Tag: flickr

1000 words

to my camp…

if only they were each worth the 10’s of 1000’s needed to explain the circumstance, the scenario, the situation underwhich they were snapped.

a big bolt of gratitude to the treehugger massive for allowing me to lose my virginity in such good company. and special thanks to those of you who took care of my body in times of need, or showing me things in terms of mentorship. you know who you are.

its been a long & strange week. its at once both strange and perfectly natural for me to say that i thoroughly miss each of you.  i’ve known some of you for only the truncated calendar week we spent together out there. yet it feels as though i’m writing to my dear roommates from university.

i’m doing a lot of routine actions as if they’re for the first time.  i feel an overwhelming sense of pride in the accomplishment, after looking at it on a shelf for 10 years. and i’m not even sure i know what it is that i’ve done.

i understand & respect that some of these words, while familiar to your experience, may sound quaint and perhaps a little bit trite given your feelings about previous years’ trajectories in counterpoint to next years direction for the whole construct.

i found myself involuntarily giggling my disbelief & roaring my approval alone in open playa.

i repeatedly wept openly amongst strangers in my daily attempt to digest the temple offerings.

i held silent council with parts of my psyche i’d never before met, and may not hear from again until all these other voices become silenced.

i felt, in some ways, at some times, more mature and more of an aware adult then i ever have before (in stark contrast with the ubiquitous peter pannish reverie)

i listened attentively to the acrid bile of veteran burners performing their obligitory bashing of the institution that continues to define whole quadrants of their adult lives.

i rode an average of 15 miles per day and would argue i didnt experience but half the installations or a tenth of the camps.

and at the risk of waxing rutger hauer, i’ve seen things you people wouldnt believe.

but then again, you guys, of anyone else, dont have to take my word for any of this.

i love you more than words.

jump to a set of all my photographs from black rock city 2007

coffee table book containing choice selection of said photographs

holy fracking shit!

from moment to moment, i brush it off as just another one down in that long list of fifty-something rockers who decide to bury whatever hatchets and go back out on tour. but then, i am reminded of the nostalgia surrounding this bands internal feuds.

i recall how at the height of stings 1990s popularity, that it was stewart copeland that was the bad seed and couldnt get along. but then, time went on, and simple resurgance of interest in the back-catalogue feuled interest in why men of such synergystic genius werent still banging out anthems.  why?

consider how well U2 brought a very large and alienating ZOO vessel back on course to produce their best studio album since Unforgetable FIre. their VERTIGO tour, for its size, was fucking breathtakingly effective. almost surgical in its ability to carve life into musical reminders that, amidst two towers down, and two wars, and the poverty their pricetag could erase, and ubiquitous shallow self-promotion, amongst all that craaap…. that CARPE DEUM is never more than an arms length away.

its called song-writing.

its called inspirational music.

anyone can get out there and be passionate and emotional. problem is, we’ve grown to confuse enthusiasm with talent.  we almost crave those without talent for the sheer entertainment value of creulty.

the police were not just at the right place in the right time.  they spun a top in the 80s that never stopped spinning.   those who can listen can hear their influence in well over half of what passes for cutting edge music these days. 

sting more or less proved his acumen at crafting epic sonic tales for generations to come.  the police reunion, though, seemed doomed in my mind. a feeble wet dream adrift in a sea of musical mediocrity.  i distinctly remember having conversations where i was willing to bet my pinky toe that i’d get to see a SMITHS reunion before i saw THE POLICE.

well, here we are. Morrissey has a thriving career, which no one can doubt will come first over that sake & sushi dinner with Marr or Rourke or Joyce.

but what both frightens me and emboldens me is the prospect of a fresh POLICE studio release. i sincerely want to doubt that these old gits are more motivated by the seven-zeros at the end of the contract then they are by what musical journey might lie ahead. and for that, they might tolerate whoever the other bandmate has become after all these years. (are the wives friends?)  we’re not talking seperate tourbuses. we’re talking wholly seperate entourages on different air carriers.

but if it works out. if whatever fucking magic of music-making they shared back then is still arcing and able to be kindled into flame after all this time. man, i’m hoping there might be something on the other side that’ll make sense & get me some Hope.

san francisco ferry building

ever since i began to shoot digitally, i have been fascinated with the rapid feedback & rewards from a long exposure with night lights. but i can show you film negs from the 80’s where i was doing the same in 6th grade photography class.

i began to get better at it. an ability to determine which lights would work better than others. wether there was too much ambient light so as to produce less-than-blacks. i was inspired by clickybd and the terrifying crazy camera tossers.

but i came to learn that my style, to coin a terms from clickybd, was called “kinetic photography”

jump to my set of kinetic photography

this is far & away one of the better shots from the study.