In the middle of learning – by Donald F. Gately

I read a magazine article about an artist who met a tragic end, perhaps at the hands of her husband, also an artist. She fell to her death from an apartment they shared on the 37th floor of a building in Greenwich Village. They had established a small art community. One of the artists in this group, Vito Acconci, produced a work in 1969 entitled “Following Piece.” The piece consisted of Acconci following pedestrians on the streets of New York City. He didn’t stalk the subjects. He only followed them from a public space to whatever private space they moved into; a cab, an apartment building, maybe a store. He photographed them as well.

In 1969, in New York City, I was 8 years old. Well, in truth, I was 8 years old everywhere, not just in New York City. Most of the time I was 8 years old in Brooklyn, because we rarely went into Manhattan. Manhattan was “the City.” Nevertheless, I believe I was in Manhattan several times during this period. We went to the circus at Madison Square Garden. Several weeks before this, I went into the “City” with my dad to buy tickets for this same circus. That’s two occasions I remember being in Manhattan.  

I have a distinct memory of taking the train from Flatbush Avenue to the Garden to purchase the tickets and my dad taking me to lunch before we returned to Brooklyn. I said I wanted a hamburger. It’s a genre of food of which I was familiar at that time. He must have taken me to a kosher deli because the burger was served on matzah instead of on a bun. I took a bite, and the matzah crumbled all over the plate in front of me. I was holding a hamburger in my bare hands. I cried, “Why can’t we have a burger on a bun like we always do?” My dad told me it was a Jewish holiday and every place serving food in the city was offering their burgers on matzah that day. I know… this story is too weird and specific not to be true.

I went to the website for the artist Vito Acconci’s Following Piece, hoping to find a photograph of my father and me walking the streets of Manhattan.

There’s no photo of us on the website.

If you know me, you won’t be surprised to learn that at eight years old I often thought that I was being observed. When I would leave my house through the side door, always the side door, I would travel in a jog to the sidewalk on Albany Avenue in a manner I’d seen the Knicks employ when they came out during introductions. Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, Clyde Frazier, they would saunter out to half court when their names were introduced at the beginning of each game. It was a casual, loose-limbed jog that communicated nonchalance, ball-knowledge, and confidence. This is what I would imitate, thinking that scouts would be looking for talent and would see me emerge from the narrow shared alleyway between our house and the neighbors. I’d fantasize that a car would pull up and Knicks coach Red Holtzman would emerge, “Hey kid, you got something. Come with us. You’re gonna play for the Knicks now.” And off we’d go.

Needless to say, this never happened. But it’s thrilling for me to think that the artist, Vito Acconci, may have followed us when we got off the train and went to Madison Square Garden to buy circus tickets or when we left with our tickets and walked to the kosher deli. The website for the piece indicates that Acconci sought to explore “the private and public fields that occur in every social space.”  In my imagination, he took our photos. When he developed the photos in his lab, he judged them unusable because the child with his father is crying.  The tragic impact on a young boy from Flatbush of a crumbling hamburger matzah was beyond the scope of the artist’s intent.