Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

The Poetry of Others’ Making

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[Image: “What I Study,” by Amber Case. (Spotted on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) I had no idea what sort of image might illustrate today’s “theme”… and then I found this one. An interesting exercise: try to guess what a stranger’s work might be, when you understand the English language well enough… but the mix of English-language words and phrases they use to describe it seems positively, well, Duchampian: furry teacup, bicycle wheel mounted on a stool, that sort of thing. As it happens, most of these are used metaphorically. I fought being sucked into speculating on the color coding and the background grid, features which suggest a deeper understanding is possible. For now, I just wanted to marvel that someone, anyone, anywhere or -time, can describe their life’s work in this manner (and mean it). For what it’s worth, you can see Case’s TED Talk — “We Are All Cyborgs Now” — here.]

From whiskey river:

In some communities there is a man who sells whistles by the courthouse or paper kites down by the river. In others there is a woman who decorates her home with multicolored lights and streamers every holiday. Usually these people are no more than small figures at the periphery of everyone’s attention, but when they die, it can be more surprising than the death of a prominent leader or a renowned artist, because no one has ever regarded them carefully enough to consider what their absence might mean.

(Kevin Brockmeier [source])

…and:

We have an obligation to one another, responsibilities and trusts. That does not mean we must be pigeons, that we must be exploited. But it does mean that we should look out for one another when and as much as we can; and that we have a personal responsibility for our behavior; and that our behavior has consequences of a very real and profound nature. We are not powerless. We have tremendous potential for good or ill. How we choose to use that power is up to us; but first we must choose to use it. We’re told every day, “You can’t change the world.”

But the world is changing every day. Only question is… who’s doing it? You or somebody else?

(J. Michael Straczynski [source])

…and:

Another Beauty
(excerpt)

We find comfort only in
another beauty, in others’
music, in the poetry of others.
Salvation lies with others,
though solitude may taste like
opium. Other people aren’t hell
if you glimpse them at dawn, when
their brows are clean, rinsed by dreams.

(Adam Zagajewski [source])

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To Tell Your Life and Your Self

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[Image: “Parking Lot Meet-and-Greet, February 2021,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.) Recently I learned a new phrase (although the concept was familiar): “vernacular photography.” I’ve always thought of such photos as just, y’know, snapshots… but a whole aesthetic, a mystique — and, probably, an academic discipline — has developed about them over the years. The gist is: not self-consciously “arty”; amateur(ish); casual/unposed; everyday/mundane; etc. During the time of COVID-19, I imagine, conscientious photographers — however “amateur” — have been composing their casual/unposed and everyday/mundane group portraits rather more carefully.]

From whiskey river:

To see that your life is a story while you’re in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It’s unwise, though, to think you know how it’s going to go, or how it’s going to end. That’s to be known only when it’s over.

And even when it’s over, even when it’s somebody else’s life, somebody who lived a hundred years ago, whose story I’ve heard told time and time again, while I’m hearing it I hope and fear as if I didn’t know how it would end; and so I live the story and it lives in me. That’s as good a way as I know to outwit death. Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can’t understand that they end in him, but they don’t end with him.

Other people’s stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.

(Ursula K. Le Guin [source])

…and:

List of Seemingly Unrelated Observations

Distance, like snow, melts.

Walking in deep yellow leaves
drowns out your voice.

Thinking, like a deep river,
eats canyons in your mind.

Everything blossoms that can.

Everything blossomed that could.

Stars move if they are airplanes;
wish fast.

You can live in as many places
at once as you need to.

For some places you don’t go anymore,
you still have a key.

A dream brings you into morning
one way or another.

(Grace Butcher [source: unknown])

…and:

Have an uncomfortable mind; be strange. Be disturbed: by what is happening on the planet, and to it; by the cruelty, and stupidity humanity is capable of; by the unbearable beauty of certain music, and the mysteries and failures of love, and the brief, confusing, exhilarating hour of your own life.

