An Unexpected Moment of Elegance

Looking Up in Dumbo, 2012

I’ve been traveling for a couple of days. The mind’s overloaded with client-related stuff, leaving little room for recreational thinking.  So we’ll close the week with this view of a little half moon, some warm incandescent light and a rich blue sky, all spied jut before sunset one day last week in Brooklyn, New York.

There’s not much story to this. I was walking down the street toward the East River, fascinated by the view ahead, the skyline of Manhattan on the opposite shore and the people around me. Then, for reasons unknown, I stopped to look up and become briefly mesmerized by this wonderful little slice of nature’s glory. I just stood there for a moment before it occurred to me to lift the camera to my eye.

When I finally did that and returned to my walk, I found a half dozen or so people standing around me, so puzzled by my stance and head turned high that they’d, too, looked to the sky to see what mysteries it held. It was like that moment in the movie The Fisher King when all at once a thousand unrelated people hurrying across main hall of Grand Central Terminal coalesce into one grand waltz. Don’t remember the scene? It’s one of my favorite movie moments of all time. Here is it.

If you’re a real nerd about Terry Gilliam films, you can see him describe the thinking and production behind the Grand Central sequence here.