enlightened irreverence (pratfalls)

pardon the picture. it's the entree into my theme.

yes, that's me, after i lept, while taking pictures, thinking i'd heard a rattlesnake. the rocks and brush, completely unforgiving, rushed up to hammer me. so much for reptiles.

of course, i'm grateful i broke no bones, avoided blindness, my glasses and camera intact. and perhaps if this hadn't happened, i'd have sat on a black widow in the outhouse five minutes later, though i always lift the seat. thus, disaster saved me from death.

perhaps it's no accident i've been watching marx brothers movies every evening, absorbing groucho's iconoclastic style and and his brothers pratfalls. i've never forgotten my childhood love of 'night at the opera'. i didn't laugh so hard this time, yet i knew here cavorted several of my masters.

you see, i wanted to be a charlie chaplin, dancing around machinery and thumbing my nose at the high and mighty. a clown, that's it, who never managed to join the circus, yet kept jumping in his heart.

i can't tell you how many times i fell on my head as a child, twice breaking my nose. and i danced around my father's churches when they were empty, something no one else ever knew.

even then, i realized, you have to give the devil his/her due. whatever we believe to be true is also false. that's the nature of being a human being.

for example, i say to myself 'all the troubles of love come from asking the wrong questions'. and still, i'm very aware asking any questions at all causes pain and prevarication. ignorance is bliss.

or, let's see, another aphorism. 'don't judge others cause it means you yourself have to be perfect.' however, if we stopped judging others, how bored we'd be on the job. only complaining makes the work we do bearable.

the writer joyce cary put it succinctly. he said, 'the great artist expresses the opposite of what he/she believes as strongly as what he/she professes.' obviously, this means external warfare and inner struggle. without an enlightened irreverence, even for your own convictions, you might as well be a preacher as an actor.

next time you take a tumble, turn it into a pratfall, if only for your own amusement. that's what i've done in the following photos. everyday i try to say to myself, 'everyone else know everything, and i know nothing.' yes, growing older means learning how much you don't know. wisdom at sixteen comes easy. at five we were doing what we were meant to do. at sixty-five we're probably saying, 'i should have embraced failure and forgotten success.'

www.pbase.com/wwp/mini

www.pbase.com/wwp/rocks

as for living, our servants will do it for us

oscar wilde showed great foresight when he wrote those lines in 'the importance of being earnest', for it has come to pass.

it's with sadness i watched videos of michael jackson after the marx brothers in 'a night at the opera', one of my favorite memories from childhood.

not being of jackson's generation, i didn't understand him as a phenomenon. not only did he show energy and talent, he made strong statements against racism of any kind. that certainly helped prepare the way for things as they are today.

alas, as an icon, he couldn't be allowed to grow old. andy warhol and marilyn monroe had to vanish before the wrinkles and trembling set in. what a rush, to be celebrated. yet a cause for fear as well.

what i mean to say is, we need stories. rather than wearing a uniform and being blown up, we need to watch 'a night in bagdad' and live that life as well as our own.

there's perhaps a certain melancholy we all feel from not being able to experience a dozen lives at once. luckily, we've the movies, novels, heroes, performers, to do that for us. it's much more fun to watch 'devil in tahiti' than to be bitten by sandflies.

yet we need our own life too, a sense of its trajectory. albert camus stated every life has a shape, no matter when it ends. he also said, 'there's no substitute for a long life.' he should know, surprised by death at fifty-one, sitting startled in the back of the car that had hit a tree.

in the don juan books carlos casteneda declares, 'erase your personal history.' supposedly, that will make you free. i've found the opposite to be true. when i listen to the three and a half hours of audio my mother made about my early life, i feel reborn, in a strange way.

it seems important to revisit your personal history every once in awhile. each important event in the present affects everything that has gone before. when it became apparent my friend berta would soon die (you can see her pictures here: www.pbase.com/wwp/berta ), her sister sat her down with a map of the world. they stuck pins in every place berta had travelled, and the earth covered with them. a lesson in recovery of memory.

a few days ago i strung a series of personal snapshots together, myself as the subject. and afterwards i again felt refreshed, as though i had confirmed something, grounded myself, and let something go. as vague as that sounds, it felt good.

www.pbase.com/wwp/snap

celebration or elegy?

the art of photgraphy explained.

lately, i've been looking at a lot of snapshot collections. and the people seem happy, unaware of mortality, living in the moment.

the composition of the photographs reflects this quick and unaffected apprehension of reality. arms and legs are cut off, things out of focus, the horizon tilted, as if the subjects intent on escaping the frozen moment, eager to depart for further adventures.

and that seems to me the way we live. we do not want our souls stifled by 'the decisive moment.' to be captured completely means having nowhere to go! that's it, we're finished.

and that's exactly what the great photography of its best artists does. they structure the photograph so perfectly, it's the end. the horizon is flat, the triangles hold the subjects in place, the rule of thirds means this person can't step out of his clothes and go to a less auspicious place.

true, the best snapshots echo the 'rules'. they imitate the masters, but they toss a variable into the mix. the edge of the frame remains pliable and broken, not definitive.

