Billboard

A loud humming sound, grinding like the din of a steroid ridden hummingbird amplified on a loudspeaker by my window, roused me from REM's quixotic narrative. My fingers fondled the windowsill above, a daily blind search for glasses. Comprehension grew as I peered out onto the parking lot below. I was surprised to find the source of noise in a big, black, cherry-picker machine, stretching its neck to the billboard adjacent the window. A red-faced sweaty man strained to pull the advertisement tight around it's corners, though the wind whipped the plastic, slapping the mans arms. Neck veins bulging, he quickly stabs the advert into place, and retracts to admire his work. I look down to the supporting vehicle reading "Skin Tight Signs".

In this post-industrial age, Every job to be performed, each duty begging completion, is the purpose of an entire company. A corporate effort complete with logos on trucks and cold calls and sales pitches. Until now I might have surmised a tiny fairy changed the billboards. I further see, though, that there is a business for everything, and a man for every job (though no job for every man).

The expired advertisment lay on the asphault, tired and wrinkled. The grueling task of securing a large new sign skin tight on a windy morning proceeded corner by corner. There was an efficiency in the man's work showing his movements were directed by memory, engrained in his joints and muscles. I heard the cherry picker grinding again, this time for the last time, with a new billboard complete. Next a delicate folding process began. The worker attempted to tame the limp ad on the pavement, subject to wind's whim, into a neat, thick square. A few piles of these sat on the truck. For what painfully felt like an hour this man negotiated with the old rectangular sheet, folded, then undone, by the wind. Now his cursing pierced the constant hum of the truck. I was impressed with his perfectionism and dedication to the job. His tenacity showed that on some level, beyond bubbling frustration, he cared-- a pride in his work. The billboard man... here to tell us which phone company has a new plan, and which movie will premier next (FYI, it's "Valentines Day", Feb. 11th). Once the old plastic sheet was folded away, the laborer took a moment to inspect the job, and photographed his work.

Unemployed in New Zealand, in search for professional purpose and meaning, awaiting the voice of a vocation, I take notice in what actions, events, and duties fill the days of everyone else. What tasks need to be completed that are worth a buck? I re-realize the intuitive; behind each man-made object and system is at least one man (or woman), most likely a group, orchestrating and connecting their efforts to the surrounding economy, involving themselves, as a group, in the webbed social constructions of society. A society where a machine with film, invented, built, and sold by a group, records movement. Producers pay advertisers to create public knowledge of said film, and advertisers pay Skin Tight Signs to post an ad so we, with money from our own jobs, will pay to go see it projected. Experiences like movie-going are essentially treated as goods, commodities, attached with financial value. The worker is a laboring cog in the machine of the Skin Tight Sign business, which is itself a cog in social machinery.