Last night I lay in bed for a long time with my eyes closedand the television on. CNN was covering ongoingevents in Tripoli and the surrounding regions and “covering” never seemed sopassive. I heard Anderson Cooper’s and Nic Robertson’s American and British voices slowly and steadily going back-and-forth, noteven rising and falling, regretting, clucking, and periodically praising eachother’s journalistic efforts. There wasa long exchange about whether the Lockerbie bomber Megrahi, whose locationRobertson had discovered earlier in the day in a Tripoli suburb, was faking finalillness and further discussion about the depth of impression his head left on thepillow (indicating whether the pillow had been freshly placed under his head orhad been there for a while).
Constantloud gunfire was going off in the background. One of CNN’s female Middle East reporters (unfortunately I don’tremember which one, but they all tend tobe pretty, bland, and western-looking like Cooper and Robertson, with Arab-sounding first or last namesand “mid-Atlantic” accents) said the gunfire was definitely celebratory and not battle-related. I imagined all of the reporters wearlng “fashion” t-shirts in varying shadesof gray (gray-blue, gray-brown, gray-black, gray-gray) and I knew I didn’t needto open my eyes to confirm this. I couldn’tdiscern even slightly theirpoint of view, which side they were on, or supposed I was on. A long time ago I remember hearing an Englishteacher warn a fellow student away from using the phrase “a strange dream,” butthat’s what this was. To the extent itwasn’t, that it was actually occurring, is even stranger.
1. Brice Marden: Dylan Study 2 (1963)
2. Brice Marden: Return 1 (1964-5)
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