People are becoming less interesting or I am becoming less interested in people or I have so little to do with them any more that I don't hear them speak. Something is up. I can't even recount a conversation of any interest to record here. It is me, I'm certain. When I shot with the model in this photograph, she didn't speak. I thought that she was not really happy and was just seeing the shoot through to the end, but she wrote to me yesterday and said she "really had a good time." She wants to come back and shoot again soon, she said. "I want to learn more from you." I was talking, she was listening, and that's a reversal. I like to ask questions and discover, but this girl just didn't talk, and that made me nervous. I am very happy she wants to come back. She was a swell gal as they used to say, at least in the movies. Maybe we'll both be silent.
I need to take to the streets, need to sit and listen. I hear things I could never make up. And if the fellow would only finish my camera and get it to me, I might begin, though I have fears about that. It is very possible that the camera will arrive and that I will never use it. Spending money and hope on something so archaic. . . well, it could backfire. Have I lost my nerve? Will I be able to approach strangers for pictures and conversation? The first thing is to get the camera. JOHN! GET ME THE CAMERA!
There is nothing interesting about being a recluse. It is just easy. I had two conversations this weekend. No. . . three. One brief exchange with the girl who owned the motor scooter, another with the woman at the shop that sold them, and last night with my mother. I've already exhausted the material from the first two. My mother and I said nothing new.
You might think that in the time I spent alone, I might have come to some interesting insights, a realization or two at the least. Nope. I am a bore.
But I work on images and they keep coming, and that, at least, makes me happy, although recently I have begun to wonder why. Perhaps I will reduce my life to some ravaging minimum where nothing is of importance or interest. And sitting in the darkness of a pre-dawn Monday morning prior to going to the factory, such a thing causes me no discomfort or distress. I should be worried, I think, but I am not.
Perhaps it is only the season.
definitely the season...
ReplyDeleteDid you ever sit in front of the TV realizing that you are seeing the pictures but not hearing the words? That they are simply some blank sound, void of any meaning?
ReplyDeleteI talked to hundreds of people this weekend. We average between 300-500 people at a sale. And I have to try to be somewhat personable and "nice." So they will buy things. Oh how horrid that sounds.
Anyway -- on Sundays I do very little talking to anyone. I have nothing left. I watch football and do other Holy things. I often watch the games with the sound turned off though. I can't bear all the incessant noise of the announcers.
For all the "socializing" I do, I think I am really happiest being quasi anti-social. Perhaps it is all the marketeering in my life.
I think that is why I have always loved books and writing. It is quiet. Except, of course, for all the noises in ones own head. :)
"With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world."
Max Ehrmann, from of course, Desiderata.
Come now, you have needle pictures to make.
ReplyDeleteI for one am looking forward to seeing what you will do with that idea.
R, One can only hope. And yours?
ReplyDeleteL, Wasn't that Satchmo?
EJR, It took me awhile to figure out "needle pictures." Yes, you are right. I almost forgot.