i learned a couple of new things this week

first, some lessons about friendship, and giving, taking, and limitations

and the fact that having something that you truly believe in and make your own is a terrifying and beautiful thing to fight for.

Halfway home in the hilltop trees
and all our footprints in the snow
and the evening glow
leaving
Low night noise in the wintertime
I wake beside you on the floor
counting your
breathing
’cause I can’t see nothing in this half moon
lay me down if i should lose you

Halfway-working on a wornout house
and all our friends the ragged crows
and aching bones
whining
Where are we when the twilight comes?
the dark of valley and the breeze
and the frozen leaves
chiming
’cause I can’t see nothing in this half moon
lay me down if i should lose you…

From Iron & Wine's new album, Kiss Each Other Clean, comes this song, Half Moon.
Why do their songs always describe my life so well?

Click to enlarge

which is better, having your book burned or your newspaper photographs wrapped around dead fish and stuffed into packing boxes?

is it better to be ridiculed or forgotten?

you know what I like? walking at night with flashlights with enough people that you don't really need to be using a flashlight, but it's fun anyways and you can shine the flashlights in people's eyes.

that's what I like.

found poems

i've been thinking and seeing a lot of found poems recently- found poems being already written or published words altered- usually by marking the majority out- to create a new meaning.

brendan reposted all his found poems from last year on his wall, and with that idea fresh in my mind, i made one of my handouts into one during an especially boring photo ethics class today. the poem itself didn't say much, but it opened another room in this corridor, and started me thinking more.

there are photos that are much like this- nathan lyon's photos in his book notations of passing are much like this- he uses words on storefronts, bits of trash, and signs, and without moving them, composes them so that they say something completely new and different.

and so i say, if we can do this with pictures, can't we and don't we do this with memories? we cross out much of what we have thought and said and done in life and hold on to enough to read as a life- good or bad or inbetween. we write this poem to fit why we do what we do now- much of which will be crossed out anyways.

what does my life read like?

September 12- Iron and Wine
September 13- The horse flies
September 20- Ithaca

Things are looking very good for the month of September

Dritzak

For the few that do not understand the goodness that is dritzak, here is a thorough and pithy guide by the venerable Jon Steffens, who most likely wrote this guide to avoid working on his thesis.

It is extremely difficult for me as a photographer to see where I need to be in terms of experience in a year and not want to be there right now. There is still some part of me that does not understand that this year's worth of stumbling will be needed.

For my whole life, I have always been the first to do everything- it is what comes with being a first born. And because of that, most of my life has been lived in the front seat- not knowing what comes next, but taking it as it comes. Now, however, I am seeing people experience photographic changes in their lives that just don't fit mine. I'm the youngest child right now, watching my path be outlined for me.

With this role, comes patience, but also comes opportunity. My parents, both youngest in their respective families, have commented to me multiple times that being the youngest often means much watching and learning from the backseat, as their brothers and sisters plowed the trail ahead. This allowed them to learn just as much, but find new ways to see the path their brothers and sisters previously traveled.

This was WRITTEN yesterday and PHOTOGRAPHED today

When my eyes survey the tree line
I'll recall a voice
And how I took great care with words

All that was
A picture was
A poem was a poem
Words were trees of brown of gold
You were a place I had come to know

If the dark falls early
Would you come in the night
Would you come with the morning
Come by fire or come by storm

When my days turn to gold
Turn to gold
And pull to the sky
To the sky
I'll recall the time
I was more alive
When I lose myself to words
Did I die in your arms
Or did I die alone?

When the dark fell on me
Did you come in the night
Did you come with the morning
Come by fire or come by storm

-------Exactly how I feel these days-----------
if you want to hear the song, click HERE

I've been able to practice my photography lately- not photograph for anyone or anything- not setting out with the goal of making even one good photograph. Just looking through a viewfinder and seeing the relationship between shape, color, expression, and gestures is teaching me better than most photography classes that I have taken in the past year. But it makes sense. If you don't practice piano, and instead stumble through many many recitals, it will take much longer to be a good musician, than if you sit at home and go over small parts, technicalities, those little things that sound terrible as you practice them over and over, but are elements that fit together well in the end. The past few weeks have been very good practice for me, and I have fallen in love with photography again- making it my own, and weaving my feeling into it. I still have a long way to go, but I'm going somewhere

"If Moses had a car- he could take you to the airport and lead you into the promised land!"

-Jillie

a few years ago, I could pick up a camera, photograph, and come up with something that I felt represented who I was and what I was thinking at that time.

there are so many times that I want to go back to that- to be able to express my emotions so easily and precisely.

But I look forward to the photographs that I have now, and though not every time I shoot I am able to tie it to myself, the times that this does happen are far more powerful and relevant than those taken a few years back.

Growing up I guess?

The way I feel about life is really complicated now, trying to untangle facts from ideas, feelings from emotions, friends from those around me.

Same with my photographs. I think that when a photograph works, when I see it come together, it writes a truth, something of the way I am, something of the way the world was, and is a combining of fact and feeling.

A month and a half ago, I wrote a page of questions in my journal- some that won't be answered, and others that are beginning to be matched to answers. The first question I asked was "What is a moment?" At the time the statement was written, I was sick of the trite definitions of this word in regards to photography, and my answer to that question was "who even really cares?" But now I am defining what a moment is in my own photography- gestures, moods, etc, that correlates me, my past, and my present subject.
I'm excited to see where I will go.

A good word for this week is: frustration.

Frustrated mostly with myself with not being good enough, fun enough, quiet enough, loud enough, productive enough, together enough.

And maybe with other people too. But everytime I want to get angry at people, I realize people put up with me all the time, so I should do the same.

Beginnings of summers always seem to be like this.

Summersong

Summer always weaves itself a new colored jacket, year upon year, despite the fact that the trees and sun inhabit the same places as summers past. What changes is myself and the way I percieve that sun, and trees, and wind on the back of my neck.

Every year, summer becomes more and more of a time to make money and pay bills, and less and less of a time to lay on the trampoline all day and eat freezepops and go to summercamp. It's more of a time to practise what I am learning in school. As I told a friend at the beginning of last summer: summer is work time, school is vacation.

But it is my hope, that this summer I will be able to love the life that I live, despite the fact that I am working three jobs, and have many freelance jobs. Moses and I have a list full of epic plans for the summer (such as walking a whole week without shoes, eating meals made with only food from the public market, finding an ice cream truck to buy ice cream from, etc), I just booked a plane ticket to Maryland, and I have plans to visit someone in the Adirondacks. So I'll keep you updated, and we'll just see what color summer decides to wear.

A few weeks ago, I was pretty sick, and while taking a nap, I had the strangest, most beautiful fever dream.

And it made me realize, I hadn't really been daydreaming for about a year now... something that I never realized I had missed until I started again.


ht: Matt