homeless hagop: still homeless in cyberspace
..two decades back, some six years before we would hear about the Internet, when big hair was fashionable and English literature was focused on apathy and indifference in the affluent America of the Reagan era, a group of young Armenians, fresh out of college, picked up their Hi8 cameras to show their community what was ravaging the homeland and what the diaspora needed to confront. There had been an earthquake, massacres in Sumgait, and talk of independence, and a weekly show called Horizon would bring these stories to KSCI TV in Los Angeles every Saturday at 5:30 P.M. courtesy of the Armenian National Committee.
In those days of a somewhat lost innocence and naivety, when the sons and daughters of the diaspora were tipped that there was a homeless Armenian living on the streets of Hollywood, the would-be filmmakers and reporters took the cameras out after midnight to track down a man named Hagop. We gave him food, interviewed him as if he was an exotic animal in a zoo, then reported his whereabouts to local community service organizations. Then we forgot about him...
Decades passed, the information age changed the world, and last week, inspired by memories of Hagop, L.A.-based artist Zareh sent his e-mail buddies a drawing of the homeless man. Hagop and his story, his life, had not faded away into oblivion.
“It was always enjoyable talking with Hagop, and sometimes his words were wise and insightful, philosophical” says Zareh Meguerditchian. “Perhaps that’s why it was a good experience drawing him.” Zareh spent five-and-a-half hours drawing and remembering Hagop, and his drawing resurrects Homeless Hagop, who will now live forever through art and in cyberspace.
“I remember Hagop telling me that he was from Cyprus,” says Zareh. “When he was young, he wanted to marry a very beautiful woman but she refused him. He married another woman later, and the two of them came to the U.S.”
The tragic trajectory of Hagop’s life follows a path that many face in our paycheck-to-paycheck civilization. After Hagop’s business failed, his life became unraveled.
He left his wife and ended up on the streets of Hollywood, the same streets that are dubbed by the Los Angeles City Council as “Little Armenia.”
“Many in Hollywood knew and liked Hagop,” says Zareh. “He used to push a shopping cart full of bottles and cans down the street, and he spent most nights sleeping next to the Fountain Theatre.”
Zareh says he would run into Hagop sometimes, see Hagop eating at the Sassoun Bakery in Hollywood; and Zareh would often wonder if any of Hagop’s family ever came to look for him or visit him again.
“He seemed to me a kind man with a soft spirit and without an evident mental illness as is sometimes the case of many homeless people,” says Zareh. His name was Hagop. Sevag K., Greg T., Azniv K., and our Hi8’s couldn’t help Hagop; neither could the community service organizations we reported him to. Perhaps his lot in life was to walk the streets of Little Armenia. Perhaps his story should remind us how easily all of our lives can unravel.
In those days of a somewhat lost innocence and naivety, when the sons and daughters of the diaspora were tipped that there was a homeless Armenian living on the streets of Hollywood, the would-be filmmakers and reporters took the cameras out after midnight to track down a man named Hagop. We gave him food, interviewed him as if he was an exotic animal in a zoo, then reported his whereabouts to local community service organizations. Then we forgot about him...
Decades passed, the information age changed the world, and last week, inspired by memories of Hagop, L.A.-based artist Zareh sent his e-mail buddies a drawing of the homeless man. Hagop and his story, his life, had not faded away into oblivion.
“It was always enjoyable talking with Hagop, and sometimes his words were wise and insightful, philosophical” says Zareh Meguerditchian. “Perhaps that’s why it was a good experience drawing him.” Zareh spent five-and-a-half hours drawing and remembering Hagop, and his drawing resurrects Homeless Hagop, who will now live forever through art and in cyberspace.
“I remember Hagop telling me that he was from Cyprus,” says Zareh. “When he was young, he wanted to marry a very beautiful woman but she refused him. He married another woman later, and the two of them came to the U.S.”
The tragic trajectory of Hagop’s life follows a path that many face in our paycheck-to-paycheck civilization. After Hagop’s business failed, his life became unraveled.
He left his wife and ended up on the streets of Hollywood, the same streets that are dubbed by the Los Angeles City Council as “Little Armenia.”
“Many in Hollywood knew and liked Hagop,” says Zareh. “He used to push a shopping cart full of bottles and cans down the street, and he spent most nights sleeping next to the Fountain Theatre.”
Zareh says he would run into Hagop sometimes, see Hagop eating at the Sassoun Bakery in Hollywood; and Zareh would often wonder if any of Hagop’s family ever came to look for him or visit him again.
“He seemed to me a kind man with a soft spirit and without an evident mental illness as is sometimes the case of many homeless people,” says Zareh. His name was Hagop. Sevag K., Greg T., Azniv K., and our Hi8’s couldn’t help Hagop; neither could the community service organizations we reported him to. Perhaps his lot in life was to walk the streets of Little Armenia. Perhaps his story should remind us how easily all of our lives can unravel.
