I know who Ellison is in passing but never saw that quote before. I would assume it was written as a general statement about life but it certainly applies in the context of graffiti. The more general idiom of “leaving your mark” as a metaphor for life is no accident. As someone who used to write an awful lot of graf, that Ellison quote is a nice summation of my reasoning. This idea, in some form, flashed through my mind every time I put up a tag.
it’s in the first sentence of the article : )
About 5,000 years ago, someone decided to paint a battle scene between
archers in a cave in Spain — perhaps one of the first instances of what
we’d call “war graffiti” today.
No way to know if it was painted by a combatant or just an onlooker, though. But I also immediately thought of Roman graf when I saw the headline here on BB. For anyone who hasn’t seen this page yet, it’s definitely classic internet:
http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm
(gladiator barracks); 8767: Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th
legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six
women came to know, too few for such a stallion.
What I love is how nobody cares about identifying themselves, indicating that writing graf was seen as just something people do instead of illegal, immoral, or subversive.
The Times article contained this link about Americans in France during The Great War with, at the end, a focus on a site covered with German and American soldier’s graffiti, which was really great.
