Singularity

A singularity. Our personal universes, wholly consuming, vast beyond perception, revolutions performed around a single axis – I.

I am amazed at the haze, opaque nothingness that separates my world from yours. Thick like a forest fire. We stand parallel but unable to see what the other sees. Is that why photography never gets old? Is that why we write? A transference of thought and vision… A continuous and futile journey towards the mind and experiences of our parallel and eternally separate companions.

What if we stopped? Would I forget that there was another way to see the world? Would I feel like my own perspectives were less real? Temporal, fleeting as the mortal coil. Traversing our life spans, each wrapped in our own cloaks of smoky trials and tribulations, unable to cross over, reach out and touch the other.

Yosemite, CA

July | 2011

Interludes

Small spaces open up to me where a certain time and a certain few people make a brief interlude in my life. The beginning of this summer has been one such time. My glorious little household in New York has been scattered to the four winds – Barbara to Croatia, Talia back up the Russian River in California and I continue my search for answers to questions that I don’t understand, across oceans and continents. Adrienne stays in New York and laments our desertion. I make Barbara and Talia promise to return whenever I make my forays back into the city. Every great album needs interludes.

Last nights together in the city.

New York | July, 2011

Road trip journaling

Slide out of the city on those hot, sticky wheels. Grey ribbon of road and a blue sky so bright it seems white. Throw your head back and howl at the freedom of a horizon unencumbered. Marvel at the little things, the perfect mathematics of cumulus clouds and wheat. Bare your skin to the sun and be lost for a while in a place that doesn’t belong to you. Fall exhausted in a heap at the end.

Flight distance

you came too close and broached
the line I drew in the sand
came into flight distance
forced me back

Submerge

I know these people. I know their lives. Photojournalists, photographers, visual story-tellers, however you want to put it, they see life, often the darker side, and bring it to the rest of those who do not travel and do not see.

The consequence is a solitude and a dark shadow that flits within the dim retina of their eyes. The solemn Onlooker. Submerged beneath the surface of raucous laughter, devil-may-care attitudes and sunlit smiles are memories that can’t be let go of. Vast journeys that sear the skin and the appraisal of a thousand strangers, locked in their own battles and greeting the Onlooker as they win trust and weave intricately beneath the surface… a poem, a story, an idea… with images.

FLASH

Objects in the night. Running feet. Rapid fire heartbeats.

Charlottesville, Virginia

PM

My wanderings in the PM.

(A lonely place to find yourself)

Somewhere along the Dan Shui River, Taiwan.

AM

My parents recently bought a holiday apartment in Taiwan somewhere along the Dan Shui river.

I’ve called it “A lonely place to find yourself”.

My wanderings in the AM.

 

Modern Romance

Baby I’m afraid, of a lot of things but
I ain’t scared of lovin’ you
Baby I know you’re afraid of a lot of things but
Don’t be scared of love, ’cause

People will say all kinds of things
that don’t mean a damn to me, ’cause
All I see, is what’s in front of me, that’s you

Well I’ve been dragged all over the place
I’ve taken hits time just don’t erase
And baby I can see that you’ve been fucked with too
That don’t mean your lovin days are through, ’cause

People will say, all kinds of things
that don’t mean a damn to me, ’cause
all I see, is what’s in front of me, that’s you
Well I maybe just a fool, but I know you’re just as cool
And cool kids, they belong together.

~ lyric excerpt from “Modern Romance” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Histories

Military histories, once vicious, now sanguine. Once bloody, now clean. Monuments raised in memorial, weapons mounted as artefacts. We like to think that we remember to not repeat the mistakes of our forebears. We’d like to be smarter than that.