(Kim Addonizio [source])

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An Image in a Ball of Glass

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[Image: “Disembodied Legs,” by Miguel Tejada-Flores; spotted this on Flickr, of course, and use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). The photographer explains, “Disembodied legs protruding from an automobile transmission – advertising an automotive repair shop, in Central Point, Oregon.” He also includes an epigraph: “You don’t get to have legs and not use them. / Dance”; the quotation seems to have come from this book, by author Dianna Hardy.]

From whiskey river:

Playing and fun are not the same thing, though when we grow up we may forget that and find ourselves mixing up playing with happiness. There can be a kind of amnesia about the seriousness of playing, especially when we played by ourselves or looked like we were playing by ourselves.

I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played, seems to play back.

If playing isn’t happiness or fun, if it is something which may lead to those things or to something else entirely, not being able to play is misery.

No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn’t able to, though I wanted to—

There were times when nothing played back. Writers call it ‘writer’s block’. For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don’t usually know them.

(Lynda Barry [source])

…and:

There is no hope anywhere but in this moment, in the karmic terms laid down by one’s own life. This very day is an aspect of nirvana, which is not different from samsara but, rather, a subtle alchemy, the manifestation of dark mud in the pure, white blossom of the lotus.

“Of course I enjoy this life! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!”

(Peter Matthiessen [source])

…and:

Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next—life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was—a whisper.

What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth dead falling or tiger-trapping.

In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink-blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspot outside your grandparents’ window long ago.

(Ray Bradbury [source)

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How to Be Here

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[Video: Another Cloud Reel, by Vimeo user “Delrious” (whose real name, I think, is Ben Wiggins; you can see some more examples of his handiwork, available for licensing, at Pond5). This genre of video must have a real name — they’re not that uncommon, and something like “time-lapse of the world over an electronic soundtrack” doesn’t exactly trip lightly off the tongue — but I don’t know what it is. Rather Koyaanisqatsi-esque, no? (Not that that exactly rolls off the tongue either!)]

From whiskey river:

It’s a good practice in a way, to be, as they say, in the world, but not of the world. You can go to the Himalayas and miss it completely. Yet you can be stuck in the middle of New York and be very spiritual. I mean, I noticed some places like New York bring out a certain thing in myself while I found in some place like Switzerland, there were a lot of uptight people because they’re living in so much beauty there’s no urgency in trying to find the beauty in themselves. If you’re stuck in somewhere like New York you have to somehow look within yourself; otherwise you go crackers. So, in a way, it’s good to be able to go in and out of both situations. Most people think when the world gets itself together we’ll all be okay. I don’t see that situation arriving. I think one by one, we all free ourselves from the chains we have chained ourselves to. But I don’t think that suddenly some magic happens and the whole lot of us will all be liberated in one throw.

(George Harrison [source: first few sentences here; remainder generally included, with other slight rewording, as here; otherwise, uncertain])

…and (in slightly different words):

But all of us are struggling to be here. One of the great theological questions is around incarnation, which simply means being here in your body — not anywhere else, just here with life’s fierce need to change you — the fact that the more you’re here and the more you’re alive, the more you realize you’re a mortal human being and that you’ll pass from this place. And will you actually turn up? Will you actually have the conversation? Will you become a full citizen of vulnerability, loss, and disappearance, which you have no choice about?

(David Whyte [source])

…and:

The Ninth Elegy
(excerpt)

But because being here means so much, and because all that’s here, vanishing so quickly, seems to need us
and strangely concerns us. Us, the first to vanish.
Once each, only once. Once and no more. And us too,
once. Never again. But to have been
once, even if only once,
to have been on earth just once — that’s irrevocable.

And so we keep on going and try to realize it,
try to hold it in our simple hands, in
our overcrowded eyes, and in our speechless heart.

