No.75

Alder treeline, Joyce Quadrangle, August 2010

Picking out some music for a day trip. Rolling Stones, Big Star, early Clash, Blind Willie McTell. Makes me realize how much I miss the impact of turning the ignition on a car and have music blast out immediately. All this waiting for things to boot up is a drag. Even gas pumps take 10 minutes to wake up. Can’t slam a phone anymore either. Much poetry of popular culture has been lost forever.  The gravitas of immediacy and impulse, of On or Off. All that’s left is the baggage of mass consumerism with none of the character.

Undermined Alder, Joyce Quadrangle, August 2010

I have a spot on the top of my head that’s preternaturally prone to injury. Always the same spot gets bumped, banged. Balding too of course.  Re-denting  is exquisitely painful- just today at work under a trailer I found the leaf spring bracket with my ‘g’ spot. For just an instant all the life drains and everything goes all rubbery and the cosmos is put on dramatic notice for explanation.  I wonder how much damage I’m doing, and must rely on tender honesties of wife and friends, and a shove  in the right direction if I get a little stuck.

So my lovely wife-   into my second weekend of filmholder work, atop of 12 straight weekends of my  uninspired begumblement-  but into her 14th week of tripping over cameras bags and tripods abandoned by the front door, finally asks:  So, are you using this stuff? And  I’m finally missing taking pictures. Whooey, that seems easy now.

And speaking of dark forests, the latest gash through the densest of silver fir and alder behind the house is an odd study of contrasts. There must have been a million yards of road base brought in and the forest darkens at it’s perimeter like oxidation at the edges of a cut, bruised and almost embarrassed at the sudden exposure, and the ease of the humiliation.. I never find this stuff in the daylight hours.

Treeline in Drought, North Peninsula, August 2010

Well I haven’t taken my camera out in several months, which is about the last time when got any rain. The irony is only peripheral,  I’ve been so absorbed with  printing lately I hardly notice the absence. A typical day printing starts at 5 am and ends…well ends isn’t the word. My latest obsession is 4 color gum printing. Don’t ask why; I don’t see well in color and am not entirely sure I like gum prints to begin with. Friday a.m. I finally broke down and went for a drive with every bit of gear I could cram in the truck in 5 minutes.

I like rotating my obsessions around like so much veteran but bitter pitching relief, it keeps me in a self-important state of micromanagement and nervousness that might be mistaken for productivity with the just right squint. The winter is for obsessing about new work and the summer is for  printing but the cycle can find occasional relief in busywork or other spontaneous projects. I started making some new film holders several weekends ago in such a ploy to distract myself.

Confronted with the mindless sun though, and outside only in the broadest definition,  I made for the darkest forest I could find. The drought extends from the cloudless sky in its 10th or 11th week and I now feel like I squint around the clock.  Not because I notice  the outside world just now but because maybe if I think about the work just right, I’ll like it ok.

Loader, March 2010

Sure looks like a line in the sand to me. But say howdy to the nice folks.

Draped landscape, November 2009

Fleshing out a new portfolio. Most have been folded into this blog as an satellite of this series. The working theme is roadwork, a sort of non-denominational scenery that attempts to be neither escapist or utilitarian. It mainly started from a need to bodycheck my more purple, illustrative work, but sadly nothing much can escape my need to go over the top..:P

Stumps, Highway 112

Random thoughts of the last few seconds

I hope a hurricane doesn’t come through the BP spill

I’d like more coffee in less cup…but how?

Don’t spare the bottleneck in that RL Burnside remix

hmmm…this didn’t suck this much yesterday

Paltry descending spiral, life. As I near utter desensitization, the landmarks continue to whiz by but interest gets no closer.. There’s a sort of implied dead reckoning as anticipation of interest..any interest..keeps missing in all dimensions of duration, scope, and reference. The errors compound as the next fix sails by, but logic refuses to sign on, and there’s no snapping out of the building inertia of it.

I’m a morose moron of late. Did I hit my head? Often? Maybe it’s just middle age, but I’m seeking comfort instead of inspiration. Visual comfort food, soft angles and light. Even the printing processes I’m working with lately favor bright child-like colors applied with simple tools. The craft of it is reassuring in times of lean creativity. It’s little wonder children and lunatics are amused with crafts, the purpose is soothing, and ravings or destructive energies are distracted for a breath-catching moment. Still, in the end it’s just more unsupervised half-assery with lots of paper towels, and enthusiasm seems to dry and harden in step with the materials, and there are half-finished thoughts everywhere.

The landscape seems sympathetic, this little gathering of stumps, a landscape of truncated notions.

Maintenance, Crescent Beach Rd, April 2010

There is a trend towards over-pruning here- the vegetation tends to grow at such an alarming rate that it can easily overwhelm the infrastructure if left unchecked. Generally the alder and blackberry is targeted most, but it’s difficult to pick and choose with a 5′ square articulating deck Flail-Master mulcher.

Stone pile, Joyce Quadrangle, February 2010

3 13s this week, stoopid tired but hey Saturday is here 2 days early. I’ve been gearing up to migrate to win7 and listening to early Jack Teagarden and Louis Armstrong, which  sort of stuns technology-induced anxiety by giving it a reference outside of itself. But even after two pots of coffee I’m no closer to actually doing it.

House, Crescent Beach Road, April 2010

My fidelity has been shrinking on some levels, and maybe expanding on others and as such I’m a little unbalanced in my habits and cautions of late. My outings now encircle the house, mostly on walks of less than 2 miles. I’m suddenly suspicious of the local. Powerlines, the bend of a marginal alder mimicking the road, and cozy destination squatting in the crook of a familiar road. Rain borders on introversion,  like a curse from some nightroaming hag offended in a dream.  There is a domestic immediacy to all I want to photograph, like I’m shuffling though the landscape in inmate slippers, pinning butterflies in a ledger. My work hasn’t changed so much as gotten smaller. Maybe it’s just backlash, like a gear that has to overtravel before it can finally start going in the other direction.

Spec Road, Joyce Quadrangle, March 2010

Man, photographers. Gear and more gear. Starting to hate it. The more low-fi my work gets, the paler the remorse of discredited craftsmanship, and yet the more fevered and trembling the distortions on the ground glass. And more crap just gets left at home. Whether from an over-indulgence of intolerance and spite, or an uneasy preference over the real resolution of things it’s not easy to say. As for the end result…well it’s almost like the quality is being sucked from my picture from the edges in while I look at it.

Where will it end… Maybe I’ll end up with a sack of roadside recycling instead of a camera bag, an itinerant tinker, clinking through the landscape in a contrapuntal din of glassware and glib ravings, developing all my pictures in a constant trickle of incontinence. Better than having your work be defined by the equipment you own I suppose.

Step back sonny, and let the paying customers through!