# 3 ~ all different / but the same

I have been watching it. On everything it falls. Moon-eyed and restless, ever moving, ever washing us with its long cycle: rain. Globes in ferocious gallops hurling into an unknown to be broken, dismantled around our dirty hands; yet each single note is still the same long song, sung around and around us as we too hurl, our watered globe ever ready to break apart within this fractal of existence.

Nota bene: FYI, even though the writings on today's and yesterday's entries do relate (in a fashion) to the pictures which accompany them, they were not written with the pictured referents in mind. And, furthermore, the intent of the pictures + words project is to deliberately avoid matching words and pictures which could be obviously related to one another.

In fact, it is quite probable that the pictures and the words will be presented in entirely separate sections of the book or an exhibit. They appear together here as merely a work in progress and to (hopefully) instigate some comments or feedback about the project.

# 2 ~ all different / but the same

We have moved the moving earth. We have cut it, melted it and poured ourselves new rock faces, hollow ones into which we hive and collect our shiny things. We have become the flowers that grow and bloom and wilt into bones. The things we touch have been refined, as if the world were not fine enough. It needed cost. Process. It needed fingerprints. We vacation to reconnect with nature as if we do not touch it every second of every day, as if it is not the mother of every object that brushes us. As if it is not our very skin. Now we look through glass and do not see the sand.

# 1 ~ all different / but the same

She looked at it. Her eyes danced over it. A dance, remarkably so. A slow circle, taking in each detail. Then familiarity. Intimacy. And a beginning. She relaxed her gaze and it captured her, led her somewhere; she followed a line and repeated the same pattern. To what end? To where had she been drawn? I like it, she thought, it doesn't stop. An endless cycle, round and round, at a pleasant cadence. She looked at it.

diptych # 31 (civilized ku # 2522-23) ~ not my eyes that see / pictures + words project

Waterfront planks and stuff ~ Blue Rocks - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggen

It was something in the street and it moved a little in the wind, as a leaf would. A wrapper? Something about it. It's beautiful, I thought. Did I... just think trash was beautiful? This was a strange place. A place where veils were lifted. Not only did I see a thing but I saw it as something beautiful; I saw its curve and shape; I saw the light in it. I nearly wept. My eyes, I thought, they keep changing. But it is not my eyes that see. ~ Cynthia Hecht

Update on Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 01:09PM by gravitas et nugalis

FYI As I think about it, the thought comes to mind that a fitting subtitle for the pictures + words project could be, in the words of the "Human Jukebox" (aka, Sleepy LaBeef*), It ain't what you eat, it's the way how you chew it.

I am also coming to the conclusion that a proper working title for the project is simply On Seeing.

*I would really like to see Sleepy one more time before he's not around anymore.

civilized ku # 2503 ~ losing the room and the emasculation of acceptance

Barrels, fence, hole ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenIn my last entry, civilized ku # 2502, wherein I put forth a "clue" regarding my intentions in the entry civilized ku # 2500-01 ~ associative disassociation or disassociated association (or maybe not), I wrote:

the audience reaction to the idea/concept was a resounding and/or collective shrug, or so the absence of comments would seem to indicate.

Which in turn instigated this response from Paul Bradforth:

Have you considered that they might not have understood any of it, as I didn't? I read those words that you put together with your pictures and couldn't for the life of me see any association OR dissociation. And I have to say that I find your second paragraph* above to be opaque

I don't mean to judge too harshly, but when you write (a paragraph) like that, I don't think you can expect to be understood too widely ....

my response: As a matter of fact, while I was hoping for a few comments / questions about the concept / idea, I have entered into this pictures+words project knowing full well that it will not be easily understood much less appreciated (much like my pictures as well). The undertaking is not meant to be "easy" or "understood" (in the definitive sense). Rather, it is meant to be a lyrical exercise from which many meanings / understandings / experiences might be gleaned or intuited.

Some will "get it", most will not. My intention is not to pander, preach, or pleasure. Instead, it is to proffer a concept / idea comprised of pictures and words which I hope, for those who "get it" (or want to try to get it), will engender thoughtful and imaginative contemplation which extends beyond the visual and literal document.

