pigs, or, the defamation of an unassuming animal by a select few
beat & bagged: showing off their catch.
Here it was, his big chance, the moment he had been waiting for since being issued his telescopic steel baton: he was going to get to batter a man in front of a large group of people. The officer’s excitement was palpable and he even let a smirk shoot across his face and linger for a moment as he raised his baton, readying it to cut through the air and smash the soft flesh of his bearded, shirtless, barefoot adversary. For a public servant to show such unabashed pleasure in the prospects of harming another human being, let alone a mentally unstable one, was quite sickening and almost unfamiliar despite being completely expected; affirmation of the “pig.”
Alas, a second officer arrived and grabbed the man’s arm, twisting it behind his back. The first officer grabbed the other and together they dropped the man head first into the brick pavement. As the man’s head connected with the brick a dull and unnerving thud quickly filled the space in front of Bank of America in Kenmore square. Injury can be represented by any number of sounds: cracking, crumpling, screeching, hollering, etc., but the sound of skull on brick is deadening, removed from any natural sound, yet at the same time, completely identifiable.
Red blood spilled through the man’s bushy, peppered mane onto the red brick. His sense of life was drained and replaced by misunderstanding and uncertainty. Kyle and I took pictures as evidence of how events should not unfold. The officer’s yelled at us, told us to take pictures of Fenway Park, and implied that we were removing this man’s dignity through documentation. But his dignity was gone when the first office made him a spectacle, when he made him a Tekken character who deserved bodily harm. And his interests to not suffer were removed when his head met the ground. He became an “unthinking” animal, or a prize to catch, well before we took our our cameras.
Aesop Rock – Pigs
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Earlier that day (sounds you want to hear)…