and this is the way i've been feeling these days. for example, our bodies are so complicated, how the hell do they keep walking around? and consciousness, what is it? after our exit the memories of most us will remain unexpressed. old george standing on the doorstep, what a tale he could tell! only he's gone to his next reincarnation.

if you step back and assume nothing, since every paradigm can be proved true, you're left with a mystery. why does one life slide along on greased rails while another cut short by war or given a bumpy ride by cancer and the ultimate questions (which can't be answered)?

i love looking at snapshots. they give me hope. while the work of the masters puts me in a museum and my mobility stunted, the butterfly with a pin through its heart, a speciman caught in a net.

ah, and the same place can be experienced so differently, depending on your perspective and state of mind. i invite you to see this for yourself:

www.pbase.com/wwp/rocks

how do you end a perfect day?

i mean, nothing happened! o, there was a little fire on the southern part of the forest, which i couldn't see. and the forest law guy stopped by, after having an abandoned truck towed from the lake. and i had a new lens for my infrared dslr, so i snapped pictures all day and took a walk in the evening.

yet none of this explains my blissful feeling. i woke up with difficulty, returning from my days off last nite. i thought, o god, i'm going to be dragging during this one.

but it didn't happen. and i think it might have been the weather, the clear sky, the warm east wind, and the absolutely perfect temperature. yes, there's a thermometer reading which puts me in heaven, a dry heat. i'm ecstatic, glad to be alive, nothing else needed.

maybe i lay in the womb at exactly these degrees, yet my mother had an apendectomy while i was inside her, the scar huge across her belly for the rest of her life. i can't imagine that invasive procedure didn't affect me. i wonder what drugs they gave her? maybe my love of daydreaming started then. i zoned out under those conditions and felt it in the air passing across the lookout today.

i do think a companion consideration might be in order.

leaving town, i stopped at barnes and noble for a cup of tea. now, i know traveling eased enormously by a book on tape. i'd listen to the stories of artemisia brunelleschi, the concentration camp saga of elie weisel, and another of a painter getting his delicious revenge on a critic in 'the portrait', as i traveled back and forth from the dental school in san francisco last spring.

and on the way to baja years ago with friends, we listened to 'west with the night' , all about flights across africa. i remember that story better than anything else on the trip!

i bought 'the castle' by franz kafka and listened to the first two disks on the way back into the mountains. i remember nothing but the story. and it reminded me so much of my favorite books, the alice stories of lewis caroll. no wonder i loved kafka, adapting his 'metamorphosis' for the stage years ago and playing the cockroach myself.

you see, it's the dreamlike, outrageous actions and humor that put me in a good mood. our everyday life depresses me, i might as well admit it (as if you didn't know already). true, i did nothing but lie around my house-sitting job this past weekend, enjoying the sense of having a home. within an hour i'd spread cameras, clothes, computer, grocieries, throughout the whole house. and for four days i enjoyed myself in lassitude, though i did take pictures and you can see them here:

www.pbase.com/wwp/diary

breaking the rather dire story i'd been experiencing the week before at the lookout:

www.pbase.com/wwp/angelg

this still begs the question, how do i end the day? ah, yes, making out with the beautiful german art student, underneath the stars and a giant oak outside the youth hostel once the home of mussolini's mistress, florence, 1965, that's how i'd like it to be, perfect as the memory, high on wine.

sometimes you need words

why is that? today i od'eed on images. finally, they couldn't tell me what i needed to know. i had to open a book of poetry 'the ink dark moon' and read:

Even when a river of tears

courses through

this body,

the flame of love

cannot be quenched.

theoretically, one of my books on photographing nudes could express this very thought, a body twisted in passion, blue on a dark background, light streaming from behind an almost closed door.

yet too much is left open for interpretation. she could be fearing an intruder, dreaming of an empty hallway experienced in childhood. the mystery of images remains just that, something we can only filter through our present mood.

but the flame of love cannot be quenched, that gets specific, right to the point. even if we don't know what love is - as la rochefoucauld said we would never experience love if so much hadn't been written about it - we imagine passion as though it existed. at least there is longing, and that is something we've all felt.

love is a disaster, i read that somewhere, and love is a misunderstanding between two people or i suppose it could be between more, like in a family.

i'm not defaming the great desire of us all, however it seems pretty questionable. even the love of a parent for a child depends upon (usually) being able to brag about them. still, this weekend, standing in line at the post-office, i watched a mother give her down's syndrome son a loving and affectionate kiss. could i take it at face value? of course not! i've known too many divorced mothers who ended up enjoying only the attachment to their sons.

gosh, this sounds awful. have i felt love? often i've wondered if it isn't simply an abstraction. is it my desire for survival i love? do i really miss people, need them? i've probably already quoted one of my mother's last revelations to me: 'you played so much alone as a child, i never thought you'd have much to do with people.' she thought i'd done pretty well to have any friends at all!

