Where does one go in the Time of Corona to get oneself straight? There used to be asylums and sanitariums that would get you back on the road to Wellsville. Long stays in the mountains or by healing waters with strict restorative regimens would bring you back to a healthy equilibrium. Hell, I'd head to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain at this point. But no such place exists now. All that is available are Covid wards in isolation and lockdown. No comfort lies there.
I guess I won't go out of the house this weekend. My state is celebrating the plague. It is a game of survival of the fittest. I will sit on the sidelines and wait this one out.
Oh, shit . . . I just remembered I drunk blogged you last night. I don't know. I'll have to go back and look at what I said. No, I remember. I was going to write about Edward Hopper and Stephen Shore, whose new book, "Transparencies," I received yesterday. It is composed of his 35mm work in the 1970's. It is a gorgeous book, large, well made with thick pages and beautiful printing. There was a zeitgeist at the time, apparently, that drove people to photograph in the vernacular, so to speak, to elevate to an art form the aesthetics of snapshot and postcard photography. Eggelston, Shore, and as we are learning, many others, were making photographs of the mundane world in living color. There is a blankness to the images that remind me of the paintings of Hopper. Hopper's buildings and houses and light evince a sadness that is nearly inexplicable. Shore's images suggest a spiritless wasteland devoid of joy. But where Hopper's paintings have a warm romantic melancholy, Shore offers a colder blankness, a cluttered landscape of distant things. Painting vs. photography, of course, but also a difference in emotional perspective, too.
Etc. I don't have the energy to go on thinking about comparisons this morning. It was surely a mistake to have begun. I'm just not up for writing a freshman paper today. Maybe it is best simply to say that it might be the difference between reading "Winesburg, Ohio," and anything by Beckett. Yea, that's a lot easier. Now the burden is with you.
The world outside my door is sparkling with sunlight. I should be out photographing right now. The images I got back yesterday were all taken under hazy skies and are not as dramatic as I had envisioned. I thought that it might work given the muted colors of Portra film, but it didn't quite work out that way. So, yea, maybe I'll grab my camera and get in the car. There are a couple things in a town only five miles away that I have been eyeing, and they aren't going to photograph themselves.
"pfffft if you can't handle Freshman 101 - fuck off."
ReplyDeleteYou pedant.
Sigh. I'm not that educated. I'll try to be better prepared.
I thought the Hopper v. Shore bit was good tho.
I don't know Shore. But I'll have a look and if I have anything to add - you'll be the first to know.
I apologize in advance.
I had an acai bowl for breakfast - I was out of EGGS. How can that be? I returned two empty cartons to the Egg Man. I await my delivery. I like my eggs better. And I just stopped in to say good night to Ma. She had Hannah for dinner and made tortolini alfredo with ham, broccoli and tomatoes. So I had a glass of wine an a bowl. Delicious. Ma is still a good cook.
I wish I could paint. I'd try some plein air. Cause I don't ever want to be inside - except when it is raining and I'll even go out in that. It's summer on Cape Cod. More sighs.
Can you believe that lockdown started in March?
In some ways I feel like I got moved to a new planet. And everything has to be sorted out all over again.
My poor Ma - you know what she told my brother on their call yesterday? She said "I feel like I've been floating around in a space ship for months on end."
There will be a huge new market in everything Covid. Everything from art to film to music to therapy.
It's important to keep taking pictures. Well. I think so. But "what the fuck do I know."
x
Your ma had Hannah for dinner? Ha! You can't trust those old cannibals. Be careful. You're probably next.
DeleteI took a painting class once. After I was in it, I was informed I should have taken the drawing class first. They were right. You look at a Picasso or a Matisse or a Bonnard and you might not think that is true, but it is. Try drawing first. If you are anything like me, you will put down your pencil and grab a camera. My hand and eye don't really seem to be connected unless there is a ball involved.