Fulton was blocked off for painting and people were gathering.
A monument impresses the mind with a sense of grandeur, inspires awe, veneration.
Watching the emotions people go through while taking selfies at the site is something else.
Their face in the frame or not, people are seeing themselves. Black lives are affirmed by both the text on the street and also reminded of threat to them by wooden silhouettes bearing names of those recently slain. Some folks are posing hard, working their good angles, telling their cameraman not to make them look fat. Some are just trying to get the angle to capture the magnitude of the mural. The are drones above recording it all. Most people appear to be here to be here, to witness this place, be here for the moment.
I am observing all this and listening to an old rasta sing his proposal for a new national anthem and smelling jerk chicken on the grill and remembering we already have dinner at home so no, I should not get that right now, and trying to grasp this significance of moment as best I can.
The graphic designer in me really appreciates the attention to typographic detail at scale here. I watched a group of painters tightening up the eye and leg of the R. They first painted the street over the weekend, then came back to make it better.
One older gentleman saw me staring with my camera in hand and told me it was OK to take photos. I said thanks, I already did, and that I got a lot. He handed me his phone opened to the camera app. “Then get pictures of the crew wrapping up.” So I did.
