Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 357

"Most of the time it’s hard to be lonely all the time."

"Most of the time it’s hard to be lonely all the time."

"What’s been your greatest failure?""I recently did a...

"What’s been your greatest failure?"
"I recently did a dance piece on that, actually. It featured 200 point shoes, puppetry, and a 13-foot tall tutu."

"Her parents know about me. They just don’t know about...

"Her parents know about me. They just don’t know about us."

"I grew up in a small village in Liberia. Everyone was like...

"I grew up in a small village in Liberia. Everyone was like family. I left when I was 19 to study in France. While I was gone, the civil war came, and everyone in the village fled. Suddenly I had nowhere to go home to."

"I’m still struggling with her death. She was my best...

"I’m still struggling with her death. She was my best friend and biggest fan."
"What’s your happiest memory of her?"
"When I graduated from high school, I had to either sing a song or recite a poem. I sang a song that she’d taught me, and she was in the front row, clapping louder than everyone."
"Do you remember the song?"
“‘I never can forget the day,
I heard my mother kindly say,
You’re leaving now my tender care;
Remember, child, your mother’s prayer.’”

"My brother was killed when I was 13. There had been a fight at...

"My brother was killed when I was 13. There had been a fight at a nightclub, and my brother was not involved, but he was shot in the head as he tried to run away. He was very popular in my town, so there were many reporters and friends outside the hospital when I got there. When I walked in my mother was sitting in a chair, crying. She wouldn’t even look at me. She wouldn’t speak to me. Not only did I lose my brother that day, but I lost my mother too. Life from then on was about her suffering. She stayed home all day, she cried, she didn’t pay much attention to us. Nothing was allowed to be more important than her suffering. Nobody else was allowed to have important problems. Her pain had to be worse than everyone else’s. She preferred it that way."

"I didn’t know a thing about contemporary art before I met...

"I didn’t know a thing about contemporary art before I met her."

"We’ve been best friends for 26 years! She used to be my...

"We’ve been best friends for 26 years! She used to be my hairdresser. We know everything about each other. We spend the day together, then she goes home to her husband. And I go home to my little dog Stormy."

"Right after I lost vision in my eye, I was so bad at walking...

"Right after I lost vision in my eye, I was so bad at walking that I ran into a girl eating ice cream, and knocked her cone out of her hand. She screamed: ‘Are you blind!?!?’ I turned to her and said: ‘I am blind actually, I’m so sorry, I’ll buy you a new cone.’ And she said: ‘Oh my God! I’m so sorry! Don’t worry! It’s no problem at all! I’ll buy another one.’ So we walked into the ice cream store together, and the clerk said: ‘I heard the whole thing. Ice cream is free.’"

"I went to work with a fever one day, and I was trying to pull...

"I went to work with a fever one day, and I was trying to pull out a screw when the crowbar dislodged and hit me across the face. Two days later, I started to see a pink spray behind my right eye. They tried many surgeries, but over two months, my vision slowly faded to nothing until I was completely blind in the eye. My balance was ruined. I felt dizzy. I could barely walk. I spent $16,000 on surgeries, and then the hospital sued me for $40,000, even though they failed to save my eye. I was so sad and angry at myself, that I did nothing for a year and a half. I lost my house, my car, everything. Then one day, my friend said to me that he had an important job for me to do. And it was a very small job, but he gave me $1,000. He knew I wouldn’t take charity, so this was his way of giving me charity— overpaying me for a job. That was the way he was— Atilla Tetik is his name, from Long Island. And even though the $1,000 was a big help, seeing that I could finish a job made me feel powerful. And I immediately started working again."