On Photography, Art and Writing
Andalusia (3) from Paradiso|Diaspora by John Yau
Are not clouds sketches for a sculpture that will never emerge from stone The neck of a cat visits you at night Are the stars still spies loyal to no one All that is left are these jackals wandering across a glittering field Our shadows have floated into the sky leaving out other shadows behind No need to inquire where or how Someday you too may need this garden
Today, I am sure, many will be inundated with images of the civil rights era as we remember the importance of the movement and its message. An inundation which I assure you is nonetheless necessary. However, I felt that the suggestion of a good record would, in addition to the photographs, perhaps elicit more than that of visual representation only. So, I looked for a record that could conjure up the time and mood, one that embodied the spirit of that time, so that we may be taken back or rather so that we, born after the era, may connect to it on a deeper level. In this regard there is no better than Max Roach’s “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” from 1960. On it’s own it is an incredibly powerful, nuanced, and at times incendiary, record worth a play beyond this national holiday. Yet, listening to it through the lens of history, and specifically with major events like Occupy Wallstreet and the Arab Spring from the past year in mind, one might see how a record 51 years old may still be relevant and possibly even radical (listen to the 3rd track Triptych Prayer-Protest-Peace, Abbey Lincoln’s vocals could do this alone). The album cover, itself a reference to a Civil Rights era sit-in, embodies this in the gazes of the counter worker (what can be seen as a gaze of contempt, disomfort, unease or other similar emotions) to that of the gazes of the three men, confronting us, the viewer. This record is contemporary and stands as a kind of confrontation, not so much between two sides, but between injustice and the lack of equality, however it may exist. I am grateful to have heard this record – it should be required listening to all.
Cornel West’s “Dr. King Weeps from his Grave” from the NYTimes (Aug. 25, 2011)
Jan Groover’s photographic work depicted quotidian, ordinary and banal subject matter. But her investigation of these things didn’t stop at their simple representation. Rather it was this very subject matter, through juxtaposition and presentation, that spoke of larger concepts: perception, feminism, perspective, space and time. As John Berger wrote concerning the uprooting of perspective upon the introduction of the camera in Ways of Seeing, “Perspective makes the single eye the centre of the visible world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity… The camera isolated momentary appearances and in so doing destroyed the idea that images were timeless. Or, to put it another way, the camera showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual. It was no longer possible to imagine everything converging on the human eye as on the vanishing point of infinity.” The visible, like digital imagery, is a constant flow, seen differently to each individual where truth (in things, events and beliefs) stand as forms of connection and relation. We all set ourself out in an array (or try to at least) and take in imagery in the same way. Like Uta Barth, her subject matter seems to point to an unnameable thing, a thing (or essence/energy) that cannot be defined by words. It is this, now, that the world will be without.
Andalusia (2) from Paradiso|Diaspora by John Yau
Rooftop roosters announce a new regime Even at night, guided by the moon, the sky can never find a cloud that fits but, for the painter, each cloud is snug Still, it is the sheet of paper that I want and the inks that can keep these lovers safe in the small garden where even the birds have stopped to look at their reflections
Andalusia (1) from Paradiso|Diaspora by John Yau
Time Quietly peers in each window but only the children find it funny The second necklace we wear is the horizon circling our waists and throats as the flowers splash the sky with twilight and constellations map out the mishaps settling above the city Abracadabras and horoscopes are impatient with sleep and calligraphy Grant me a sheet of paper that will not turn to ash and this hand will write down afternoon's clouds while you are hidden in my eyes, it is enough this sheet of paper where I have hidden you in these days of smoke and candle flames Grant me time to pause and inquire of the clouds if they have concealed you in their tears behind a red sky in which the moon briefly flies Grant me a sheet of paper that we might live near the heat we once made when our hands pelted the sky with ink and paint Margins of thought curled like eyelashes ask them if they remember us now that our names are forgotten
On the tips of ten thousand grasses,
each and every dewdrop contains the light of the moon
Since the beginning of time,
not a single droplet has been forgotten
Although this is so,
some may realize it, and some may not
I wanted to pull specifically from Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island in light of the holiday this week. Turtle Island being a pivotal work by Gary Snyder and a reference to the common name given to North America (well before it’s naming as North America) by various Northeastern woodland Native Americans (notably the Iroqois, Haudenosaunee & Anishnaabe). Give Thanks.
