Spy Ear Vocalize Silent

Lately I've been noticing instances of a very particular graffiti phrase popping up all over Montreal. Its origin is a mystery to me, as is its meaning, but after having seen it four or five times in a one hour walk downtown, I decided to spend a day walking around the city, photographing each copy of the phrase that I found and recording its location. I suppose I felt the need to do so because the repetition of the phrase fascinates me, or because I often hope that by photographing such things (messages scrawled on bathroom stalls, scratched in subway windows, doodled on abandoned scraps of paper) I can record in some way the person that made them, their mindset and intention, regardless of how mundane that may be. It still interests me. Or it could just be that as a huge fan of Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", I am predisposed to be obsessed by such things. In any case, this blog was created to record humanity being human, and if this isn't an example of that, I don't know what is. Some of the images are rather blurry, as I was in something of a hurry towards the end of my foray, and I apologize for that.




I had expected to find the first of the graffiti'd images downtown, but instead I was absolutely shocked to find it written on the side of the grocery store I stopped by in order to pick up a bottle of water before heading downtown to explore. This is the same grocery store from which I buy food every week, and it's miles away from where I first saw the phrase written.





On to downtown. Didn't take me long to find the second one. This was on Rue St-Denis, on this block of whatever at the front of a shop called "Orientale".







After rubbernecking more than even the tourists, I managed to capture two more, these within feet of each other, both outside a Couche-Tard on the corner of St-Denis and Maisonneuve.






These next three were all found on St-Dominique, which was where I'd first seen the phrase written.






And these last ones were found on St-Laurent, all within a block of each other.

I plan on keeping my eye out for more on my future forays into the city, and I ask any and all Montrealers to do the same, and to let me know if they find anything, either by photographing it themselves and sending the images to me, or by recording the location (street and building number or nearest intersection) and letting me know; both can be sent to easypeasyeasypeasy (at) gmail (dot) com. I want to know where this guy (girl?) has been. Probably seems freaky and obsessive of me, but mostly I'm just curious.