Fire Escapes
I listened to Krista Tippett's conversation with Ocean Vuong for the the fourth time this week. Ocean is an award-winning poet and novelist who teaches at New York University. They touch upon a multitude of topics over the course of 45 minutes - growing up Vietnamese-American, the power of language and the impact of violent words, the story of the first time his mother heard him speak in public, and the death of his uncle from suicide.
I've listened to more than forty of Krista's conversations. Most of them are interesting and moving. Despite that high bar, this particular interview stands out because of the gentleness and thoughtfulness of Ocean's words in the face of experiences that would harden any of us if we aren't careful.
You can find the interview here and the essay they reference towards the end of the episode here.
Snippets from the podcast:
And I think the way language exists is similar to when I was in Hartford, we were surrounded by these abandoned buildings, these old factories. The Colt gun factory was in Hartford, and it sold weapons to both sides during the Civil War. And we would go into these abandoned warehouses just to play and explore, and I remember seeing these old, warped windows, the glass just melting, and looking through at my city, the city I thought I knew so well, through this glass. It was so surreal. Everything changed. Everything was warped.
And to me, that’s what language is: the glass. You think it’s fixed. You think it’s clear pane of glass. But in fact, through years, it starts to drip and melt and change.
...
We have to ask — I’m not saying it’s wrong, per se. I use it too, being a product of this country. But one has to wonder, what is it about a culture that can only value itself through the lexicon of death? I grew up in New England, and I heard boys talk about pleasure as conquest. “I bagged her. She’s in the bag. I owned it. I owned that place. I knocked it out of the park. I went in there, guns blazing. Go knock ‘em dead. Drop dead gorgeous. Slay — I slayed them. I slew them.” What happens to our imagination, when we can only celebrate ourselves through our very vanishing?
Snippets from the article:
During these aimless forays, I kept finding myself looking up—particularly on residential streets lined with anything from monolithic tenements to luxury brownstones. But I also saw, attached to nearly every building, a skeletal structure of architectural finesse equal, in my eyes, to any of the city’s glittering towers. Fire escapes. Not buildings exactly, but accessories. Iron rods fused into vessels of descent—and departure. Some were painted blue or yellow or green, but most were black. Black staircases. I could spend a whole hour sitting across the street from a six-floor walk-up studying the zig-zags that clung to a building filled with so many hidden lives. All that richness and drama sealed away in a fortress whose walls echoed with communication of elemental or exquisite language—and yet only the fire escape, a clinging extremity, inanimate and often rusting, spoke—in its hardened, exiled silence, with the most visible human honesty: We are capable of disaster. And we are scared.
...
And yet, as I walked through the neighborhoods of New York, there were always at least one or two fire escapes on each street adorned with flowers, tin bird feeders, herb gardens, pink lanterns, bike racks, even cafe-style chairs and tables. I admired and envied this at act of domestication. Imagine a pair of hands reaching between those cold black bars and placing a pot of lucent April tulips into the sun. Life touching the possibility of its extinguishment. It almost makes me forget what those black bars were intended for. And maybe that’s for the better. Maybe we live easier decorating danger until it becomes an extension of our homes.