Even the average become a canvas
Truthful Fiction
The Way We Live Now: Anthony Trollope
I imagined an urban wilderness of millions- -alone. A Salvador Dali like commune of dancing eyes appeared on the universes’ stage: I felt a joyful neurosis: I saw a stratosphere of kaleidoscopic layered colors splayed in VistaVision: Widescreen visual images like a memoir of pointedly broken down framed 35-mm celluloid fragments: Unimaginable passions sit and await before the camera everyday: There in an organic clarity with a hint of the “I”:
John Ford’s The Searchers rewinds- -fast forwards and repeats. Monument Valley remains my North Star: If it was not for the movie I might never have known about the photographer Edward S. Curtis: My passions for the framed picture, the frozen Ford moment in VistaVision, “I” revisit in every second of my days with all of the years behind and ahead: I step inside and listen to the apparent quietude: The high amplitude seen in the voluminous desert sounds that will one day no longer remain:
Color is everything in my cities
The rare, the poised pose: The interlocking I and eye encounter: The eyes illuminate: The “I” absorbs: My mind sits in flux: My Circadian Rhythm’s felt as a few ounces of smoke drift wind: The watchful eye in capture mode-settings near infinity: All of the details in mind: Anthony Trollope’s title page (The Way We Live Now) becomes a subtitle for every image I have seen and made
The ordinary that remains common: The common that may be surreal: Cultural change in urban cities can be an architectural phenomenon—the phenomenon can be the city’s architecture: From block to block— county to county—state to state—country to country—continent to continent and the galaxies above—seen, can be pure intimate transparent cultural anthropology. The entire world rests like paper raffles in a straw hat begging to be chosen-chosen to be seen: Every step I have made needs a capture:
World’s not mine: The Chester Himes’ A Rage in Harlem appropriately becomes an idea for my stories: I have walked in mind and mindfully taken infinite steps in an array of locations and imaginations: I remember walking from New York’s Coogan’s Bluff to Sugar Hill: A short stretch with remarkable history: For the slightest movements I often assemble thousands of partners (authors musicians artists and of course architects) to be enjoined in my musings: This particular rendezvous called for a meeting of adventurers of all reputations: I invited Conrad, Maugham, Greene, to- journey, my journeys). Himes’ narratives trace and travel through lands planted for Baseball, Blues Music and another kind of anthropology left behind: A single frame seen in my minute history leaves a remnant of a fossilized truth for posterity: I recorded the minute with a hint of the grand.
My Heart and Eyes return to Architect Fernando Romero’s museum in Mexico City
World’s not mine: The cameras’ life from California’s San Gabriel Mountains and near Altadena: Author Zane Grey’s home posed for my camera: Grey’s famous Riders of the Purple Sage, is a Western: Like Himes in New York, Grey’s presence in Hollywood was formidable: In mind I marched the distance between the mountains and Altadena: A mere whisper from Grey’s voice offered me a look into a past: Imagined stories of days and years before my time. The early days of simple Hollywood “Flicks” merged eventually like a highway to the arrival of Baseball: Baseball and Hollywood, Hollywood and Baseball: Stories of conquest and romance, romance and folklore landing again in a single frame of my imagination: Hollywood rolls into Los Angeles’ Chavez Ravine: Baseball and VistaVision arrive in my consciousness: This geography this burgeoning culture became a new history for my camera filled with tantalizing stories- -cultural secrets: My camera begs to capture more- -and then I imagine more.
More world’s not mine: Randomly. I recall some and all of my influences: Who comes to mind? Everyone:Mark Twain’s Huck Finn traveled down the Mississippi: Cervante’s Don Quixote rode across middle Spain: More and more fiction: More stories to capture in dreams and reality: Centuries not mine become a cause for my camera: My camera and me: It is the intersection where the melange of ideas penetrate my eyes for my every tomorrow. The worlds between are where the images reside. The angle of repose is the mantra within: Everyday is The Way We Live Now.
Oddly enough: Rafael Vinoly’s 432 Park Avenue looming over Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building New York City