I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
BirchLane.net
October 2005
Monday 31
Doors. One closes. One opens.
Sunday 30
Call me Peter. That is what the Rev. Dr. Peter Kakos said today in church. Often, he said, people ask him what should they call him. Pastor? Father? He said, "Call me Peter." He said titles separate us from each other. God, he said, has called each and every one of us to minister. To love. Titles distract us. Dispensing love is the most important action we can take. Our calling is to love. He said if we are born of mud and clay that is itself born of the universe than each and every one of is is a star.
It makes me think of Beethoven:
Saturday 29
More Thoughts about Moving. I looked at a house for rent today in Cummington. It was not the right house, but looking at it felt right.
Friday 28
About Moving. Today I started to think about moving. I simply can't afford to live here anymore. And if I found a place for around $800 I would be saving $500; and then a part-time job would make sense and I would not be worrying all the time about paying rent and the numerous other bills. And I would have money for Betsy.
A friend writes in his journal:
It was on this bridge in Montgomery County that the first sighting of Bruce O'Lantern of
Easthampton Massachusettes happened in the state of Maryland. It seems that Bruce had tricked the Devil twice in his life. Because of his dealings with the Devil he was denied entrance to heaven. And when Bruce tried to get into Hell the Devil would not allow him entrance there as well for tricking him twice. In fact the Devil was so angry that Bruce was able to best him that he cursed poor Bruce to roam the Earth forevermore with only a small light inside a carved out turnip. Bruce's ghostly figure shortly thereafter became known as Bruce O'Lantern, Soon towns and villages throughout the land started to carve scary faces into turnips to scare away Bruce or any other suspect spirits. As time went on pumpkins were substituted for turnips and well, today on Halloween throughout the land are lighted Pumpkins galore ! And that is a true story, believe it or not . . . .
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA > > > >Thursday 27
Rebekah. She read me a poem this morning and then said "let's make the zine." And I said, "Now?" And she said, "Yes! Now." So we then spent two hours on the computer and came up with a few pages: Poetry and Photography.
Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again."
-Henri Cartier BressonIs this true? Is this what I do is all about? This sign is no longer here.
And Tita; who knows what has become of her. She is certainly older.
Wednesday 26
About this. This remains one of my favorite photographs:
I went for a walk around Fitzgerald Lake in Northampton:
Tuesday 25
Christina's World.
Mid-August, overheated, moorings cut, lives boaxed,
we slog to the Danforth for souvlaki and iced lattes,
quick shots of the Barents Sea, 118 Sailors suspended
in five hundred feet of steel, flickering on screens
in store windows, and tiny, over the cash register.
You say you don't want to leave, but who
can afford the luxury of home these days?
All that last night you slept, I lay cheek
on the cool floor of the echoing kitchen, listening
to overseas broadcasts and constant updates: the Kursk,
the longshots, the possibilities. I imagine Dmitri
and Alexei in their bunks, the notes, the last seconds.
Were they aware we were all listening? How we are all
in our wired worlds, on the bottom of the Barents,
tapping our goodbyes to the baleen whales.
-- Sina Queryas
Monday 24
Mondays.
Sunday 23
Walking. I went to the Lower Mill Pond again today. I think I could produce a beautiful book of photos of the pond--photos taken over the course of the year. I then headed toward town on the bike path and ran into Kristan (a pleasant surprise) at the coffee shop. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Following your advice," I answered. "Getting out and about." As I I was leaving the coffee shop it started to rain so I sat on a bench under an awning intending to wait out the rain. After 5 or 10 minutes Kritann drove past and offered me a ride back to Eastworks.
I waited for the rain to stop and headed out again; this time to the park.
And:
Saturday 22
The Birthday Party. I photographed a birthday party today. Her's:
My friend Corrine asked me to shoot it. $125 for one hour. It turned out to be a fun experience. The birthday "girl" could not keep her eyes open when she smiled; thus the image above.
Friday 21
Travels.
