Daily Havana tumbles life onto the streets where bikes, wagons and hawkers of handmade brooms fill streets too narrow for the painted cars of the 1950s. At midnight I lean from a shaky balcony drawn to a party trumpeted by a band from a corner house. The barrio sleeps and sings at night. Rains come and go. People wait by day in thought and shadow for something unexpressed. Cubans are patient and used to disappointment and overripe fruit. Tourists bring nostalgia for a simpler life—neighbors looking out for each other and time to just be. The idea of Disconnect reflects both a time warp and Cuba's ration on virtual constant contact. Patterns repeat themselves in metal and metaphor—grids, a scrapped bedspring by an ornamental grille, lacework at a window, neighborhood networks—the web of woven patterns that record history and keep people inside and out. The past and the future resound. Juana, touching her wedding band, recalls a childhood of poverty. My landlady holds her first grandchild. And I'm invited to be a small part of their stories.
