Promises (I Never Keep)--Oh, Lord

Tamara de Lempicka

I promise there is a new series coming.  I promise.  It is just taking a while.  But I talked to the man making the camera yesterday.  He called me.  He never remembers our last conversation and we begin again, but we are beginning this time, for he asked me to make choices.

"What are you going to use it for," he asked me.

Embarrassing.

"Portraits mostly," I said.

"Like what?"

I felt like a kid in front of his teacher.  What kind of question was this?  Was he drunk?  Cruel?  I began to tell him about my next project.  It sounded stupid the way such things inevitably do, boring, pedestrian, mundane.  I didn't even try to muster up enthusiasm in my voice knowing it would sound like a nervous tyro, knowing that it was all doomed anyway.

"Have you ever seen Penn's book "Small Trades?  Like that. . . only better."  

He says nothing about that.  Like I say. . . idiotic.

"So let's see.  Do you want to use flash?"

We'd been through this before, but we would go through it again.  I was better prepared this time.  You see, the  7" Aero Ektar lens has one big advantage (other than its radioactive glass)--it stops up to f 2.5.  If you do not shoot it wide open, it is silly to have it in many ways.  And at f 2.5 you will probably not be using flash.  Probably if you are normal.  I am not.

"Yes, I do.  I think if I shoot ISO 25 film at half speed and use a neutral density filter, I can use a flash to nice effect."

"You know that it syncs with flash at 1/7th of a second?"

I knew that.  He told me last time.

"Good.  I'll drag the shutter, again, to nice effect."

I felt like I was on top of the game now.  I had answers.

"O.K.  What do you want me to do for a viewfinder?"

"I don't know if you can use the one I sent with the camera, but like that."

"You're going to want to make instant contact with the people you're shooting. . . this one doesn't pop, you know what I mean?"

Oh, he had me again.  I didn't.  Tumble. . . tumble.

"I think I have one I can put on here, though.  Let me see. . . yes, I think I can make a frame with some wood. . . . That will only take me a day, huh?"  He laughed, I thought, sinisterly.  The price just went up.  So did the amount of time before I'd get it.

"What do you want the body to look like?"

Shit, shit, shit.  Like Moby Dick, I started to say  The Great White Whale.  What did he mean?

"There are two models, one that had a flash sync.  Some people like the way one body looks over the other.  I could put a flash sync in the other one. . . probably. . . ."

My end of the phone was desperately silent.  I didn't know the difference between the body types.  I was sure I would want the other one no matter which I picked.

"What color material did you want for the bellows?"

"What color do you suggest?"

"Well. . . it depends on what you want.  Some people say they want the red material. . . ."

"Red!  No, black!" I blurted out in a panic.  I could see my camera becoming uglier and uglier, not at all like the other beauties he has built.  I felt he was regretting ever agreeing to working with me on this.  Oh. . . why couldn't I be more knowledgeable?   Likable?  I felt doomed.

"You haven't given me any money yet, right?"

"Yes I did, yes I did!  I sent you (deleted) dollars!"

"Oh. O.K."

So you see.  I am going to bring you a new series.  I just can't say when.  But the old one, "Lonesomeville," is definitely over.  I can't do it any more.  I have enough images for years to come, but I can't shoot that any longer.  And so I panic and despair until the next thing begins to work.

I was thinking about this when I went to the camera store the other day.

"Hey man, can you help me?  I want to buy a camera that will make me famous.  Which one should I get?"

"Any of them."