West Side Canvas: Homebound

Painting and Essay by Robert Beck

The Upper West Side is a walking community, filled with vibrant places where we eat, shop, and socialize amid the blare and frenzy of the streets. The kind of place you might make a neighborhood-ish movie. We have it all here—the affluent, the poor, the psychotic—and often within easy reach of each other. You can argue how melted we are, but there is no question that it’s a diverse pot.

That’s us, or a lot of us, anyway. There is a subsection of the population who are homebound. They don’t get to go out and swim the UWS rapids. They don’t get to grab a coffee or a bagel, or even just go for a stroll. The closest many of them get to their neighborhood is the window, if their room has one, and many of those windows look out on other windows and walls. Their world stops there. A box in a box in a box.

Some people who are homebound—or shut-ins, to use a really uncomfortable term—have professional caregivers, while others are cared for by friends, relatives, or a spouse. But many are alone, their contacts being the occasional volunteer visitor or a social service. It can be a life without dimension or agency. Who of us isn’t one misstep away from that room? Who has never been sick, never had an accident, or never felt a delivery bike come so close it tugged at your sleeve? Things can turn on a dime. Or crossing Amsterdam.

We all have places that make the Upper West Side our home. The restaurant or bar where we are regulars. That path in the park we take on our walks and the bench in front of the coffee shop where we blab with friends. Lincoln Center. Murray’s. Blondie’s. The salon. Places where life happens. Imagine having all of that stripped away. Most of us say we would rather not be in a hospital or nursing facility, but much of what we call home is made up of the favorite spots and familiar faces outside the walls.

My previous studio was directly across the street from an apartment where a young woman would guide an elderly man past the window to a place where he would sit for a while, then she would take him back again. It wasn’t far, and it was always the same, day in and out. I recall thinking that at least the man could get out of bed, but he didn’t have the outside—the sun, the rain, the weather—and that scares the country boy in me. That’s just one window in a whole Upper West Side of windows with stories.

New York has a bad-ass, hard-bitten persona, but that’s a myth. For the most part, people are nice to each other. The UWS has volunteers who provide services and vital human interaction to the homebound, and I admire them greatly. Those who make it a practice to help others are the action heroes in a community. Nobody is going to make movies about them visiting the homebound, though. That would be too disturbing.

See more of Robert Beck’s work and visit his UWS studio at www.robertbeck.net. Listen to an interview with him on Rag Radio — Here. Let him know at info@westsiderag.com if you have a connection to an archetypical UWS place or event that would make a good West Side Canvas subject. Thank you!

Note: Before Robert Beck started West Side Canvas, his essays and paintings were featured in Weekend Column. See Robert Beck’s earlier columns here and here.

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