7/03/2006
Metro Station, Paris
Even though this is many years ago - I can remember looking through the viewfinder, and into the center arch and saying, that's great - I can see Paris through the arch. I can remember wondering where our own beautiful subway stations were?
Invisible Warriors
My generation grew up in the "duck and cover" world. It was not imaginary. We drilled to see how fast we could get under our desks to protect us from the big explosion. I say it was not imaginary because both sides had the big weapons and were enemies. It didn't take very much imagination. There was the Cuban Missile Crisis. There were spy planes shot down. There we were squeezed under the desks where we could easily picture the mushroom cloud over Manhattan. We could calculate how long it would take to reach us as we scrunched up under our desks in the Bronx.
That era works itself out and a new war of nerves begins - this time the enemy is here. This is the time of the invisble assassins. It could be anyone. It could be you. It is the time of real body snatchers. You can't place pins showing the enemies placement.
The comforting idea that you can fight them over there instead of over here is illusionary. And we won't stop fighting 'til it's over over there - doesn't work anymore.
Somehow - I don't know how it happened - we managed to slip back into the dark ages.
The movies from the 50's reflected the cold war. There were all these evil old aliens landing all over the place in clunky costumes - but American know-how usually wiped them out.
The commies were coming. The commies were coming. But they left with a whimper.
There were spies back then - but they weren't sabatours. They weren't blowing things up over here. They were passing papers back and forth. Rotary phone calls.
We invented the atom bomb, and the cell phone. The enemy is trying to connect them.
What I'm trying to get around to is that this too is a war of nerves - like the cold war - but there is no place to duck and cover. Even that illusion is gone.
It is all about intelligence, i.e. spies. It going to be an era of the invisible war. An era where you see the explosion as the tip of an invisible system. Paranoia must run rampant. The air will fill with coded signals.
The automated warning announcements on the subway went into a loop: "Ladies and gentlemen, please watch your belongings. If you see something suspicious, please notifiy a police officer. If you see something, say something. Don't keep it to yourself."
It just kept playing. "Ladies and gentlemen..." Archaic salutations from the Victorian age.
"Ladies and gentleman, an invisible enemy is plotting to release poison gas and kill as many of you as they can. Have a nice day and thank you for riding with MTA transit."
We grew up with the idea that the world could be blown up in an instant, but we still found time to play. Today's kids will grow up with the invisible enemy - but they will survive and find ways to have fun. That is one of the miracles of creation.
Magic Waters, Battery Park
That era works itself out and a new war of nerves begins - this time the enemy is here. This is the time of the invisble assassins. It could be anyone. It could be you. It is the time of real body snatchers. You can't place pins showing the enemies placement.
The comforting idea that you can fight them over there instead of over here is illusionary. And we won't stop fighting 'til it's over over there - doesn't work anymore.
Somehow - I don't know how it happened - we managed to slip back into the dark ages.
The movies from the 50's reflected the cold war. There were all these evil old aliens landing all over the place in clunky costumes - but American know-how usually wiped them out.
The commies were coming. The commies were coming. But they left with a whimper.
There were spies back then - but they weren't sabatours. They weren't blowing things up over here. They were passing papers back and forth. Rotary phone calls.
We invented the atom bomb, and the cell phone. The enemy is trying to connect them.
What I'm trying to get around to is that this too is a war of nerves - like the cold war - but there is no place to duck and cover. Even that illusion is gone.
It is all about intelligence, i.e. spies. It going to be an era of the invisible war. An era where you see the explosion as the tip of an invisible system. Paranoia must run rampant. The air will fill with coded signals.
The automated warning announcements on the subway went into a loop: "Ladies and gentlemen, please watch your belongings. If you see something suspicious, please notifiy a police officer. If you see something, say something. Don't keep it to yourself."
It just kept playing. "Ladies and gentlemen..." Archaic salutations from the Victorian age.
"Ladies and gentleman, an invisible enemy is plotting to release poison gas and kill as many of you as they can. Have a nice day and thank you for riding with MTA transit."
We grew up with the idea that the world could be blown up in an instant, but we still found time to play. Today's kids will grow up with the invisible enemy - but they will survive and find ways to have fun. That is one of the miracles of creation.
Magic Waters, Battery Park
7/01/2006
Governors Island
Manhattan, View From Ferry to Governors Island
Nothing that I shot on Governors Island is worth keeping in the blog; but this might make a nice postcard. Clouds are thanks to red filter which I've been carrying with me since the infrared spree.
6/30/2006
6/29/2006
Rimbaud
I'm in the middle of a biography of Rimbaud by Enid Starkie. Whenever you think you've read it all as far as the horror of an artist's life goes - there's always more. Arthur Rimbaud begins life in a small provincial French town. He excels in literature and wins several poetry prizes by the time he's fifteen. His mother is a woman determined to push Rimbaud into a "good" career - and he definitely has the brains for it. For these first fifteen years - he plays at being an obedient kid but behind his placid demeanor - there is already a wild egoism waiting to emerge.
