Laundromatopoeia
May 2, 2009.
Potemkin Collective, Ruin and Reclamation
Vacated Singer Clothing Factory, Lethbridge, Alberta
Laundromats are an excellent cultural thermometer have been an interest of mine for years. The following text, as was written on the discarded laundry machines should aide in the intention of Laundromatopoeia as an installation.
This intent is to bring the laundromat experience to the viewer through smell, sound, tactile activities and text to challenge ideas of “faux-gentrification*”. The removal of the local laundromat often the final brick removed before the garage doors and the gates close.
*The false belief that neighbourhoods are improving through the development by individualist cultures.
Materials: Laundry machines, permanent marker, several items of used clothing with laundromat-related haiku, 1 polyphonic wash/dry cycle of a Luandromatopoeic jazz composition layered on top of Hein Van Der Gaag’s Angelica.
click here to play Laundromatopoeia
(In order to attempt to somewhat replicate the experience, I have uploaded my musical composition, so feel free to read and listen at the same time!). But, my apologies that technology will not allow the smell of soap into your house through computers….yet.
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Observations from outside the window of a Laundromat
“The last load goes in at 8:30” said the growly vocal chords of the attendant through her war era dental work and jail bar lips as I had put my second to last load into the machine. Her phlegmy insubordination and her smoke rings for eye sockets suggested she had been a member of the pack a day club since Trudeau’s roses were still fresh.
I nodded to acknowledge her remark as truth and popped in an Old Port Wine Tip to ready my mouth for a jimmy dean impersonation on the other side of the window.
“The Laundromat is one of the last bastions of a strong and democratic society like hitchhiking and good tap water” I think to myself as I haul a long reef from the Old Port and voyeuristically gaze in on the population from the outside.
In this large room humming with fluorescent lights and with droning dryers doing their Gregorian chants periodically interrupted by the clang of something metallic in one of the machines, there are the out of towners, the down and outers, and the old timers gathered around the bulletin board looking for a break, a deal, a job, and perhaps a used machine that will take one of them away from this deserted island.
This is not an island where the middle class want to clamber. It is an island like a small patch of Killex sprayed cement with a cast iron chair and outdoor table and a cup of strong coffee and a smoke outside a ground level apartment is an island. The Laundromat is not like those tropical places that mine Samsonite for a livelihood. It is a working island, a place people think about leaving, where the local airport says more goodbyes than hellos.
The regulars are chatting it up in the back corner around the free coffee that is a right, not a privilege and a hash stack of old magazines and romance novels.
The struggling mother is breaking a sweat running between what seems like a dozen machines she is juggling like a circus performer managing a plethora of spinning plates. A skill that is only learned in the Laundromat or perhaps through the management of several bingo cards at one time. Each time she bends down to get another load going, a peek-a-boo of a thong winks at me from the top of her last remaining pair of clean jeans….laundry day.
An old neighbour of mine arrives. I am immediately taken to a time when I was sitting on my midnight porch a few years back when an obviously hired high heeled visitor secretly extricated herself from his front door and slinked her way into a waiting cab to take her like a pin ball to another threshold. I grind the remaining third of the wine tip into the gravelly sidewalk and go inside to say hello.
The smell of over priced mini soap boxes from behind the counter and the squeal of the rusty laundry cart wheels resonates into a special part of my brain and memories are immediately triggered of times when I was living out of a backpack discovering myself, reacquainting myself.
I put a dime bag of soap into the machine and looks for a place to scribble. A long haired brunette in a strawberry blonde fur collared coat and a suggestive twinkle, cuddling and chatting occultly with the pay phone across the room. As I move closer to the only table where she is, the smells change from soap to an amalgamation of Dentyne and DuMaurier.
I remember that this is what real life is. Abundant life is not about delicately wrapping manicured hands around an ice brewed organic Sumatra blend mochalatte frappachino. Instead, its warming your paws on a Styrofoam cup of stainless steel urned Nabob Black gold with a couple of dissolving Roger’s sugar cubes sinking into the base of the plastic stir stick in a Laundromat. Just like It is not measured in terms of 100 dollar bills, it is measured in dimes, nickels, quarters and loonies, $3 dollars for a wash, $2.75 for a dry. $3 dollars for redemption, $2.75 for forgiveness. It is about washing off blood and stain. It is about dryer sheets and worn out sofas, plastic plants, Life is about static cling.
I begin to read the posters and take a number of a person that may be able to help with shingling my roof. I am thankful my washing machine broke down.
I say thank you to a confused attendant as I leave and give her my last Old Port and step into my other, less privileged side of the fence.