Amtrak Routes :: Image–Amtrak
Benefit Street Apartment – 1984-1985
First Baptist Church Crows and Ravens – Providence :: Steeple Image–Providence Public Library
My second winter on Benefit Street was oppressive — weighed down by the cold humidity of Providence, and phone calls like sniper fire because a relationship was unraveling. It got dark early too and I questioned everything. Every couple of weeks beginning in the fall of my first year, my thesis, the research, the visual work that supported it, and all my studio coursework was questioned, poked at and dismantled. Critiques and reviews were nothing new, difficult or easy, I usually looked forward to them, but my doubt was relentless that winter. I was tired. Everyone was tired. On some days, biking home for dinner up the hill and past the First (first) Baptist Church was stressful, the crows that congregated there seemed to caw louder as I approached. Occasionally one or two unexpected ravens would burst from the murder towards me like a scene from The Birds. It felt like a sign and I took it personally.
I was lucky though because I had a few thesis ideas the summer before my first year, as nebulous as they were, so I didn’t feel like I was starting from scratch. While I was on the train from Havre to the middle of North Dakota, I stared out the window when I wasn’t asleep, but beyond there, while in the Midwest and northeast, I started to take notes. Days later we reached the outskirts of New York City and into the tunnels beneath it. Eventually finding myself in the middle of Penn Station with all my gear — two suitcases, one large backpack and travelers checks. Two hours later I boarded a smaller train leaving for Providence. It was dusk and all I could do was stare out the window then too — seeing the broken pediment of the AT&T building, the World Trade Center towers, fragments of the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building was overwhelming. I’d only seen New York City in pictures or in movies before that. I was hypnotized. I imagined pointing at those buildings from the sidewalk with my dad, then looking at each other, and simultaneously recounting the conversation we’d had only a few weeks before about the architecture I might see, what Yamasaki might say about his towers.
During that long winter, a classmate disappeared for weeks during Winter session. One afternoon, a few of us were at the Snack Pit, a campus coffee shop, and someone asked, “has anyone seen X?” No one had. “I heard that he was holed up sewing and building huge nylon kites by hand,” I said. They all thought I was joking. A day or two later I asked his closest friend how our classmate was doing. “He’s having a bit of a meltdown.” “What’s going on — I heard he’s making kites?” “Not really sure what’s going on and yes he’s making kites in my apartment.”
Eventually he resurfaced and finished strong. Like all of us, he’d had his struggles, and although I felt for him, I wasn’t worried for him. No matter what, he always pulled it off. He always shaped his projects into something thoughtful and beautiful. We had successes, but it was mostly our flaws and failures that changed us. We became a small community, thrown together from all over, and whether our work was ever resolved, or even interesting, for two years we had to believe it was.
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“You have to create a reality distortion field and believe that what you are doing is right. Believe that what you are doing is important. Believe in the goal and believe that you will accomplish what you set out to accomplish. You must believe to the point of knowing it as a fact.” Paul Hudson
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Songs :: Here by David Byrne, Time After Time by Cindy Lauper, How Soon Is Now? by The Smiths, I’m On Fire and Downbound Train by Bruce Springsteen, and What Do You Want by Joan Armatrading
© C. Davidson