Eyes of the Storm

I thought I’d be finished in five minutes.

Last week, I joined up with my sister and auntie for a trip to the Brooklyn Museum to see “Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo,” a collection of prints by Utagawa Hiroshige of the city that would become Tokyo.

The prints were first published in 1856–58 and the museum’s website promised visitors to the exhibition that “you’ll encounter all four seasons in scenes of picnics beneath cherry blossoms, summer rainstorms, falling maple leaves, and wintry dusks.”

This was the first time in 24 years that the print was put on public display and the exhibition also includes modern photographs to show how Hiroshige’s scenes morphed into today’s Tokyo.

My sister and I were already acquainted with Hiroshige’s work, having seen his “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art during our recent vacation. We’re becoming experts on this guy.

The Brooklyn Museum’s collection is vast and once we were finished, we planned to head back to Bay Ridge and have dinner at The Red Bowl, a fabulous Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood.

Coming into the museum, I noticed announcements for an exhibit of Paul McCartney’s photographs.

For whatever reason, I dismissed the idea of checking out the ex-Beatle’s photo collection. How much more is there to see or know about the Fab Four?

Plus, I was getting late, and I was getting hungry.

It turned out the McCartney collection—entitled “Eyes of the Storm”—was located on the same floor as the Hiroshige exhibit.

Oh, what the hell, I thought, we’re right here? We can duck in, take a quick stroll around, and then dive into to The Red Bowl.

My auntie offered to sit on a bench wait while my sister and I checked out the McCartney exhibit.

"See you in a few minutes," I said.

'And You Know That Can't Be Bad...'

Yeah, right...

We walked into the gallery and went right back in time.

“Eyes of the Storm”, was organized by the National Portrait Gallery in London and dates back to 1963 when The Beatles were on their first U.S. tour.

Armed with a Pentax camera, McCartney captured incredible black and white images of New York of the early Sixties.

All my memories of those Beatlemania days came roaring back into head: seeing them on The Ed Sullivan Show, listening to their songs on a transistor radio, and going crazy along with my siblings when our father bought home the single “She Loves You” one afternoon.

I have this vague impression of dancing on top of a small table in my pajamas, but unless someone produces evidence of this activity I will deny all knownledge.

The photos are displayed alongside video clips and archival material and includes backstage images John, Harrison, and Ringo and everybody is so goddamn young it’s painful.

I regret I didn’t take photos of the exhibit, but I was so caught up in the history that for the first time ages I didn’t reach for my phone.

The photos shift to color when the Beatles go to Miami and there are great shots of them hanging around their hotel swimming pool.

One sobering photo is a close-up of a motorcycle cop’s gun resting on his hip. McCartney said he’d never seen a gun before in his life, as the police in England don’t carry firearms.

Later I thought how John Lennon had been murdered by a gun-wielding maniac and it’s painful to see that happy young man living this incredible life and knowing how it will end so brutally-and so senselessly--20 years later right here in New York City.

In 2015, Rolling Stone reported that 1.5 million people—roughly the population of San Antonio, Texas--had been killed by firearms in the U.S. and God alone knows how many more have been gunned down since then.

Doesn't that make you proud to be an American?

My sister reminded me that it was getting late, so we went to collect our auntie head out for a delicious dinner.

The Hiroshige exhibit was incredible, but the McCartney photos went straight to my heart, and I loved them, yeah, yeah, yeah…