My Heart Is a Drunken Compass

I can't find a decent copy of this photograph anywhere on the internet.  This is very, very odd.  Of course, you know who is in the picture taken many years ago.  It is a wet plate collodion image made by Robert Maxwell which was included in his only book, "Photographs," published in 2000.  It was a controversial book at the time in that he included images of his nude son in the collection that included some graphic images of female models.  Maxwell is now an advertising and celebrity photographer.  The old images are hard to find. 

Last night I sat looking through a lot of old photo books that lie about the house.  I remembered how much his images motivated me.  I don't think I had been cognizant of wet plate photography.  I wanted to know how to make images just like those.  It is what led me to my experiments with Polaroid film and the images I eventually made.  Looking back last night, I realize that I have done much of what I had then set out to do. 

I'm not so crazy about the pictures he's showing now. 

I picked up some unread novels last night, too.  I began reading one that I have owned about as long as I've owned the Maxwell book, "The Paris Pilgrims."  It is about that 1920s Hemingway who had just come to Paris with his wife, Hadley, and a pocket full of introductions from Sherwood Anderson.  Photography and writing.  Last night was a bit of a nostalgic trip through Wonderland. 

This morning I read a review of a book that has a great title, "My Heart Is a Drunken Compass."  I'll start reading a book with a title as good as that.  The review makes the novel seem somewhat appealing with its references to existentialism and Bukowski, but it sounds as if it goes all soft in the end, too, with the sort of conclusion anyone might write.  Everyone can start a thing and some can continue it, but endings. . . those are the hardest parts.  Too many novels just wear out, or rather, the writers do.  They seem to get tired and want to wrap things up.  Endings are too often simple notes to an ending that was never written. 

"And so, sitting alone in the cold star night, the protagonist felt the weight of existence--his existence--and the presence of his dead brother and mother and father, and he thought of his ex-fiance who had always tried to live a true and good existence, and he knew what he must do, understood. . . blah blah blah. . . . " 

I may read the novel just to see.  I like the idea of a fellow who drinks beer and sits out in the backyard shooting targets with a b.b. gun.  My friend in Yosemite does that.  Not drunk, but he has small metal plates hanging all over the back yard that we shoot at with a b.b. rifle.  It is fun. 

I'm going to make some better photographs, too, better than the Maxwell ones, I mean.  I think I already have maybe, but I want to go head to head with those images that sent me forward some fifteen years ago.  Jesus, that long ago?  Really? 

And I'm going to get a b.b. rifle.