All of that written (sorry, Paul), as I develop and refine my approach to the pictures+words project, I have considered this from James Agee (from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men):

As a matter of fact, nothing I might write (picture) could make any difference whatever. It would only be a “book” ("picture") at best. If it were a safely dangerous one it would be “scientific” or “political” or “revolutionary.” If it were really dangerous it would be “literature” or “religion” or “mysticism” or “art,” and under one such name or another might in time achieve the emasculation of acceptance. If it were dangerous enough to be of any remote use to the human race it would be merely “frivolous” or “pathological,” and that would be the end of that. Wiser and more capable men than I shall ever be have put their findings before you, findings so rich and so full of anger, serenity, murder, healing, truth, and love that it seems incredible the world were not destroyed and fulfilled in the instant, but you are too much for them: .... one by one, you have absorbed and have captured and dishonored, and have distilled of your deliverers the most ruinous of all your poisons; people hear Beethoven in concert halls, or over a bridge game, or to relax; Cézannes are hung on walls, reproduced, in natural wood frames; van Gogh is the man who cut off his ear and whose yellows became recently popular in window decoration; Swift loved individuals but hated the human race; Kafka is a fad; Blake is in the Modern Library: Freud is a Modern Library Giant; Dovschenko's Frontier is disliked by those who demand that it fit the Eisenstein esthetic; nobody reads Joyce any more; Céline is a madman who has incurred the hearty dislike of Alfred Kazin, reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune book section, and is, moreover, a fascist; I hope I need not mention Jesus Christ, of whom you have managed to make a dirty gentile. (ed., I have added the parenthesized word "picture")

Now, to be perfectly clear, my humble little project is not undertaken with the aspiration of achieving either the importance or the notoriety of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Evans+Agee's picture+words critically praised opus. Nevertheless, my project - much like Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - does aspire to combine factual / true pictures with passages of lyrical / poetic beauty.

Whether or not it achieves the "emasculation of acceptance" is anyone's guess.

*As a clue to what my intentions were, re: putting those words with my picture(s), I titled the entry associative disassociation, which on hindsight should have read (or maybe not) as disassociated association. In either case, what I was driving at was the idea that the words and picture(s) were simultaneously connected yet seemingly not - while the words were literally disassociated (to separate) from the picture(s), in fact (to my eye and sensibilities), figuratively speaking they are associated (the connection or relation of ideas, feelings, sensations, etc.).

Update on Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 10:55AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Peter Nilsson wrote: "Did you already say where you're going to get the words from? Is this a collaboration?"

my response: Yes, it is a collaboration between myself and a woman whom I consider to be a gifted writer - amongst many possibilities, she's very good at writing what I might label as extended haiku.

civilized ku # 2502 ~ moving pictures

Stewart's delivery ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenIn my last entry I paired 1 (or both) of my pictures with words. Words which I thought worked very well with my picture(s).

As a clue to what my intentions were, re: putting those words with my picture(s), I titled the entry associative disassociation, which on hindsight should have read (or maybe not) as disassociated association. In either case, what I was driving at was the idea that the words and picture(s) were simultaneously connected yet seemingly not - while the words were literally disassociated (to separate) from the picture(s), in fact (to my eye and sensibilities), figuratively speaking they are associated (the connection or relation of ideas, feelings, sensations, etc.).

In any event, the audience reaction to the idea/concept was a resounding and/or collective shrug, or so the absence of comments would seem to indicate. Nevertheless, the last entry and this explanatory followup entry are an indication of what is to come, both on this blog and as the focus of a joint project involving me and the writer of those words.

That project is based on the words of James Agee taken from his preface in his and Walker Evans' collaborative book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ...

The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are co-equal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative. By their fewness, and by the impotence of the viewer's eye, this will be misunderstood by most of that minority which does not wholly ignore it. In the interests, however, of the history and future of photography, that risk seems irrelevant, and this flat statement necessary.

civilized ku # 2500-01 ~ associative disassociation

Post shower ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenIf you take the time to think about it, these words from a friend work very well with either (or both) of these 2 pictures:

I had a moment with the sand last week when I was walking to work. There were weeds in the wind with their unpretentious grace, and grass, and thinning grass, and sand and road, and humans in car suits. And I thought of the sand creeping blindly from the balding grass, as if to stretch itself to the surf, and how it almost looked as if it could span that unknown distance if only I could block out the road. Then I thought about reading at the beach. And then I thought about reading in the sand a foot from the highway.

Think about it.

Tatertots ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen