My date was driving around looking for a certain middle-eastern restaurant somewhere in Greenwich Village. It was our first date, so there was a sense of something new, or the possibility of newness. The weather was especially fine. It was the start of July 4th weekend and the streets were packed. Snatches of music faded in and out. I was excited, happy. As we turned down Fifth a convertible pulled alongside of us and a blonde shouted over the din of the traffic, “Do you know where the Old Homestead is?” I yelled back, “It’s everywhere!” Then, as we proceeded further west down narrow side streets, a brightly lit poster caught my eye. It was gigantic, covering the entire side of a building. There was the head of a mummy covered in gauze—all except for the mouth. The mouth was unwrapped. It was dark, cavernous. A gash in the face. Underneath, the caption said, “The Mummy Speaks!” It startled me. Whether we were stopping for a light, or searching for a parking space, or merely stuck in traffic, I remember staring at it for a long time. Experiencing the title as part of the picture, and experiencing the picture, huge, white, and astonishingly bright, an incongruous sight even for New York, as a message. A sign for me personally. I thought it magical.
I was used to signs telling me what to do. Walk. Don’t Walk. Stop. Wait. Go. Whether I obeyed or not, these were specific instructions. Street signs too, informing me of my present position in space. Time and space at ground level is closely regulated, affording penalties for those who disregard the signs. Looking up is a different matter. In New York to look up is to be dazzled by architecture, or a slice of sky, or the lights. When I first saw the lights I thought I had arrived in fairyland. I was five. I don’t think that first impression has ever entirely left me. Once a place has been perceived as magical, a sense of enchantment remains.
It was nineteen years ago when I saw the Mummy poster. I was a painter then. I had been painting non-stop for almost ten years. An ever expanding stack of canvases leaned against the wall. Until that very afternoon they had also covered practically all the wall space of my studio apartment. It’s hard to explain why I had suddenly taken them down. Something had disturbed me. Something I hadn’t seen until now, that made it unbearable to look at them. After they were down I saw the nails. The sight of all those nails protruding from bare white walls made me think of being “nailed.” I had been glad for the invitation to dinner that night. Happy to get out of the house. And now this mummy poster. This mum-me sign with the mouth unwrapped. The Mummy Speaks! It was huge, impossible to ignore. It frightened me. But in a thrilling kind of way.
I don’t remember seeing the poster after that night. Nor do I have any idea what it was advertising. The important thing was what happened the next day. It was the fourth of July, sunny, hot. My air-conditioner was broken, so I really felt the heat, which also felt like a heat from inside, as if I had a fever. Yet it wasn’t like a fever either. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt before. And then I heard this voice inside that told me I didn’t have to paint anymore. That I’d painted enough; it was time to write. I think the heat was like the friction of changing direction. Like a sharp curve on the tracks. The end of one path and the beginning of another. A turn in the spiral. Changing direction without losing speed.
I think I must have taken the paintings down off the walls because they had spoken to me. They had told me something I hadn’t seen before. Something scary, horrific even. Something I was seeing for the first time. I didn’t want to see it. And then that night when I saw the poster, the picture of a mouth being unwrapped, the words saying that a dead person was talking, it came together for me. It converged.
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