(Rainer Maria Rilke [source])

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Real-Life Dialogue: Meta-Dialogue Edition

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[The setting: a Monday evening in a small apartment in North Florida, USA, in March 2021. Dinner is being prepared, mostly by Her. They are just coming off the feverish roller-coaster of symptoms common after Round 2 of the COVID-19 vaccine; they are both a little light-headed, even giddy, with relief — and with the start of their first cocktail hour in a couple of days. As usual, whatever the nominal topic, beneath the repartee is an undercurrent of adversarial good feeling: She says “[A],” for example, and he counters with “But, well, [A-Prime]…”; she replies “But [B]!,” and he ripostes with “Yes, but [B-Prime]!” They both withhold any sign of amusement, but with difficulty. Suddenly, she turns at the counter and signals for silence.]

She: You make talking about everything so difficult…!

He: And yet, you seem to have made it your primary mission in life to get me to talk more about everything—

She: (interrupting) I know! You’d think, after thirty %&*!@?! years — you’d think I’d know better by now!

[Scene dissolves in laughter.]

___________

(Note: for further reference, please visit the Wardrobe Culling Edition of this series, from 2011, and also the more recent Men Are from Illinois, Women Are from Manhattan entry, from 2016. Or, come to think of it, pretty much any of the posts in the series.)

From Arriving to Having Arrived — and Then What?

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[Image: “Stay Put,” by photographer Akiva Shapero. Found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). In their different ways, the couple in this photo struck me as iconically impatient and dissatisfied with their setting: looking elsewhere, apparently trembling with a desire to get moving — elsewhere, anywhere — and, in any case, physically there but psychically adrift.]

From whiskey river:

Whence all this hurry to arrive at a state? Are you not already face-to-face with the eternal mystery? Take it easy for a while; just watch the snow falling or the kettle boiling, and not so much hurry.

(Alan Watts [source])

…and:

Watchful Waiting
(excerpt)

It’s where you are in your imagination
That’s important, for the life of simply staying where you are
Is a shadow’s life, that leaves you by yourself, alone and scared.
Why can’t we just move on? The light up ahead is soft
And seems to beckon us, glowing with a promise of beginning
Once again, as if there were still time.

(John Koethe [source])

…and:

Blinding, the White Horse in Front of Me
(excerpt)

…I’m the one into whose
arms you fall when you fall through all of space. The one
who tells you infinity is another hoax. I’m the being
who has no manners, or mannerisms. I have no style.
I settle on nothing; I decide nothing. This is not
a final place. There is no such place. I am the being
who whistles to you and distracts you from self-absorption.
I am the mosquito in your ear, an iridescent fly, a lightning bug.
This clearing is full of false lights, flickers that stop
when you look. I’m the being that’s tricky because you
try to make me conform to your senses. You
have no senses here. You have nothing.

(Alice Notley [source])

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The Mercy Hidden in a Circular Clockface

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[Product photography: “Volta Coffee, Tea, & Chocolate: Iron Goddess of Mercy,” by Anthony Rue; found it on Flickr. (Used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) See this Wikipedia article for the remarkably apropos story of the “Iron Goddess of Mercy” tea. While the Volta Coffee dot-com website seems defunct, the eponymous Gainesville FL café itself lives on, on Facebook, Instagram, and other social-media sites. We could find a certain grand balance even in that simple online history.]

From whiskey river:

At the end of an age, the denizens of the age still profess to believe that they can understand themselves by the theory of the age, yet they behave as if they did not believe it. The surest sign that an age is coming to an end is the paradoxical movement of the most sensitive souls of the age, the artists and writers first, then the youth, in a direction exactly opposite to the direction laid down by the theory of the age.

(Walker Percy [source])

…and (shared at whiskey river in the more commonly quoted, shorter form; below is the full passage):

Now, there’s a wonderful work of Schopenhauer’s; he says, “When you reach a certain age,” and he wrote this when he was in his 60s or so, “and look back over your life, it seems to have had an order. It seems to have had been composed by someone. And those events that when they occurred seemed merely accidental and occasional and just something that happened, turn out to be the main elements in a consistent plot.” So he says, “Who composed this plot?” And he said, “And just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself, of which your consciousness is unaware, so your whole life has been composed by the will within you.” Then he says, “Just as those people whom you met by chance became effective agents in the structuring of your life, so you have been an agent in the structuring of other lives, and the whole thing gears together like one big symphony,” he says, “everything influencing and structuring everything else.” And he said, “It’s as though our lives were the dream of a single dreamer, in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, and so everything links to everything else, moved out of the will in nature.”

