Training
These are two drawings, made from colored pencil and charcoal, that I did in the last two days. To the one on the right was done from life, with several layers of clothing on. Its opposite, becuase of my pose, was done from a photograph I took.
The scene is something I witnessed a few days ago. As I was eating, a terrible rumbling noise began and grew louder and louder. It sorta seemed like helicopters, but the noise was so horrendously loud and distorted that I rushed to the door. As I opened, two military helicopters were receding off into the distance, flying far closer two the ground than anything else I ever remember going by here. They looked like blackhawks (armed, but used for troop transport) but I also believe armaments were on the stub wings. As I took note of this, I looked down the street, and a neighbor was on his porch, doing the exact same thing as me, trying to figure out what just happened.
Why draw a picture of this? Becuase it is, in fact, notable. I don't recall military helicopters ever flying over this area, or even their stationing within any reasonable distance. Also, I was struck by someone else having the same response as me, along with the consideration that scenes like this, though lacking the nice houses, cars, trees, and land, are the regular tempo of life for many areas of the world. As for the fly-by; undoubtably it was training, but what could be the intention of low-altitude training done over surburban neighborhoods? That's the essence of the event. Sure, like everyone I've mentioned it too said, this was training- but training for what? We live under the most reckless and militaristic presidency in the history of our country, a war of a flagrantly illegal character has been launched based on lies, and as a parasitic minority amasses obscene amounts of wealth, the living standards of millions are continuing to plummet. Furthermore, reflecting upon the continuing erosion of democratic rights, it should not be doubted that the elite will continuing its path towards ever-more repressive measures. Need it be mentioned that martial law was declared in New Orleans after a natural desaster?
Clicking should get you a larger picture.
posted by - at 1/06/2006
2 Comments:
I cannot explain this very well, but I do like how you draw a photograph and then add an inverse to the photograph but base it solely upon drawing. It is interesting the reason they flew above, I remember a few years ago there was a training spot in the mountains at night and the Army stormed the wrong house, the baffled couple inside only made the trainees think how much more real the training was, and luckily the elderly man inside did not have his shotgun handy because, as he proclaimed, they would have gone through the other side of his house.
Militarism is everywhere here in my military town. Helicopters like that fly over all the time, sometimes so low that they look as though they could get snagged on a tree top and crash. For the past three days, the city police have been exploding "heavy pyrotechnics" on the busiest street in downtown in an attempt to dislodge some roosting birds. (One wonders why birds are roosting in mid-January as though it were April, but that's a subject in itself.) It sounds like artillary fire and bombs, and has everyone in constant jitters.
A friend of mine grew up on a nuclear airforce base in upstate New York. There, his father worked as a mechanic on planes that were kept running all the time in case of nuclear war with the USSR. Working there, he suffered significant hearing loss. Pilots practiced bombing runs over the base neighborhoods, pretending houses were targets. Of course they didn't really drop bombs, but the result of such displays was extreme paranoia and militarism. I think this is the desired result, personally.
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