i'm sometimes convinced love is the desire for a return to childhood, even if we had a miserable one. there's something about the ache for protection, the feeling we'll be supported when we stumble, the source of all religions. however, with dependence comes the limitations of someone else paying the bills. 'the price of freedom is loneliness', i once read that on a men's room wall in berkeley, california. (where else?) but i'm not sure this is right. being alone can be a great delight, as along as we feel we'll land on our feet, no matter what happens.

who was the psychologist who said, 'the child gains confidence simply knowing the mother is there?' i can't imagine how children who grow up in orphanages survive.

ah, we've come full circle. perhaps we thrive when we accept the earth as our mother, from whom we come and to whom we shall return.

this message may have been the through-line of the latest 'fresh ink' at the blue room theater:

www.pbase.com/wwp/ink2

be sure to see the show:

http://www.blueroomtheatre.com/

am i too late?

that was the question she asked me.

no, it wasn't about buying an ironing -board on special, or entering the museum of natural history, relatively unimportant events. and she didn't mean something much more significant like 'is it too late for us to make love?' though i wished she had asked that question!

what she meant was 'am i too late with my life?' had everything she wanted to do been done, the artistic work with voice and theater? had her potential contribution been cancelled by time as null and void?

of course, i tried to come up with a re-assuring answer. you know, like, 'it has to be done again, renewed, every generation.' or, 'you can do it with a different twist, a different tone of voice.' yet we've experienced that already with marcel duchamp and andy warhol. around 1950 imitation and replication became the rule rather than the exception. in some sense, tv announced the end of western civilization.

timing is everything, both my mother and shakespeare said it. these days, doing photography, i'm all-too-well-informed of its history. i browse new books on the subject practically every day. and yes, those given the greatest honors those who did something first, who took pics off tall buildings (rodchenko), who shot from the hip in gritty black and white in gritty cafes (robert frank), who introduced geometry into reportage (henri cartier-bresson). even these days with digital it appears the reservoirs of invention have been exhausted.

alas, the only recourse seems to be to do it better. say you're shakespeare having a beer with these other playwright clowns, ben jonson, edward marlowe, and they talk about ghosts. okay, they've done them, but i can one-up them and steal the box-office. (sounds like hollywood today, doesn't it?) and so willy goes off to dig up hamlet's father and banquo's spooky spirit.

most of us do feel like changelings, i surmise, born out of our time. there's the pedant in venezuela who reads only the novels of balzac. there's the aficionado who believes no one except bette davis ever made a movie. or there's myself, one of the lost generation who's truly lost since i didn't arrive with hemingway and the paris photographers of the fifties. i even came on the tail-end of the beatniks. truly, i'm the last of them though never one of them.

now, even as we weep for what we missed, the wheel of fortune remains round and spinning. it resurrects fads and fantasies. maybe you will be lucky and the taste for lace will come back, or a passion for absinthe and madness. you too can be the baudelaire of pasadena. chance likes to trip up all human expectations. maybe one day she will really say, 'are we too late for sex and a steamboat up the nile?' one can only hope.

here are the first photos from a return season in the most archaic of occupations. after all, people stood on towers looking for the fires announcing the fall of troy four thousand years ago.

www.pbase.com/wwp/47th

every age sees itself as modern

studying the history of photography, i find this discovery fascinating. look at those peculiar hats. and horses and manure dominating the street, what a concept (not to mention messy). yet those very people of 1850 paris experienced themselves in the present. nothing around them felt peculiar.

and so, someday, we ourselves will be quaint. that slick car, that dashing haircut, that swish of the hem, how outdated they will be.

the beehive haircuts of the sixties strike me as ancient and odd as the courts of the pharaohs, the linear art of the assyrians. and i was there!

i remember going into a local museum in willits, california many years ago. they'd a kitchen on display as though it were a stage for ancient artifacts. well, i can tell you, those very plates and spoons were used by my family in the forties. and that's not all, a black and white photograph of a california indian woman at her fire looked exactly like my mother, who was born in oakland, california, april 14, 1920.

one of the most refreshing of thoughts: we can believe whatever we want (as long as we don't force it on others): a final heaven, a return in another disguise, a black hole into which we disappear with all our appetites and memories. take your pick, whatever consoles you, it's yours.

i choose to believe nobody dies as long as we remember them. o yes, roland barthes felt every photograph a reflection of death. and one of my favorite, most desirable of females is a young woman in a long dress stepping off a paris street into a doorway in 1945, a photograph by robert doisneau. my immediate thought: she's beautiful and i will never meet her, she's most likely deceased.

decease and desist, must we really, as along as we have the photos, as long as our living room exists in a museum? who's to say time is linear, that it doesn't exist all at once? in our mundane way we travel point to point. yet last night in my dreams... perhaps everything in the universe exists now, in this very moment, and we can pick and choose?

what a shame photography didn't exist in the time of the romans, the hovels of the visgoths, the creamy marble palaces of crete! i think we would be much less afraid of time, more enduring in our loves, explicit in our passions. time may be a mere fiction. even if it is what makes us human.

yes, back on the lookout, i'm thrust into an ancient frame of mind. see the latest photographs at

http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7786

and you might remember nature towers above us. we can never be sure our reality is the only one, and that's the way it should be.