His studies of magic, alchemy, and the Cabala convince him that there is a totally original non-Christian poetry that goes back to magical sources. According to his theory - by "disordering the senses" he can tap into the neo-Platonic power behind the senses, and become a sort of God. There is already a bit of a tradition of this in France with Baudelaire - but Baudelaire believes that this "debauch" will ultimately fail and destroy the poet. Rimbaud believes that Baudelaire didn't go far enough.
By the age of 16 he has run away from home to go to Paris several times; and each time he is met with abject failure (frankly a lot of it because of his own behavior). By the time he's 21 or so - he's written his major works - and alienated Parisian literary circles; his own family; his friends; and I suppose anyone else he's come in contact with. What is worse, is that he's come to believe that his ideas about channeling God (some say the Devil) - has not worked and that he's only been writing (like every former poet) through his own prism. A Season in Hell is partly about this horrible discovery of his own failure.
His former lover, Verlaine, has been sent to jail for shooting Rimbaud in the wrist. Rimbaud has stopped writing altogether and believes that he must make a success of himself by becoming an industrialist or a scientist. He is convinced that a new world based on science will produce the utopia he's been longing for.
But again - at every point where he might have found some success he gets bored with the drudgery of the "real world." A lost spirit, set adrift in a world which he cannot accept.
It's difficult to find a single moment of peace for him. He ends up in Africa - running guns, possibly involved in slave-trading. And through all this - from the most remote locations - he continues to write to his mother:
"I'm obliged to wander over the face of the earth, tied as I am to a distant undertaking. What is the use of all this indescribable suffering, if I'm not one day, after a few years, to rest in a place that I more or less like, and have a family of my own, a son at least, whom I shall spend the rest of my life in training according to my own ideas and whom I'll see grow into a famous engineer, a man rich and powerful through science. But who knows how long I may last in these mountains here; I may lose my life amongst these people, without any news of me ever coming out again." May 6th, 1883
His problem was that he was just living at the wrong time. If he'd live in San Francisco in 1965 he might have been the next Jim Morrison. In the '50's he might have been Alan Ginsburg living in Pasaic or Jersey City.
But as it was - he was simply born 100 years too soon.
His studies of magic, alchemy, and the Cabala convince him that there is a totally original non-Christian poetry that goes back to magical sources. According to his theory - by "disordering the senses" he can tap into the neo-Platonic power behind the senses, and become a sort of God. There is already a bit of a tradition of this in France with Baudelaire - but Baudelaire believes that this "debauch" will ultimately fail and destroy the poet. Rimbaud believes that Baudelaire didn't go far enough.
By the age of 16 he has run away from home to go to Paris several times; and each time he is met with abject failure (frankly a lot of it because of his own behavior). By the time he's 21 or so - he's written his major works - and alienated Parisian literary circles; his own family; his friends; and I suppose anyone else he's come in contact with. What is worse, is that he's come to believe that his ideas about channeling God (some say the Devil) - has not worked and that he's only been writing (like every former poet) through his own prism. A Season in Hell is partly about this horrible discovery of his own failure.
His former lover, Verlaine, has been sent to jail for shooting Rimbaud in the wrist. Rimbaud has stopped writing altogether and believes that he must make a success of himself by becoming an industrialist or a scientist. He is convinced that a new world based on science will produce the utopia he's been longing for.
But again - at every point where he might have found some success he gets bored with the drudgery of the "real world." A lost spirit, set adrift in a world which he cannot accept.
It's difficult to find a single moment of peace for him. He ends up in Africa - running guns, possibly involved in slave-trading. And through all this - from the most remote locations - he continues to write to his mother:
"I'm obliged to wander over the face of the earth, tied as I am to a distant undertaking. What is the use of all this indescribable suffering, if I'm not one day, after a few years, to rest in a place that I more or less like, and have a family of my own, a son at least, whom I shall spend the rest of my life in training according to my own ideas and whom I'll see grow into a famous engineer, a man rich and powerful through science. But who knows how long I may last in these mountains here; I may lose my life amongst these people, without any news of me ever coming out again." May 6th, 1883
His problem was that he was just living at the wrong time. If he'd live in San Francisco in 1965 he might have been the next Jim Morrison. In the '50's he might have been Alan Ginsburg living in Pasaic or Jersey City.
But as it was - he was simply born 100 years too soon.
6/28/2006
iView bought by Microsoft
Seems like everything I like is swallowed up by a bigger fish. I believe that iView will be bundled with the operating system and the "pro" version will be sold separately. iView began life on the mac . I use it to generate the galleries you see on this site and for managing (finding and cataloguing) images. It's one of those programs where you never need to open a manual or look up anything in help. Very straight-foward user interface. So I guess it's all part of the war to manage images. My guess is that Microsoft will "integrate" a raw conversion program into it.
News about iView acquisition.
News about iView acquisition.
6/27/2006
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