Those of us who think we know
the same secrets
are silent together most of the time,
for us there is eloquence
in desire, and for a while
when in love and exhausted
it's enough to nod like shy horses
and come together
in a quiet ceremony of tongues
it's in disappointment we look for words
to convince us
the spaces between stars are nothing
to worry about,
it's when those secrets burst
in that emptiness between our hearts
and the lumps in our throats.
And the words we find
are always insufficient, like love,
though they are often lovely
and all we have
~Stephen DunnBefore I met Rebekah for coffee I stopped at The Lower Pond:
I have driven past this field of wild grass almost very day for the past few weeks; today I stopped the car and found this:
And after spending a pleasant hour with Rebecca, I drove to Troubadour Books in Hatfield.
Thursday 20
Prayer.
And here:
And at the studio today Marc asked if I knew how to refinish photos (take out pimples, etc) in Photoshop. I have at least another two weeks of full-time work refinishing photos. He's a great guy. Bless him.
Wednesday 19
Kicking The Leaves . When I woke this morning, the first thing that came to mind was the poem, "Kicking The Leaves," by Donald Hall. It has always been a favorite of mine and it is simply such a perfect October poem. I like to read it aloud a few times during the month of October. On my way to get a cup of coffee, I stopped at the pond and saw this:
And this:
Samantha, an internet friend and supporter of my work (She has purchased many photographs.) visited me with her partner, Rob, on their way to New York City. I gave them a tour of Studio 19. She gave me a first edition copy of Annie Dilliard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. They treated me to lunch at Apollo Grill. And as we said our goodbyes she said, "Read the second chapter first. It is one of my favorite pieces of writing. It is about seeing."
And I did:
"...if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is infact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a liftetime of days. What you see is what you get."
So I am thinking about seeing. And not seeing
Tuesday 18
To Ithaca and Back or In Praise of Slowness. Drove to Ithaca to get Daisy. Drove back home. But I did not hurry. And I still made good time. In praise of slowness.
Monday 17
The Goatee. I shaved for an interview I had today. The man I interviewed with had a goatee.
Sunday 16
A Day of Walks.
Saturday 15
Rain and then sun.
A Walk Around Fitzgerald Lake:
Friday 14
Thinking of Brassai, Van Gogh, Memling and Doisneau.
Two must-see exhibitions in New York City: Van Gogh (MET) and Memling (Frick). In today's New York Times (edited):
The Evolution of a Master Who Dreamed on Paper .......To say these pictures required a kind of monkish devotion to draw is in part to reiterate his inherited Dutch Reform ideas about nature and the revelation of God. Nature was virtually supernatural to him. There is no better proof that he wasn't the mad hatter of movie legend than these painstaking tributes to sublime countryside - as Robert Hughes once put it about van Gogh's paintings, "if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis."
......I suggest you think again before deciding you've got a case of van Gogh fatigue and skipping the occasion. This is not just because the focus here is on drawings, which are on the whole less iconic than the paintings, but were so important to him and to the early spread of his reputation. As they say, in the flesh great art, no matter how often it has been dully reproduced or mistaken for a price tag or overrun by crowds, somehow retains its dignity and originality. It slows your system and demands that you stop and look afresh.
Frankly, the whole show, even including the bad drawings is unforgettable.
"Tell him that I should be in despair if my figures were 'correct,' in academic terms," van Gogh wrote after a fellow artist complained about the distortions. "I don't want them to be 'correct.' Real artists paint things not as they are, in a dry analytical way, but as they feel them. I adore Michelangelo's figures, though the legs are too long and the hips and backsides too large. What I most want to do is to make of these incorrectnesses, deviations, remodelings, or adjustments of reality something that may be 'untrue' but is at the same time more true than literal truth."
