Dormority of the Deranged Continued

Part II: The Dysfunctional Sink

Another time there was a design show in the hotel, with small companies selling furniture and wallpaper and bedspreads--what have you--setting up shop in various rooms throughout the hotel.  One of the companies rented the room next to mine and set up a huge sink in the little corridor outside my door—right between my room and the bathroom.  The sink, a huge, solid affair, consisted of a slab of black granite set atop a granite pedestal which stood upon a rectangular base topped with gravel.  The funny thing about this sink was that it had no basin: the water came out of a tall, curved spout and ran across the flat granite slab, then down the outside of the pedestal, into a drain set into the base. That, anyway, was the concept: the sink wasn’t connected to a water supply, so you just had to imagine.  There were a couple of salesmen hanging out who would help you to imagine.

            I kind of liked the sink, since, despite its size, it was sleek and minimalist, and I struck up a conversation with one of the salesmen, a big blond guy named Olaf.  “It costs $15,000,” Olaf said.  Olaf was very proud of the sink.  He spoke with a German accent, though he said he was from Switzerland.
        “Wow,” I said, “that’s a lot of money.  But I guess it’s worth it if you’ve got a fancy restaurant or something.”

“Ja, it makes a big impression.”

“But one thing I was wondering is, won’t the water just slop out all over the floor when you try to wash your hands in it?

Olaf rolled his eyes and said condescendingly, “You must not wash your hands in it.  It’s more for the aesthetic experience: watching the water cascade over the sides.  You should just use it to get a drink, or to let a small amount of water trickle over your fingertips.”

Though Olaf was nice enough, I decided that the sink was ridiculous. 

It annoyed all the residents: a gigantic sink sitting right in the middle of everything.  With the base it set on, the sink was nearly as wide as the little corridor, and you had to squeeze past it every time you wanted to go to the bathroom.  It became a symbol for the real annoyance, which was the crowds of people streaming through the halls day and night to see this and other exhibits around the hotel.  Olaf was giving away free beer from a cooler, and that made his room especially popular: potential “customers”--in actuality mainly young hipsters who just wanted to tour the hotel--spilled into the hall, clustering around the sink, drinking and talking.  John,  a guy from the other wing of our floor, a poet, somewhat of a crank, was driven to distraction and taped up a sign saying: Please Be Respectful Of The Rights Of The Permanent Residents.  (John didn’t even live near the sink, and I’m sure I got blamed for the sign, since the next day Olaf was especially friendly and gave me free T-shirt.)  Carla, a girl from down the hall, had to squeeze past the revelers in her bathrobe every time she wanted to take a shower, enduring off-color remarks.  And at one point, when the noise became especially bad, my next door neighbor, Nancy, a dancer who slept during the day, popped out of her room and screamed at them hysterically: “Get the fuck away from my door you fucking assholes!”

Anyway, to get back to the theme of garbage art: after a week the design show packed up and moved out.  In a pile of fliers and other materials that Olaf had thrown out into the hallway beside the trash bin, I discovered a big mounted poster depicting the sink, and detailing it’s many virtues.  To commemorate the design show, and also to remind us of the finer things in life to which we might aspire, I taped up the poster in our bathroom: a high-end, luxury sink to contrast with our retro-chic, 50s flophouse fixtures.  Where the artistic element came in was in the juxtaposition, of course.  A Chelsea Hotel bathroom seemed to be where the fancy yet dysfunctional sink naturally belonged, serving humans of it’s kind, and I was quite pleased with myself.  It stayed up a few days, and then someone took it down and threw it back into trash bin from whence it had come.  Well, people can’t just desecrate my art, now can they?  It was lucky that I found it before the trash man showed up.  I got it out of the trash and taped it back up in the bathroom, and it stayed up maybe one more day.  This time, someone tore it into tiny pieces and stuffed them into the bathroom trash can.
Ed Hamilton  (Next Week: Still More Garbage Art) (Click here to read Part I: Dormority of the Deranged)