Things are getting grimy, dirty, and gritty. That's what happens when people think the money's gone. Maintenance goes the way of the dollar. First cuts are to the janitorial staffs and the groundskeepers. Nobody paints, nobody cleans. I don't know how, but parking lots and roads even look dirtier. How can a road look dirtier? Everything I lean against covers me in grime. Public bathrooms are a plague. Cities and neighborhoods are beginning to look the way I remember the '70s. Even the colors have changed. Crime is up. People aren't smiling. For those who grew up in the '80s and '90s, those who took the annual trips to Disney World, it must be awfully shocking. Like most things, the crime and grime will be blamed on the poor. They live in it. They enjoy it. And they spread it like the swine flu. Except none of this was created by the poor, but by the last to be cut, by executives and administrators. My own institution is still bloated with them. And they are more Executive than ever. I am going to watch the movie "Slacker" once again. I haven't even thought of that film for a decade. Social groups. Blighted areas. Maybe I'll read "Generation X" again as well.
And there you have my definition of bad blogging. I've opined rather than illustrated. I'll let it stand as a negative example so that I won't forget. Show, don't tell.
But while I'm at it, I'll whine. My new old camera, the Mamiya 6, broke. I spent (deleted) dollars to acquire the thing and have only shot about ten rolls of film. I'm sick with it. Every time I buy an old medium format camera, something breaks. This is the third one in the past year. Well, the Holga has never broken. Maybe I need to stick with that.
Ruination. There was nothing in this at all. But I like the photograph. I took it last night. Polaroids to come.
I like the photo too. Lots.
ReplyDeleteI have started reading The Moon and Sixpence online. Course I mostly hate reading books online -- I love real books. I had written about El Greco last week - I think I mentioned the Spanish exhibition I had seen -- Toledo blew me away. I think El Greco was a modernist. Everything is connected.
I'll look for it at estate/yard sales -that book -- Maugham is always in the bookcases of those houses. Always.
Synecdoche, NY -- the city outside the play building falling into ruin --- that movie is amazing for ruination lovers. Course it's all the Waste land too. Damn Mr. Eliot.
Spiritual warfare.
You are allowed to whine every once in awhile, especially if you have a good picture. (I've heard of a great place in New Jersey that repairs old cameras.)
ReplyDeleteWent to the bookstore yesterday and what did I buy? The Moon and Sixpence. You should get royalties.
Ring a ring a rosy
ReplyDeletea pocket full of posy.
As bad as the first world thinks things are, it's still not a bad as the black plague.
We all need to harden the fuck up!
By the way, all medium format cameras are crap. None of them are made or designed well (and I mean none of them), because they were aimed at a relatively small market where there is so little profit.
Film with bits of metal suspended in a jelly made from cow bones and hide is dead, time to move on.
The seventies are over... thankfully;
so are the eighties and nineties.
Death to nostalgia!
I've been reading "Moon" without thinking about it. It is easy, like a blog, with short chapters. I haven't gotten to the meat of it yet. I've been feeling lame and lachrymose, so it is an OK read right now. Lisa, I don't recall anything about a Spanish exhibition. ??? Rhonda, I think a fellow here can fix the camera, but if he can't. . . . .
ReplyDeleteRazz,
?????????
Black Death? Harden the fuck up? I guess that's why old guys use Viagra. Maybe your saying people with the plague should harden the fuck up? I'm not sure.
All people harden up in tough times, though. It is not a conscious decision, it is just what we do. And we soften up in easy times. Again, we don't mean to, it is just what we do. If one must live like a !Kung Bushman, s/he will. Some choose to do so voluntarily. But nobody is opting for the Haiti solution as far as I can see. When social institutions run amok, I don't think we eschew social criticism and tell people that they are pussies and that every man jack needs to look after himself. Iconoclasm is fun and fine, but history is not the same as nostalgia, nor is it ever over even if we choose to ignore it.
As far as medium format cameras, my experience is running true to your claim. I've not had luck. I like digital cameras and have used them since the earliest models. But film is a different medium. I can't bring myself to say fuck oil paints, we've got pixels now.
But I don't know if I'm reading your comment correctly.