Monday, January 02, 2006

Sin Sing 2- class is cancelled and I become a security threat

Days like this make me wonder why the hell I go out to this place every Monday. Its cold and rainy and after taking spending 2 hours traveling from Brooklyn - I arrive and am the only teacher checking in at the gate. There were two other missionary volunteers and an extremely friendly Reverend. Apparently the main pastor in the prison. Usually there are other teachers that come in at the same time, but their classes were all cancelled today because it’s the day after new years. --- so I guess that makes it a holiday… but since my class is its own weird, uncategorizable thing, I assumed- and they didn’t know otherwise, that it was happening.

Not so, I realized once I got to the school building and the driver let me off. I went in and it was completely empty today. Usually there are men bustling all around in the hallways and going up and down the stairs, but it was totally empty and when I got to the top door to the hallway that leads to the classrooms, the CO got on the phone to find out what I was doing there. He hung it up after a minute and said, “You have to go back. No classes today.” I couldn’t believe it because I specifically brought a box with a mess of drawings in which to sneak out their work so that I could put it up in my studio for a little private viewing- this whole idea has been brewing for a while- and they would really like to have some exposure, but there are all these regulations on showing work, and ultimately I’d like to not get the “no” with which to fight---- I’d just like to do it and ask for permission later--- so anyway, I was broken hearted that I couldn’t see them after this whole trip- and also because I really wanted to bring them John Baldessari. I had brought his book with me.

So as I was exiting, the civilian van was still sitting there, with the religious folks waiting for me. They hadn’t left for the chapel yet, so when I got into the van, the minister said I should just come with them to the service. I was nervous about this because I hadn’t been into the chapel and I’m not even Christian, but he was very intense and I actually did want to have a glimpse into another strange part of this place. So we get to the chapel and go inside where all the men are hovering in the pews and at the front there are drums, bass, guitar and piano, and there are two men playing bass and drums in a kind of R&B gospel style. The reverend takes me into the back room with the other two ministry people and we are just waiting and have small talk until finally we go out and are sitting on the stage in front of all the men in the congregation.

The minister is trying to get them to sing, but only a few of them do. He is very very passionate and is also trying to get me involved. Finally when one of the guys takes the microphone and sings, “This Little Light of Mine” I felt like I could join in. After these songs, the minister announces that one of the men’s grandmother’s has died, and he comes to the front in a yellow sweater- for some reason, the only other thing they seem to wear are these yellow sweaters over their drab green suits. So, he’s standing there, he’s a white guy and he’s crying and the minister holds him and starts praising him for coming to the right place, rather than for going into the yard and doing drugs, and he says, that he knows that it’s a really hard thing to not just try to escape from the pain with drugs, and the whole time the poor guy is really sniveling and crying, and the minister is saying how hard it is to have someone die when you’re locked up. He asks him when the last time he saw her was, and the grieving man says “O 4”. I was struck by the use of that hard, military like expression o - 4, rather than two years ago, but then I realized, that is so constant here, that even talking about the death of your grandmother wouldn’t be any different.

Anyhow, the reverend called everyone over to surround him in prayer and I started crying myself. It was just so heavy…But after all of this I’m sitting on the stage with my head down most of the time because its really weird being up there, the only female besides this very old lady who is the wife of the other minister, and I just felt them staring at me… and then the reverend comes up to me and says, “you’ve got to leave.” The CO said, you need to leave right now. Jeez, I thought… this can only be bad… I am always so forgetful of all the rules. So I hastily grab my jacket from the back room and exit – and the exit of the chapel meets an intersection of a hallway from the cells directly into the theater--- where they hold the plays, but now there is a movie screening. Its really confusing the spaces in there because everything is interconnected so that they are always accounted for.

I’m in this weird purgatory waiting for another correction officer to release me, and I look into the auditorium where on a big screen the movie playing is, “The 40 Year Old Virgin.” The whole area was so strange because I could still hear the gospel music coming from the chapel.

Finally I’m ushered out to the van which takes me to the main entrance and the CO looks really mad. I walk up to him to have him let me through the gate and he says, “do you know we’ve been looking for you for the last hour??” and I said, “no, I had no idea” and he said, “you did not get permission to go into the chapel and no one knew where you were because we were told you were going to the school house.”

So I explain to him that the reverend invited me, and I really didn’t know what I was supposed to do because it had never happened before that my class was cancelled. And he said, you can’t go with anyone anywhere if you don’t have explicit clearance.

We had this whole long conversation and then he led me back to the main entrance where the even tougher guard was waiting with an even worse look on his face. I really can’t stand this one guy, he always gives me a hard time and is very silent in his condemnation. I knew he was going to get into it and he did. He said, “Do you realize that you are NOT in the civilian world. We had no idea where you were for the past hour and if there were an emergency, like a hostage situation, we’d be looking for you in the schoolhouse, not the chapel. We would go in and get the three civilians who are scheduled to be in the chapel and NOT you and then you’d be left in there All Alone with 500 men, some of whom are NEVER getting out, and all of whom never see women. You might be an art teacher or an artist now, but once you’re in there, you’re just like me and who knows what could happen. This is a PENITENTIARY. These are not nice guys in here. We were calling all over the place, looking for you this whole time!!!!”

So anyhow, I apologized profusely and got the hell out. On the subway back, I was looking through the John Baldessari book and thinking about when I had told him about teaching at the prison, John had told me that he taught juvenile delinquents. He said that he had initially thought to go into social work, because he wanted to see art actually have an effect on society--- at least if I’m remembering right… something along those lines. And I started reading this biographical account which I had never read, but which began to fill in the details of things I had only vague knowledge about his life--- and it was actually really heartening on a number of levels for me.