The remark could be the manifesto for modernism. Once in Paris, swept up by the new radical painting, by Japonism and by fresh subjects, van Gogh quit drawing briefly. But in Arles, he returned to it with a mission. He ditched the perspective frame. The Arlesian landscape, with its patchwork of fields, echoing Holland and the flat, interlocking planes of Japanese prints, liberated him. Reeds, plucked from the Midi fields and sharpened into pens that could hold only a little ink at a time, encouraged him to devise an all-over, rapid sort of notation, a Morse code, which he endlessly varied.
~Michale Kimmelman
And Memling at The Frick--one of my favorite painters. Again, from today's Times (edited):
Possible fakes, copies and misattributions aside, just over 30 portrait paintings by Hans Memling survive from the 15th century. Of those, around 20 are now on view at the Frick Collection. That's a whale of a lot of paintings by any major early Netherlandish artist to be in any one place at one time. In fact, there is little question that "Memling's Portraits," which comes to New York from Europe, will figure on short lists of the year's outstanding small exhibitions, and not only for the rarity of its contents. The show is some kind of ideal experience. It's engrossing to look at. It comes with a handsome, re-evaluative catalog. It's perfect in scale: two compact rooms of compact pictures, each picture a main event.
And curious pictures they are, though this doesn't necessarily register at first. Memling has long been considered the most accessible, the least enigmatically coded, of his Netherlandish contemporaries, who included Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. He was a hit in Flanders in his day and admired in Renaissance Italy. The Victorians adored him; his Nativities were the ones that went on their Christmas cards.
Something, it was perceived, set him apart from the adamantine van Eyck, the heavy-in-soul Rogier and the tense, eruptive Hugo van der Goes. Memling's paintings were sweet, easy-does-it affairs, gentle, pacific; drowsy, even. If they have an intensity, it's the ungraspable intensity of blank beauty: individual figures are acutely defined; psychological exchange is absent.
In the religious pictures, of which there are two at the Frick, no one so much as sneaks a glance at anyone else. In the portraits, almost none of the subjects look out at us, the viewer. And the few that acknowledge us do so in a cool, unpenetrating way, as if their thoughts were elsewhere.
Earlier, in the Middle Ages, when lives were short and fear of eternity great, portraits served a kind of talismanic function. They were a means for transcending death and time and they mostly appeared in a religious context, as in the case of donor figures in altarpieces or tomb sculptures.
By the 15th century, the emphasis had shifted. Increasingly the portrait was a secular vehicle for advertising the worldly status of an individual, usually male, and of his dynastic line. "Now, there's a chap who's done well for himself," portraits ask us to think, and more often than not, this was so.
Memling was adept at both types, religious and secular. In one of the earliest paintings at the Frick, a devotional panel dated 1472, a middle-aged man, presumably the patron, kneels before the Virgin and Child in a regally appointed room. The motif, which had been a van Eyck specialty, was a favorite in Bruges. Memling tinkered with it a bit - pushed the figures off-kilter, and so on - but left the model essentially as he found it, as he did, for better or worse, with many of the pictorial conventions he inherited.
......Not that he was a revolutionary; far from it, as critics are quick to note. Erwin Panofsky called him a "major minor master" who "occasionally enchants, never offends and never overwhelms." But Memling has his moments. Even Panofsky agreed that the portraits are very fine. And when Memling pairs one with a religious image in the "Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove," the results are up in the stars.
In the diptych's left-hand panel, the slope-shouldered Virgin, her face as smooth and pale as an egg, offers her child a piece of fruit, though without actually looking at him. He reaches for it, but also looks past it, as if he were dazed and in need of a nap. In the right-hand panel, the painting's young patron clasps his hands in prayer, opens his lips as if to speak and stares off at nothing in particular.
You can speculate that if the hinged diptych were half closed, he would be looking at the Virgin and Child, but I doubt it. One of his eyes goes in one direction, the other in another. There's no way their vision could come together. Memling placed these figures in a scrupulously plotted domestic interior, but they exist in worlds of their own.