That’s a beautiful idea. It’s an idea that occurs in India, in the image of what’s called the “Nee of Indra” or the net of gems. Where it’s a net of gems where every gem reflects all the other ones. And they also have the idea of a spontaneous and simultaneous arising. Everything arises in relation to everything else, and so you can’t blame anybody for anything; it’s all working around. It’s a marvelous idea. It’s as though there were an intention behind it, and yet it all is by chance. None of us has lived the life that he intended.

(Joseph Campbell [source])

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“Worth the Faff!”

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  • Establishing shot (color)
  • Establishing shot (B&W)

[The title of this post comes from a comment by a UK-based photographer I know on Instagram, after I’d posted this mini-slideshow there. The caption on that IG post focused on various practical annoyances I’d encountered during setup — not least, all the blessed lint present on the black backdrop, which I didn’t notice until I viewed the photos I’d taken on a large computer monitor.]

Like many people during the pandemic, at least in the so-called “developed world,” photographers have been turning to their hobby to keep their minds occupied, not wanting constantly to sit around watching TV, scrolling through social media, and the like. Idle pursuits, y’know, in idle times.

Not to suggest that such photographers are even remotely the ones suffering the most. In fact, the years 2020-21 may well be remembered as a period of creative-photographic explosion in response to various lockdowns and restrictions. Why? Because all the familiar subjects are out of reach. Public buildings and even outdoor common spaces shuttered. Travel restricted. Social distancing, masking, and other reasonable limits on spending much time with anyone other than the handful of people you’d already chosen to spend time with (only not, perhaps, quite so… exclusively.) But a recurring theme behind much Instagram posting over the last several months, at least among those who seem to take photography “seriously” (whatever that means), everyday if possible, has been — well, to put it simply: What the hell do I have left to take pictures of? And even if I find a new subject, how the hell do I shoot it so I’m not just repeating myself?

I’m lucky: I have experience with taking pictures going back far enough, without much in the way of training — or, to be honest, of practice! — that I feel somewhat renewed by all the time at my disposal. I can also, for now, set aside my guilt and/or embarrassment about photographing human subjects, especially candidly. I’m used to taking photos of the inanimate. (Let’s not speculate too much about what might say regarding my own, er, inanimation.)

Nonetheless, back in the fall I did pick up a sourcebook of ideas for photos and photo projects. It’s called The Photographer’s Playbook, and was edited by two professional photographers: Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern. Over about 380 pages, they offer ideas — mini-projects, cloud seedings so to speak — from just that many of their colleagues in photography and other arts. Each idea is simply printed, verbatim, from the responses they gathered (one per page).

I’d almost forgotten I even had the book until a couple of weeks ago, when I found myself spinning my wheels — twiddling my thumbs — about what to do next. So I opened the book at random and directed my attention to the first page I saw. There on page 72, I decided, I found my assignment, “Object Lesson,” contributed by Sarah Cwynar. It says (in abridged form):

Look for five to ten objects that are somehow related—it could be by color, type of object, quality of surface, even a theme like “tropical,” or from the same place, like, “stuff from Mom’s basement”… See what your chosen objects look like photographically and how they related when they are placed together in one image. Narratives will develop between the objects.

Shoot a roll of film of your objects placed in different arrangements. Take some out, put new ones in, move them around…

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In the Uncomfortable Embrace of Past and Future

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[Video: actress/comedian Leigh French made a series of regular appearances on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour TV series in the 1960s. Her specialty: playing long-straight-haired “hippie chicks” who often made much more sense (in retrospect) than they seemed to at the time. In an interview last summer, she said of this particular skit: “…if I did it today and just changed a little of the slang and the dates, it would be as significant today as it was decades ago.”]

