Photography

Repost-Poem By Seamus Heaney-R.I.P: ‘The Grauballe Man’

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The Grauballe Man

As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep

the black river of himself.
The grain of his wrists
is like bog oak,
the ball of his heel

like a basalt egg.
His instep has shrunk
cold as a swan’s foot
or a wet swamp root.

His hips are the ridge
and purse of a mussel,
his spine an eel arrested
under a glisten of mud.

The head lifts,
the chin is a visor
raised above the vent
of his slashed throat

that has tanned and toughened.
The cured wound
opens inwards to a dark
elderberry place.

Who will say ‘corpse’
to his vivid cast?
Who will say ‘body’
to his opaque repose?

And his rusted hair,
a mat unlikely
as a foetus’s.
I first saw his twisted face

in a photograph,
a head and shoulder
out of the peat,
bruised like a forceps baby,

but now he lies
perfected in my memory,
down to the red horn
of his nails,

hung in the scales
with beauty and atrocity:
with the Dying Gaul
too strictly compassed

on his shield,
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.

–Seamus Heaney

Digging through the past and digging at the thing, a body almost lovingly rendered, made alive on the tongue, looking inward and trying to look forward.

Wikipedia’s Grauballe Man page.

Seattle Photo-Ship Slidin’ Away

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Happy Belated Easter!

I remain convinced that a blog/online presence is secondary to life. A way to document one’s experiences with the things that really matter (many ideas really matter).

Most social media doesn’t seem worth making one’s Self small to fit in the sewer pipes of online communication (a work in progress, these pipes).

Don’t get me wrong, we all gotta pay the rent. I have some admiration for the desire not to starve. God Bless the ones who make me laugh.

The most interesting writers of the day are usually idea merchants; spreading down their cloths upon the cobbles. I admire people gifted enough to display the thoughts of others as though their own.

Living takes it out of you. When you need ideas, may you find what you need. Most importantly, the thoughts you have become your habits, and your habits become your character.

No one gets out alive.

I think that’s why we have this old and important story about the Resurrection…

Seattle Photo-Breakfast At Bistro Dumpster

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Northwest crows live in territorial family groups; foraging constantly for food. From dawn to dusk, you can find the usual customers, at the usual places, at the usual times.

They are cautious, and like a high, safe perch from which to view the world. Upon discovery of a new food source, they scope out the scene carefully, swooping down to ground-level only after the coast is clear.

Seattle Photo-Stripes & Train

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Do you guys remember the old Amtrak baggage car/American Airlines logos?

Engage your sense-memory. No one will find you here. No one.

***Except for the good folks at DataCorp Inc, specifically the Eye Tracking training-unit (shout out to Teddy). Also, I should advise that engagement metrics could be used to curate responsible citizenship through train-travel at Amtrak and the DOT, too (efficient and caring).

****Michael’s cousin Peter knows a guy, and some ‘Colombians?‘ are running terabytes of data in old Dell hard-drives (yes, really) around Cape Horn. Your data could be in there, too.

Thanks for looking.

For A Friend-A Scene From The Color Of Money

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Movie Title: The Color Of Money (Director-Martin Scorsese). 1986.

What’s good and what’s genuine in characters who hustle for a living? Can the American pulp novella/novel be a source of both popular and high entertainment?

Visual Storytelling (end-scene pool showdown): The wiser and more experienced mentor, perhaps washed-up, is being pushed out of the business during his comeback, but he’s not going quietly (we need some dramatic tension). His lady waits for him near the edge of frame, while both of them only take about 1/5 of the frame (all four characters are on the diagonal). 

Does he still have it? 

—

Brash, untempered (arrogant), less experienced rising talent and his lady take about 1/3 of the frame, closer to the audience. They’ve been hustled; learning the art of the con pretty well.  

Should he accept the challenge? Is this it? 

Possible conclusions: Maybe that’s what we get in life, a view every now and again. At the height of our powers (or past our powers), we get a moment when the conception of the game and the game become one. In a tacky hall of mirrors, no less. I hope it’s not all a hall of mirrors.

Generations stuck in a stand-off…

My point: A good visual storyteller takes his craft seriously, associating the story and the images to push the story forward. He has an appreciation for beauty. I appreciate Scorsese for working hard because the harder he works, the more my intelligence is respected.

To be honest, the movie dragged on for me and is very much of its time (this is pool for Christ’s Sake, how much can you glamorize pool?). Mythos is tough to achieve.

That said, I appreciate a director practicing his craft and trying to provide some continuity in American life through the visual arts. I appreciate someone who understands that developed characters invite us to see something of ourselves in frame.

Thanks for that.

Seattle Photos-A Gull, Considered

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—

This was Harry at his most presentable: A shrewd cunning in stillness. Perhaps, he’d even brought me a question.

He was half-again as large as the other gulls near the Market. Not respected, maybe, but feared.

My mind would wander to thoughts of freedom, watching his wings dip and scissor, cutting the air. Sometimes I would watch his eyes, too, scouring the ground for food and the sky for other birds.

The constant shrieking and territorial displays were better than silence, Dear Reader, especially if thoughts of death crept in (how much I missed L). 

