I just read this strange and beautiful story that I have to share.

The unexplainable, magical things that happen, sometimes, in life, stagger me and confirm my - too often tenuous - belief in the spiritual world that exists beyond the rational everyday.

The Intimacies of Strangers

The man who lives beneath us snores. Loudly. And it's not that kind of sporadic, choking snore. He snores with every in-breath - every long, heavy, loud in-breath. The first time I heard it, I jerked my head off my own pillow and thought - "no... that's too ... that can't be..." I thought it must be just one of those odd sounds old buildings make at night. But, despite my unwillingness to believe, night after night it only became more clear. Aside from it being somewhat repulsive to fall asleep listening to the snores of this maybe 60-ish man with a shaggy unkempt beard and sagging belly, it also embarrasses me for him. I cringe every time I encounter him in the lobby because of the horrible mental image that flashes through my head of him sleeping. And it seems like he's always sleeping!

Maybe that's why he and his wife argue so much. Not because he snores, she must be used to that by now, but because she is not close to him. I can't imagine she sleeps in the same room with him - not when there are two other bedrooms she could use. We hear raised voices, hers more than his, on a near nightly basis. From the general intonation of the conversations, she dominates. His voice has a low, sonorous quality that only breaks into her higher-pitched harangue from time to time. The man spends most of the time he's at home being reprimanded about something or other - it's no wonder he sleeps so much and so deeply.

You know, I don't know them and I really should know better than to wonder at what keeps couples together - but I do wonder. If they've ever had kids then maybe that sustained them for about 20 years or so. Though, if they have ever had kids, those kids never come around to visit. I think it's just been them, by themselves, all these years. Maybe it's just the force of time that keeps them together, they've been together this long and endured this much - perhaps it's a badge of honor of some kind. Or maybe it's just inertia pooling around their ankles, weighting them down. Maybe they've just never had any relationship that's been better and at this point, that voice - angry or not, defeated or not - is better than silence.

Hell, maybe they love each other.

Anyway, the contemplation of this, of them, has given me an idea for a new project. I'd love to photograph couples, portraits of couples, to see the body language that comes about naturally. How do these couples come together for a photograph? Do they have an automatic turning inward towards each other? Does one person face in and one face out? Is one person's hand or arm placed in a proprietary way on the other person? a tentative way? I'd love to do a shoot with a large white backdrop, and say - "ok, I'm going to take several shots of you - just act natural," and see how "natural" is translated. Who snores loudly day after day, and who places themselves in the center of the frame... Something in the style of Richard Avedon.

Hopefully someday soon...

Bedtime lullaby

I was finally clued into "yo gabba gabba" last month and I think I like the show as much as Phineas does. Hearing this song by Mark Kozelek sealed the deal. I love it and the animated dream interlude.


Here's another take on a dreamspace.


daytime, day-dream time

Searching for answers

Ever since the first of this year, or really since the 4th of this year when I started back to work after being off through the holidays, I have felt unsettled. Going into work that day I felt bluer than I have in a long time.

"oh - this routine again." I remember thinking as I walked from the subway to my office. "another year of this. and it's only january."

And by "this" I meant the broad pattern of my life at this point - the frenzied morning rush to get to daycare and work, the minor panic that I'm not on top of what I need to be at work, the frustration that can occasion client service jobs because essentially you're always doing someone else's bidding. the rush to finish and leave the office to get to daycare before six, before they charge for being late, before - even worse - it's your kid who's the only one left, again. the brisk walk home pushing a heavy stroller over uneven pavements, snow and slush, around people who take up too much space on the sidewalk, in between rush hour traffic blocking the crosswalks. the scramble to figure out what to make for dinner that Phineas will eat and then watching and coaxing while he doesn't eat...

It's not that I don't want to do these things, or that I'm unhappy that this is what I am doing. It's just that all of that leaves no room for personal creativity. Is it just discipline that enables someone to stick to routines? No, I guess not - it's has more to do with responsibility, sacrifice and the desire to do what's best for the people you love. I used to think that people who were more routinized really just lacked imagination and creativity.

Anyway - one way I've developed for dealing with monotony is to be impossibly obsessive over politics. Following the daily debates, reading about political ups and downs, and just tracking the news - literally minute by minute. It really works to sublimate the incredible absorption that comes from creating something. My energy is instead channeled into absorbing the details of health care reform, or political races, or how some idiocy from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh should be refuted. It's not really a good trade-off... I know.

This evening, between the fallout from the Massachusetts senate election and the Supreme Court decision in favor of corporate funding of political campaigns - I felt a complete and utter despair. It sounds ridiculous, I know. Anthony cannot at all understand why any of that would matter so much to me. And his point is valid - worry about the stuff over which you have some control. But... for me, it's complicated.

