he must have sensed the hell that would befall his country. “Maybe I did,” Jerry said to me later. “But really, those things I painted — the suffering, the poverty, the misery — that all existed before the earthquake. Now things are just worse.”
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You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many.
— , Steppenwolf
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