He wears his ornery disposition like a badge of honor, holding onto grudges with a tenacity comparable to a troll guarding its favorite bridge. Everyone who had ever wronged him, real or perceived, took up residence in the caverns of his mind. The bitterness had become his constant companion, whispering tales of betrayal and disappointment into his ears.
The townsfolk of Durango know Chris as the man on the corner, the one who seems to carry the weight of the world on his square head. He stands on the corner of 8th & Main every day, like a brooding monument to discontent, his eyes fixed on a horizon that seems perpetually out of reach. His grievances and rants were nothing more than background noise to a world that had learned to tune him out.
His claim to being a free spirit was, in reality, a façade as thin as the Colorado air. He was as uptight as a coiled spring, ready to snap at the slightest provocation. The weight of his own desolation had become the anchor that kept him tethered to the corner, a lonely man lost in the vastness of his own despair.
Following an unexpected encounter with Chris and a disheartening conversation steeped in vitriol, 1985 grammy award winner Phil Collins wrote a song about Chris. That song is “Man On The Corner.” Below is an excerpt of the lyrics.
“See the lonely man there on the corner
What he's waiting for, I don't know
But he waits everyday now
He's just waiting for something to show
And nobody knows him
And nobody cares
'Cause there's no hiding place
There's no hiding place for you
Looking everywhere at no one
He sees everything and nothing at all, oh
When he shouts, nobody listens
Where he leads no one will go, oh”
And so, the saga of Chris continued in the shadow of the Rockies, a tale of hopelessness set to the tune of a life that seemed to have missed its own plot.
This is Chris' story. He is the subject of this drawing. The drawing is graphite, charcoal and ink on paper.