—

Harry had other behaviors: Gobbling fish guts and slurping coffee directly from the street. One day, he’d snatched a french-fry mid-air from a child’s fingers. After the shock and a brief consolation, we smiled in mutual surprise.

Clever, I suppose.

In short, Harry didn’t give a shit. 

In fact, the bird shit wherever he pleased.

This is where our story begins…

Two Photos Around An Aesthetic-Ye Olde Shopping Mall

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Just had a quick visit to family in the D.C. area, and Georgetown has a lot of high-end shops. A vague notion of London flashed through my mind. This is an area with appeal; where attractive women go to shop, see the sights, and be seen.

How does one capture the aesthetic (brick facades, colonial style, gothic script, ye ‘Olde English Shoppe’ vibe)?

The light was winter-light, mid-latitude, coming from over the left-shoulder/south/southwest. There were a lot of subjects, and lots of visual interest.

In photo number one, the reflection seems balanced, but the focus should probably be on one subject, preferably the guy (tough to manage if he’s only reflected). In number two, the umbrella on the right should probably in focus. 

Neither are ‘winners’, really, but both have solid elements. They demonstrate that, over time, while taking photographs, you can continue to add judgment upon judgment, experience upon experience, into a ‘tool belt.’ You must make decisions, quick decisions on the street, regarding focus (what’s in focus?), light (shutter, how much to let in?), subject (what’s the story you want to tell?), and composition (what’s in frame, and what did you leave out?). 

Each variable is crucial, and in this case, there are some focus and subject (static/boring) issues, to be sure. 

Thanks for looking and reading.

—

Seattle Photo-Don’t Buy That Condo!

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The photo’s all real. Just playing around with some text.

—

Kojak’ll chase a perp down a garbage-strewn alley on the lower East Side. Right around minute fifty, just before the last ads for life insurance and Polident. 

Someone’s gotta let the mother of another dead hooker taste a little justice. 

Maybe a sharply-spoken word unloosens memory; a lost soul’s dreams, floating to some place in the sky.

Maybe amidst the stench of dopeheads and their dealers, greed and thoughtless action..a splash of Old Spice reminds us all of a little thing called hope. 

—

This is my favorite:

Seattle Photo & A Poem By Richard Wilbur

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Today, rousing from sleep, if your first sight was that of a young couple consumed by one another, silent within the silences of conversation, would it be as dark as the following?

I hope not!

Thanks to a reader.

From Richard Wilbur’s ‘Love Calls Us to the Things of This World’

               …“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,   
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

    Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,   
The soul descends once more in bitter love   
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,   
    “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;   
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,   
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating   
Of dark habits,
                      keeping their difficult balance.”

Allow The Glow-Some Random Neon And Non-Neon Links On Place & The American West

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Via Mick Hartley, Steve Fitch Photography has neon motel signs glowing into the Western night.

He also has a book simply titled ‘Motel Signs:’

“To me, neon really figured in the migration movement on Route 66. The farther you go out West, the more neon you’d see, especially as a presence on motels. You can see towns like Tucumcari, New Mexico, coming from 20 miles away.”

I may harbor skepticism regarding a more anthropological, back-to-Earth Romantic primitivism found in certain quarters (Berkeley, especially), but I certainly appreciate good composition. Click through for more photos and less pre-judgment.

—

As posted, what’s more American than an exiled member of the Russian aristocracy intimately making his way into the English language and peering out from a thousand Motor Lodges?

Nabokov in America:  On The Road To Lolita.

Michael Dirda review of the review here.

“Nabokov in America” is rewarding on all counts, as biography, as photo album (there are many pictures of people, Western landscapes and motels) and as appreciative criticism. Not least, Roper even avoids the arch style so often adopted by critics faintly trying to emulate their inimitable subject.’

—

Well, there’s Donald Judd and Marfa, Texas, which looks interesting:

As previously posted, The Critic Laughs, by Hamilton:

Do you long for the days of unabashed American consumerism? Are you nostalgic for nights lit only by a soft, neon glow on the underbellies of clouds? Return to a time when America broadcast its brash, unironic call to the heavens.

But it can be empty, and lonely, and full of hard work and suffering:

MT-3 Storm Breaking-3

Montana Pastoral    

I am no shepherd of a child’s surmises.
I have seen fear where the coiled serpent rises,

Thirst where the grasses burn in early May
And thistle, mustard and the wild oat stay.

There is dust in this air. I saw in the heat
Grasshoppers busy in the threshing wheat.

So to this hour. Through the warm dusk I drove
To blizzards sifting on the hissing stove,

And found no images of pastoral will,
But fear, thirst, hunger, and this huddled chill.  

–J.V. Cunningham

And because this blog likes to keep things a bit mysterious, I think ‘New Slang’ by the Shins (James Mercer) captures three strands I can identify:  Western U.S. cowboy folk (Home On The Range), English (England) folk, and Pacific NW hipsterdom, which is interesting to me, and because in the arts, I like to like a song, and think about what’s going on afterwards:

That hipsterdom part likely connects with a lot of powerful modern and postmodern strands which could be affecting all of our institutions sooner or later, but, you know…it’s also just a song.

Click here.

Is that a real tower against a painted sky?

Go West.