Filed under: art, community, Imagination, Witchery | Tags: art, Astoria, decoration, dragon, Grief Walking, Halloween, neighborhood, Queens, witch
The cheerful scarecrow dolls and corn cob clusters don’t thrill me but I will celebrate any nod toward decoration this month. I embrace your paper pumpkin, your hay bale, your autumnal faux leaf display.
But I am delighted by your circle of witches, your zombie doll babies, your floating spectres, your plastic bag ghosts, your homemade headless magician, your skeletons engaged in activities, your dagger wielding clown child on a swing, your smoke machine, your sound effects, your back-lit and up-lit cloaked figures, your spiders, your crows, your ravens, your bats.
Having been starved of art for so long – (I have not yet been to a museum or a theatre since March 2020) – I find myself intensely grateful for the experience of discovering decorations on my neighbors’ houses and apartments. Is it art? Mostly not. But occasionally there’s something that feels like it. The house with the Dead and Breakfast sign felt like such a complete concept in its design. I can imagine the experience continuing should I walk through the gravestone yard and go up the steps, up to the figure who tells you to beware and attempts to send you away. I can then imagine trying to check in to this glorious Dead and Breakfast, where skeletons climb in at the windows.
Art or not, it feels like an exercise of our art muscles as we applaud the good ones and bemoan the missed opportunities of houses that seem built to be perfect settings for Halloween displays. I am weirdly so intensely grateful to all the people who’ve made an effort. It seems like this is a new development, that this year is unusually rich in Halloween festiveness, but I can’t be sure. I’ve never gone hunting for Halloween houses before.
Ever since my youngest brother was killed last month, I have felt a strong need to get out of the apartment and walk. From day one, we went out walking nearly every night and over the weeks, there has been more and more to see. It feels so much better to get out and walk because we have a mission to see the best Halloween décor, for fun, than to just be out Grief Walking.
So I just wanted to say thank you to my neighbors for giving us cool things to look at. I thank you for your inflatables, your cobweb arches, your flashing eyes, your jack o lantern pile, your comedy skeletons who drink beer, read dirty joke books and fart. I thank you for your inflatable dragons that turn their heads to look at me. (Though I am not 100% sure dragons are on theme for Halloween, they are 100% on theme for me, so extra thanks!) I thank you for your vampires and your transforming portraits. I thank you for your flashing orange and purple lights. I thank you for your skull wreath. I thank you for your severed limb Halloween bush. (Like a Christmas tree but with feet and hands instead of ornaments!) I thank you for your Yoda toting T-Rex skeleton eating a hand. I thank you for your blood smeared windows. I thank you for your tiny mermaid skeletons that I feel sure you dressed yourself in tiny shiny mermaid skin tails and bikini tops. I thank you for cheering us up with darkness.
And if you live in my neighborhood (Astoria, Queens) and you know a cool Halloween House to go see, please let me know. I’m out walking, looking for them.
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