News: “On Foot: Brooklyn” book

Craig Shepard and I have begun work on a book of photos and writing from his “On Foot: Brooklyn” project. At the moment there are no deadlines or schedules – we are just gathering the media we have, organizing, scanning, writing, editing, researching, and browsing through bookstores. It’s an exciting time – I’m not sure exactly where we are headed, and that’s a good thing. Right now we can just experiment, play and entertain any ideas that come up.

I’m in the midst of sifting through the thousands and thousands of photos I took on the thirteen Sunday walks, both en route and during the performances. I have photos from all over this large land mass we call home. Brooklyn is 71.82 square miles according to the Census Bureau. Of course we didn’t cover every square mile, but we passed through a good portion of it. I plan to include photos representing the vast diversity of architecture, people, landscapes and ecology that the real-heart-shaped boundary of Kings County (aka Brooklyn) encompasses.

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-Beth

On Foot: Brooklyn. Walk to Bensonhurst.

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I feel it mostly in my hips. With each step, I can vividly picture the ball turning in its socket, all the surrounding cartilage angrily inflamed. I’m not tired and my muscles may be tight, but it’s not debilitating. What makes it hard to continue is the focused, grinding pain in my hips with each step. It feels dry and scratchy, and I daydream about inserting the long red straw of a WD-40 can into the joints, coating them with soothing viscous oil. Problem solved. If you had asked me what would be most difficult about walking long distances I would’ve guessed exhaustion. But the pain comes before exhaustion – long before I run out of energy.

On Sunday morning, February 26th, 2012, Craig Shepard and I set out from northern Greenpoint to walk to Bensonhurst, a far-southern neighborhood in Brooklyn 9.9 miles away. It was the first of thirteen Sunday walks he will be doing over the course of three months. When we arrived, Craig set up on a concrete island under the New Utrecht Avenue elevated subway train at 18th Avenue and 85th Street. While he played his composition on a pocket trumpet, I took photographs of him and the activity swirling around him.

But there was an epic journey before us before we got there. And I think I wore the wrong shoes. In October of 2011, Craig and I walked the entire perimeter of Manhattan in one day. It came out to 39 miles. We stayed as close as possible to the border of land and sea, tracing the edges of piers when we could. For that walk I bought a pair of high-tech, high-top, super light Salomon walking shoes. They were magical: so light they barely registered and I didn’t get one blister from the moment I first put them on. I don’t recall the hip pain effecting me much until we were half way through that walk. That’s 20 miles.

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“On Foot” by Craig Shepard

Craig Shepard and I moved in the same social circles in northern Brooklyn, frequenting some of the same spots, but we didn’t really know each other. The impression I had of him was someone with a tendency towards intense silences. A concentrated and slightly disconcerting silence had been the defining feature of the few interactions we had. It was a collaborative project, these silences, as I am decidedly reticent with new people myself. Rushing to fill a space with words has never been my role, as my mind tends to react to even a whiff of awkwardness with a complete cessation of all activity. My sense was that his silence was not out of discomfort but simply an aspect of his personality and relational style.

What finally brought us together is a very North-Brooklyn-2011 story: he is a composer and I am a graphic designer, and he was putting out a CD.

Graphic design is a side-project of mine; it’s more of a hobby than a career, allowing me the luxury of choosing only to work on projects I like. It’s too bad that CD packaging is most likely on the way out – it’s an art form I really enjoy. I’ll do everything from creating artwork, photography and logos to the layout. The largest project I’ve ever done was for a Brooklyn-based band named Nakatomi Plaza. You can see the project here: “Unsettled.”

Craig’s project and the album is called “On Foot”. In the summer of 2005, he walked 250 miles across Switzerland, carrying a pocket trumpet with him. Every night at 6 p.m., wherever he was, he would play a piece he composed that day.

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