To get myself out my misery pit I did something that is instinctual - take a book down from the bookshelf, think about writing or reading or art. I picked two books - and found something in each of them that instantly soothed my passions.

The first was the Tao Te Ching - which I like opening at random to read what it has to say to me. I opened to this stanza:

Act without doing; work without effort.
Think of the small as large and the few as many.
Confront the difficult while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.

I also picked up a book by Annie Dillard that I'd read some years ago - For The Time Being. Rifling through, I found this passage -

"Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy - probably a necessary lie - that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and we are in the know: crazy people, bunches of them. New diseases, shifts in power, floods! Can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?... The closer we grow to death, the more closely we follow the news. Year after year, without ever reckoning the hours wasted last week or last year, I read the morning paper... It is life's noise - the noise of the news - that sings 'It's a Small World After All' again and again to lull you and cover the silence while your love boat slips off into the dark."

After reading those, I felt light years better.




Night-time in a strange place

Wyeth's words

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape -- the loneliness of it -- the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it -- the whole story doesn't show."
- Andrew Wyeth

Authenticity is the new black

I read this the other day and it brought up a few half-formed questions I've wondered about before - what is photography today, why the term 'authenticity is so popular, and how people define themselves as artists. Not that I've thought about all of that at once, but separately they are three things I've mentally checked-in on at some time or another.

(original article in The Independent, Talent in 2010)

But this statement is a trifecta of puzzling thoughts! - "Photography is dead in its traditional form," says Tim Hetherington. With the proliferation of digital culture, his view is that authenticity is now more important than style. "Many people can take pictures as good as mine but mine are more authentic because of my experience."

This is the kind of thing where if you're just skimming the article it sounds really good, like ... smart. It comes off as a strong statement, purposeful, made by someone confident in his trajectory. But once you begin really thinking about its individual components it doesn't make any sense!

I don't know if I'm going to make any sense either, but I want to think a few things through...

First - I wonder what he means by photography's "traditional form?" Is he going all the way back to glass plates or just to silver processing? Or is it simply the difference between film and digital? If so, there's this assumption of skill if you're shooting film, whereas with digital you can just click away. But that difference isn't artistry - that's being technically proficient. If traditional form means composing in camera (using film) and digital is automatically associated with computer manipulation - he's ignoring photography's extensive history of manipulation either in camera or in the darkroom.

There was a time when photographers had to beat the gallery/museum doors down to be considered artists in their own right. Add to that, a parallel history of photographers wanting to demarcate the line between their work and that of the unwashed masses. Photography today is both a recognized and valuable artistic medium. And it's interesting to see what the proliferation of digital cameras and imagery add to the art form. Our culture is becoming even more visually aware and documented to an unprecedented degree. Still, not everyone with a digital camera and photoshop is an artist. And although everyone has "experience" that is authentic to themselves, neither does that authenticity distinguish what is art.

Speaking of authenticity... a few years back when I was still freelancing I was hired to do research for a company that makes an artificial sweetner. They wanted to understand how young women in their 20's (a core segment for them) thought about beauty - what beauty was, how it could be attained. A sidebar to this was how their thinking about what "natural" meant tied into notions of beauty. Really interesting project... Anyway, one of the strongest patterns to emerge was the association of beauty with authenticity. If someone was being "true to themselves" then that was beautiful. Which is cool, right? especially for young women to be able to discard unrealistic or impossible standards.

Since that project I've noticed that "being authentic" is a seemingly ubiquitous concept. I see it mostly in the corporate brand world where supposedly "authentic" brands are championed or champion themselves for being "authentic." What is that anyway?

So... this isn't really making sense, as I'd expected. But basically what I keep stumbling over is that this photographer, Tim Hetherington, is setting up a distinction between what is real and what isn't based on his inherently subjective experience. And he's established a value judgement associated with that - saying that his experience makes his pictures more "authentic". Well, yes of course - but so does everyone else's. If he just wants to say "mine are better" he should try a different line of argument.

The trees outside our windows are bare now. Winter is prepped though who knows if any snow will fall. The temperatures ping-pong between mild and cold. On sunny, warmish days I feel like a narcissus bulb forced into early bloom.

But I do really want to go sledding in the park with Phineas. I can't wait for the city's first big snowfall. The hush of snow smothering traffic, the glitter of snow shining in every street light. The forced slowdown as we dig out, climb over snowdrifts, pass neighbors in the middle of day in the middle of the week going out for hot chocolate.

These photos are from Prospect Park in the last days of brilliant leaves on the trees - a couple of weeks ago.











Phineas loves airplanes... just like his mother...






Sometimes I wonder if it's possible that little bubs develop their sense of humor so early... or if he's picking up cues from us. But he routinely tries a sly move or ham act only to see if I'll smile. Although... he probably learned that from me a long time ago...