Some observers have sought a rationale for such spaciness in religion, proposing that Memling was an adherent of an old-fashioned brand of mysticism, one related to the teaching of the unorthdox theologian Meister Eckhart. Eckhart, who was German like Memling, espoused a life of spiritual detachment as the path to God.
"If the heart is to find preparedness for the highest of all flights, it must aim at a pure nothing," he wrote. And if Memling took Rogier's model and drained the anxious soul from it, as some have charged, maybe he did so with a purpose.
Or maybe not. Spiritual explanations that have plausibility when applied to altarpieces seem far less germane to portraits of Italian merchants. At least, that is, until you recall that the virtue of imperturbability, at once deep and lofty, was essential to the ideal of the truly evolved humanist gentleman. And it was some version of that ideal that Memling's portraits were meant to convey.
And so whether Memling really is the anodyne virtuoso of legend, or an artist whose true mind we still do not know, remains a question. The Frick's marvelous show, with its vacuums and exactitudes, is a place to ask it.
~Holland Cotter
I haven't photographed a model in so long so today I went through some images from the past year. I like this one of Victoria.
And spent the day preparing for important job interview that I have on Monday in New Haven. And it rained--all day:
Thursday 13
Wednesday 12
Tuesday 11
Something Happened.
Monday 10
A friend is surfing in the Women's World Longboard Championships
Sunday 09
Saturday 08
Friday 07
Fifty Years Ago Today. Fifty years ago, poet Allen Ginsberg gave the first public reading of "Howl" at the Sixth Gallery on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. It was a literary milestone: Many consider that night the birth of the Beat Generation. No photographs of the evening have turned up, but by all accounts, when 150 to 200 people showed up at this low-ceilinged former auto-body shop in response to hastily printed postcards, the size of the crowd astonished everybody. Rexroth served as master of ceremonies that Friday night. Kerouac, who had declined to read, brought jugs of burgundy to share.
Ginsberg's friend and fellow poet, Gary Snyder also read that night and recalls the event. Listen here:
The first few lines (Kerouac urged him on, hollering "Go! Go! Go!" as the poem gained momentum: ):Thursday 06
Wednesday 05
Midlife Angst. A friend whose opinion I respect wrote to me the other day suggesting that I should spend more time out in the world---have a cup of coffee at a cafe and watch people, make new friendships, volunteer. Help people. I think these are good ideas. And I intend to look for some volunteer work--helping people. Interesting to note: in today's Wall Street Journal, in an article entitled "Rich, Successful--and Miserable: New Research Probes Middle Angst," we come to the final paragraphs:
What can you do about all this, particularly if you are in your 40s and feeling glum? Consider three strategies. First, research suggests you can boost happiness by "counting your blessings." Sure, this sounds hokey. But according to experts, pausing occasionally to appreciate what you have may counteract the tendency to take improvements in your life for granted.
Second, think carefully about how you spend your spare time. The temptation is to opt for stuff that seems fun or easy, especially if you are getting run ragged at the office.
But studies indicate you will likely be happier if you make a point of trying activities that are enriching or challenging, such as volunteering or taking up a new exercise program.
Third, cultivate friendships. Research indicates that friends are one of the biggest contributors to happiness. Want proof? Check out the list in the accompanying chart. Among the most enjoyed activities, socializing with friends ranks second only to sex.
Tuesday 04
Art. An artist friend writes to me this morning:
This is very weird, but lately I find that when I
paint, it is your image that shows up, so I spend
most of the day, erasing you......very odd. One day I will paint everyone else out and just leave you, looking in from the side of the painting.
I think that is what turned my thoughts towards
you in the beginning. A lot of the first photos I saw of you were the self portraits where you were just inside/outside the frame, or back to the viewer.I always wondered why, and why the photos worked,
when they should appear lopsided, but they never did.Self-portrait in Old Deerfield:
And one taken at an art exhibition in NYC:
Monday 03
Shana Tova. A friend writes:
On Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), there is a ceremony called Tashlich. Jews traditionally go to the ocean (or a stream or river), pray, and cast their sins into the water; some then throw bread crumbs onto the water, so that the fish can symbolically eat their sins. Some people have been known to ask what kind of bread crumbs should they throw.