“Pine Tree Tops”
in the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks
What do we know.
I’ve decided to start a weekly post of writers/poets every wednesday. This will be the first edition (they won’t always necessarily deal with photography or art, but I feel this is a good way to start).
Photographer
by W.S. Merwin (From The Shadow of Sirius)
Later in the day
after he had died and the long box
full of shadow had turned the corner
and perhaps he no longer was watching
what the light was doing
as its white blaze climbed higher
bleaching the street and drying the depths
to a blank surfacewhen they started to excavate the burrow
under the roof where he had garnered his life
and to drag it all out into the raw moment
and carry it down the stairs
armload by armload to the waiting dumpcart
nests of bedding clothes from their own days
shards of the kitchen there were a few bundled papers
and stacks of glass plates heavy and sliding
easily broken before they could be got down
to the tumbril and mule
pieces grinding underfoot
all over the floor and down the stairs
as they would rememberfortunately someone who understood
what was on the panes bought everything in the studio
almost no letters were there but on the glass
they turned up face after face
of the light before anyone had beheld it
there were its cobbled lanes leading far into themselves
apple trees flowering in another century
lilies open in sunlight against former house walls
worn flights of stone stairs before the war
in days not seen except by the bent figure
invisible under the hood
who had just disappeared
In 2004, a mentor recommended I read the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Taking it seriously, I picked up a well used copy and began to read. Before long I was fully immersed in its pages. It is a story that begins in an alternating, binary fashion where each chapter bounces back and forth between two world’s narratives. As the stories progress, they start to break down and meld into each other, blending reality and illusion, consciousness and unconsciousness (or perhaps dimensions). At the close of the book I had felt that I had found an author that spoke my language (or at least a similar dialect); one that opened new doors to new worlds. His interest in jazz, subtlties in daily life, dreamt worlds, magical realism (of sorts), and contrasting element (reality vs. illusion) all the while mixing genres struck a chord. Things are interconnected, nothing is only what it is all of the time. His works have been in my hands, and mind, since then.
The Fierce Imagination of Murakami, an article written by Sam Anderson for the NYTimes Magazine, appeared today (and this Sunday’s magazine) in anticipation of the English translation of his latest, and to date longest (932 pages) work 1Q84. In the article, Murakami reaffirms my belief that good work and thought comes from slowing down:
“Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life,” he said. “If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy. I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years. I don’t get bored. I’m kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot.”
For me, the reason his work is so wonderful is in the seemlessness in which it travels between two supposed worlds (a kind reality and a kind of dream – neither of which is totally one or the other):
Murakami often hears from readers who have “discovered” his inventions in the real world: a restaurant or a shop that he thought he made up, they report, actually exists in Tokyo. In Sapporo, there are now apparently multiple Dolphin Hotels — an establishment Murakami invented in “A Wild Sheep Chase.” After publishing “1Q84,” Murakami received a letter from a family with the surname “Aomame,” a name so improbable (remember: “green peas”) he thought he invented it. He sent them a signed copy of the book. The kicker is that all of this — fiction leaking into reality, reality leaking into fiction — is what most of Murakami’s fiction (including, especially, “1Q84”) is all about. He is always shuttling us back and forth between worlds.
Sam Anderson’s article is a wonderfully written foray into the world of Murakami, definitely worth the read. And it’ll have to do, until I get my hands on 1Q84.
Murakami’s Tokyo (Sam Anderson’s multimedia companion piece to the article)