From whiskey river:

When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate. Since I’ve been born, the population has doubled and that total population is now 65 per cent literate. That’s a gain of 130-fold of the literacy. When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans themselves are literate, able to get the information, we’re in an entirely new relationship to the Universe. We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do.

(R. Buckminster Fuller [source])

…and:

Living in a dream of the future is considered a character flaw. Living in the past, bathed in nostalgia, is also considered a character flaw. Living in the present moment is hailed as spiritually admirable, but truly ignoring the lessons of history or failing to plan for tomorrow are considered character flaws.

(Sarah Manguso [source])

…and (except for first two paragraphs):

The scientists and humanists were saying one thing, but the artists and poets were saying something else…

Someone was wrong.

In the very age when communication theory and technique reached its peak, poets and artists were saying that men were in fact isolated and no longer communicated with each other.

In the very age when the largest number of people lived together in the cities, poets and artists were saying there was no longer a community.

In the very age when men lived longest and were most secure in their lives, poets and artists were saying that men were most afraid.

In the very age when crowds were largest and people flocked closest together, poets and artists were saying that men were lonely.

Why were poets and artists saying these things?

Was it because they were out of tune with the spirit of the modern age and so were complaining because the denizens of the age paid no attention to them?

Or was it that they were uttering the true feelings of the age, feelings however which could not be understood by the spirit of the age?

Nobody wants to hear about his unspeakable feelings. It is only when the feelings become speakable, that is, understandable by a new anthropology, that people can bear hearing about them.

(Walker Percy [source])

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When Does a Photographer Know an Image Is “Done”?

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  • (1) Original…
  • (2) as shot (i.e., cropped by camera)…
  • (3) as manually cropped and edited…
  • …and (4) as converted to B&W

[Slideshow: partial screen captures from the Adobe Lightroom program, showing four basic phases in the editing of a photo I eventually posted on Instagram. The first two really required little if any “manipulation” on my part; they happened in the camera itself. My involvement didn’t even click in until step (3). For some technical details, see this separate page (opens in new tab/window).]

Instagram is typically counted among the social media, but it doesn’t in fact quite “fit” among Facebook, Twitter, etc. After all, it focuses (ha) not on the social — not on human interaction — but simply on visual representations of the world: pictures. The general nature and purpose of a given picture depends on the person or institution who posts it: it might be self- or product-promotional, or artistic, or more — or less — clever, or topical, or whatever. Within each of those general categories are various more precise ones: landscape vs. portrait, for example, or pure photography vs. photography-of-other-media (paintings, calligraphy, video, and so on).

Still, after you’ve been on Instagram for a while, it’s hard not to find yourself interacting, via comments and replies, mostly with a consistent group of people — maybe people you know from elsewhere online, or those whom you first found on IG (as it’s sometimes called) and gravitated to based on a common interest — subjects, genres, media, whatever.

One of the folks whose daily posts and commentary about photography I always look forward to seeing recently posted this photo:

[Image used by permission of Chris Sutcliff (Instagram: oldmansutty77). Thanks, Chris!]

…accompanied by this caption:

I’m interested in how you guys edit your work – do you wing it or do you know what you’re doing? Do you use presets or, like me, hurl yourself at edits with no plan or talent? I feel like I’m winging it with occasional flashes of actual insight. I don’t want to tell you how long I spent on this tree (and the alternate shot before it which ended up in the bin under a hail of verbal abuse). I went to the extreme edges and back again, and I suppose I must have learned a lot along the way; lessons like never ever photograph a backlit tree. Everything about this shot was a total bastard, and I have hated every second of editing it. I’m glad it’s dead. It can’t be just me that experiences this level of frustration. Please share your own tales of woe, join me in ineptitude. Thanks.

As it happens, I thought the photo of the tree was just fine as posted — no post-processing recriminations “necessary.” But I also recognized the misery — boy howdy, did I ever!

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