Here is the definitive Tashlich Guide for the Complicated Modern Jew:
For ordinary sins.......................................Wonder Bread
For exotic sins.........................................French Bread
For complex sins.........................................Multi-Grain
For twisted sins............................................Pretzels
For tasteless sins........................................Rice Cakes
For sins of indecision.......................................Waffles
For sins committed in haste....................................Matzo
For sins of chutzpah.....................................Fresh Bread
For the sin of substance abuse/marijuana................Stoned Wheat
For the sin of substance abuse/heavy drugs................Poppy Seed
For the sin of committing auto theft.........................Caraway
For the sin of committing arson................................Toast
For the sin of passiveness when action is warranted......Milquetoast
For the sin of being ill-tempered/sulky....................Sourdough
For the sin of cheating customers.........................Shortbread
For the sin of risking one's life unnecessarily............HeroBread
For the sin of excessive use of irony......................Rye Bread
For the sin of telling bad jokes..........................Corn Bread
For the sin of being money hungry..........................Raw Dough
For the sin of war-mongering............................Kaiser Rolls
For the sin of immodest dressing...............................Tarts
For the sin of causing injury or damage to others.............Tortes
For the sin of promiscuity..................................Hot Buns
For the sin of promiscuity with gentiles..............Hot Cross Buns
For the sin of davening (praying) off tune................Flat Bread
For the sin of being holier than thou.........................Bagels
For the sin of indecent photography......................Cheese Cake
For the sin of over-eating............................Stuffing Bread
For the sin of gambling..............................Fortune Cookies
For sin of abrasiveness........................................Grits
For sins of pride....................................... Puff Pastry
For the sin of cheating......Baked Goods with Nutrasweet and Olestra
For sin of impetuousness.................................Quick Bread
For negligent slip-ups..................................Banana Bread
For the sin of dropping in without warning..................Popovers
For the sin of perfectionism.........................Angel Food Cake
For the sin of being up-tight and irritable..High Fiber Bran Muffins
The New "The Shining." New York Times story here.
Today: five sales jobs applied for online. One job application filled out in person. Tomorrow: two job phone interviews.
After Daryl's game I went to my friend Rachel's house in Northampton for a Harvest Feast celebrating Rosh Hashanah, where I enjoyed a delicious artichoke and a vegetable/chick pea curry. I also had the pleasure of meeting singer/songwriter Kristen Gass. I asked her if she would perform for me and she sang a haunting song called "Never Love." I was going to photograph her as she sang, but I decided to simply sit still and listen; when she stopped and the song was over I felt this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I was glad that I had focused on her beautiful guitar playing and quiet, sultry voice. I also had the pleasure of meeting Christen Greene of Faux Pas Productions.
Sunday 02
Road Trip. I didn't go to church today. It was Communion Sunday. I drove north to Vermont and New Hampshire in search of Autumn and Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site and the Cornish Museum. I didn't find Autumn as the leaves have not yet reached that bright and burning stage and I didn't find the museums; I didn't bring directions, thinking there would be signs along the way. But when I got home, I found this family out in the pond.
Saturday 01
Eastworks. Will's birthday was yesterday. He turned fifty. He owns Eastworks. Paula, his wife, threw a party for Will last night here on the fourth floor. Some two hundred people attended and most contra-danced. I spent most of the evening talking with Adell and her partner, Jane. Earlier in the day, Will mentioned to me that this was the floor's last hurrah; the raw space, the space that makes living on the floor feel like we live in a factory, would this winter disappear and 14 new apartments would slowly materialize over the course of the next year. Ten years ago, he said, was when he first looked at the building. Ten years ago, he said, he had not yet met Paula, nor had children.
The pond behind the building altered in photoshop; accented edges.
Peering through a bush to the pond.
