Back from two days at the Marriot Tarrytown Hotel. It was the annual family reunion for the patriarchs birthday. I used to think that I could find something to shoot anywhere - but as I stood on the 10th floor balcony overlooking the parking lot with the highway in the background and some office building that looked like it has just landed and unfolded - I thought long and hard about pressing the shutter and concluded that as sterile as it was - it wasn't worth a 1/36th of a roll of film.
And I guess you got me there. Stick me in the suburbs and although I've seen work by artists about this tortured sterile land - I don't want to document it. I don't. You can't make me press the shutter.
And inside the hotel. A major dance contest - mostly ballroom. Little girls heavily made-up with their hair tied back. Bigger girls marching their little potential contest winners around.
Help me Ronda. They've taken me to another planet. I can leave any time I want - so long as the cake has been served and the presents for the octogenarian handed out.
Presents - my dad asks me if I'll buy him a CD changer (5-CDs) and then calls (after I've bought it) to declaim that he has thought better of it and that he doesn't have room for a CD changer. How would I like to have the CD changer for my birthday (in December) instead.
He has no room? He lives in a five room apartment in Long Island - each room as large as my entire apartment.
No - he has talked with his companion and there is no room. And he would just like to see me. That's all the present he wants.
Dang. Now what. I can return it. Maybe I'll find a spot for it.
But I only have one thing to say, "What a wasteland" out there. How do you do it? So happy to come back to my tiny apartment in what I will call a freakin' neighborhood. I need a neighborhood to be happy. Hey - Johnny! What's goin' on.
