I’m Just a Boy by Jerrold Green

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:57:49 -0500

After seeing the Memory Project, I thought of many ways of making this print. I saw the face and how round it was. I wanted to make the “JUDE” sign superimposed on the face because it was round and just perfect for that shape. But I thought more and more that the photo is not of a symbol. It’s not a political statement. This is a boy. The most respect that can be given is to say, “This is a boy who sadly, didn’t have a chance at life”--without all the political statements. So I left it as is.
In the beginning I thought of the project as Roz’s way of giving back, to make whole the parent that was not whole. We all, as children born into this, know of the great loss that our parents had. We have to gingerly approach them because we know our parents are broken and we want to make them whole.
Afterward, I saw it more as an exposition of the process of creativity. It was more than the personal statement about her mother and the lost uncle. Is the message to make a creative effort out of everything around you or to honor the loss of the community that you’re a part of? Both are equally important. Roz brought those two things together with the bridge of creativity and it made me want to do something with it.
When I saw the photo in the small Memory Project brochure I knew what it was for me--black and white and a print. I had fun. That’s the important thing.

we were running and lost one shoe

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:46:27 -0500

(for my mother; for Roz and Anja)
by Helen Eisen

I could not protect my mother
I could not bring back or fix the past
Those figures she drew
Were so weighted with paint
On a space the width of a thread
The canvas collapsed of itself
Broke what she saw
In my hands

I ran away instead
Speeding faster than thought
And no one knew where I was
But the crowds amassed
Behind a skein light as a spider’s web
Glinting from the same fibrous
Thread my mother had sketched
And hidden in her hands

Poet Helen Eisen is the daughter of Polish Jews who survived Hitler’s Europe. Born in a DP camp in 1946, she crossed the Atlantic on a freighter with her parents and arrived in New York in 1950. This poem appears in her collection, The Permeability of Memory (c) 2007. Published by Cherry Pie Press, Glen Carbon, IL.

No Man’s Land by James Carrington

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:39:33 -0500

James Carrington is a singer-songwriter living in London. This beautiful song was his response to The Memory Project. We encourage others to share their reactions--to the song and to the project. At this point you have to email us or post responses on our Facebook Fan page. (Here are the lyrics. Thank you James!

No mans land
by James Carrington (c) 2009

There’s a picture in a room with a view that scars the eye
It’s like looking through a history book with the tale of time gone by
And every piece of your life is written on the page The smile that keeps you guessing and the voice that never fades

Like a lie that’s never told, you are gracefully
Coming in out of the cold to depend on me

Chasing shadows in the dusk from your favourite hiding place
As the sun begins to set the shadows that you see just fade
Its only when they’re laughing I see what it is you fear
The sound of someone’s happiness has never been so near

Like a lie that’s never told, you are gracefully
Coming in out of the cold to depend on me

And every now and then
When a situation ends
You may find yourself in no man's land.

There’s a picture in a room with a view that scars the eye
It’s like looking through a history book with the tale of time gone by
And it's only when they’re laughing I see what it is you fear
The sound of someone’s happiness has never been so near.