It had slipped my mind like a slapstick comedian falling on a loose banana peel. It slipped through the crack of my attention span the way a plumber shows himself off by bending over, letting his baggy "old-man" trousers fall below his attention span; the hairy white crack had no appeal to me. It dropped through the holes in my pockets, ripping out the threads of self-interest with the sounds of gagging, chocking, snoring, heavy breathing, uncontrolled and painful coughing, spitting. belching, screaming and moaning....(there were also some really disgusting and bad noises! And some gut-wrenching smells from the pits in the worst neighborhoods in hell!)... so much so that after two weeks of repetitive, non-stop, pain-gasping, life-ceasing self-resignation even I began to get used to it; it sounded normal, all-too-normal, peaceful and boring. It made me ask, "if it's like this in here, what's it like out there?"
The answer, of course, stared back at me through bland lifeless eyes: a right and a left eye on the same face, like a normal face, but clearly two separate eyes belonging to two separate people looking back at me not the least bit interested in my question; made me forget the question. I'd grown so accustomed to this nut house, I experienced less and less difference between the madness in here and the madness out there. Eventually, I experienced a type of zen tooth-extraction by mixing my yogurt with fresh cold watermelon, starring out the window, listening to cool west coast jazz (like the Art Pepper Trio with Elvin Jones), looking out upon the sunny side of Pine St. near Polk, drinking decaf coffee almost convinced that one's just the same as the other. And in the distance, the uncanny peaceful sound, the calming, peaceful mantra like temple bells being played by the institution's "COW" (Crazy Old Woman) screaming her head off, yelling at the top of her lungs, spitting at the walls, begging anyone stupid enough to listen as she perfects her performance of "Dependently Dysfunctional". And then, finally, just when I think I can't take anymore, my nurse comes around with my meds and narcotics (100mls of morphine: once, twice a day), and suddenly all is well. Hmmmmmmm. The sad part is that even that started to drop off little by little; the one thing I looked forward to each day, besides talking to Nico, taking walks and taking photos, was beginning to taper off so that I wouldn't leave the rehab facility needing to be admitted to a detox facility!
I told my nurse that my pain level, 1-to-10, 10 being the worse, was at a high five -- just to get morphine. I lied; so what. The lieing doesn't make it right; it just makes it lieing. I did it here everyday and so do the nurses when they write up their reports, and so do the doctors when they lie to the administrators, and the admin lies to the insurance carriers, and they lie to the auditors, who lies to Congress on television, and then they lie to The People (who are really gullible.) The People, if they're lucky enough to get a room in this healthcare circus, lie to everyone, everyday, all day just to get their share of tax relief (LOL!). The fact is, the people who will change the healthcare system, and fix the economy and stop the wars: they haven't even been born yet! The pain meds are much better and more reliable than tax breaks! They're faster acting and they make me feel a hell of a lot better for longer time! It's a vicious circle, or maybe it's not as vicious as we've been led to believe. I dont care one way or the other because now -- at least for the next ten hours or more -- I'll be on a morphine high spiked with oxycodon; that'll hit me in the afternoon. As for right now, right this minute, if I close my eyes I'll probably nod out for a bit, which is why it's so hard to write.
My problem is that it's almost impossible to write when I haven't got a clue what to write about or what to say. It reminds me of those irritating obnoxious sounds low-income men make when they eat their food deliberately and ignorantly clinking and clanking their forks, spoons and knives on their plate, loudly scopping up their pathetic imitation food, cutting it up, chopping it up, mixing it as noisely as they can bang their forks on the plate, shoving it all together, the eggs mixed with the butter mixed with apple sauce mixed with jelly mixed with bread, potatoes, soup and the salad get scooped up onto a big spoon gripped by a fist wrapped around the eating utensil like a hammer, clinking, clanking, blink-blank-blinkity-blankity-clankity-clanking its food into their gas-swollen, gas-protruding stomachs!
It reminds me of b&w movies I've seen of farmers, miners, truck drivers, school teachers, car salesmen and rural sheriff's as they lean over their food as if they had hunted, killed and dragged it away for safe keeping; as if they were protecting their meal by keeping it for themselves until later when it would taste better; as if they had won a lottery ticket and were dressed for the Last Supper; clinking, clanking and scooping up their wet mix, slopping it as fast as they could shove it into their mouth, making noises half-animal/half-human so furiously their jaws fell off.
(After my initial morphine rush, a few hours later.......) OK, back to photography: what is it, exactly, I want to say? Maybe I dont have anything to say, or, if I do, maybe it doesnt need to be said. I can't let myself believe that for Christ sake! So, why is it taking me so long to write it? It must have something to do with pretense; a lot of what I write sounds pretentious and contrived. I dont think there's anything pretentious about an empty white porclean coffee cup placed on a brown wooden table that's lopsided and rocks back and forth. The cup sits on top of a white table napkin and the table's next to an open window facing street traffic and feet traffic and you can almost see the outline of the shadows of people walking. There's nothing pretentious about that is there? Or, finally, how about a toilet bowl full of feces after I take an intestinal vacation for three to five days with no bowel movements; there's nothing pretentious about that is there?
On the other hand, we've got an old grey-haired witch staying in one of the insured beds, in one of the insured rooms, down one of the halls in this insured rehab facility. She spends most of her waking hours imagining she's tripping and falling, or at least threatening to imagine she's going to trip and fall and brake her other arm. One thing is real: in the middle of the night she screams in her witchy spell-binding voice that either she needs to pee or that she's already peed all over the floor - even though it's completely dry. She wants the nurses to drop what they're doing and discharge her so she can pee in her own home. Is she pretentious? Is every mental case who's locked up in this physical rehab facility pretentious?
I don't know. but it still sounds pretentious when I write the following: "As a photographer, what am I willing to promise, if anything, about the work that I do? And what really is the "work" that I do? Are they just pictures or are they something else? What right does anyone have to expect something more out of the work I do other than just what I feel like doing, what I like to do?"
I'll answer the second part first. People have the right to expect my photos to be authentic and to have integrity. That's it; period. This means, people have the right to expect me to raise the bar on myself when it comes to self-exploration, examination, re-evaluation and self-confrontation. They have the right to see my photos as a visual, pictoral conversation that they're having with me as we interact and converse together inside a new domain, a new realm of possibility that we explore together, not simply to look at pictures with the background or the foreground as an easy prop.
Now I'll answer the first part of the question: What am I willing to promise? Let's be clear about what I'm not willing to promise: I don't care how great the camera is or even if I understand how to work all the bells and whistles on the cameras I have. I don't promise to study photography and try to master the interesting principles of composition, structure, lighting, shutter speed, computer processing or whatever else there is.....and when it comes to actually knowing anything about photography, I promise to live by the code, "If you know the difference between a bus stop and an f/stop, you already know too much."
I promise to ask questions -- mostly not questions about photography, but about life itself -- and not questions to get answers, but questions to get more questions. I promise to re-evaluate the opinions and viewpoints that have acquired me like tics on a dog, and to acknowledge my fixations with aberrations and let go of them, give them up, re-invent and transform an opinionated bias into an open space of acceptance and clarity. I promise to remake and rebuild points of view, such that processing is experienced by others who look at my photos as an on-going conversation they're invited to be involved with, conversations and inquiries we share about distinctions of life, not necessarily about photography at all. Finally, I promise that my photos will be a function of this collective conversation; that integrity will come at a high premium of personal transparency of states of mind and ways of being, relationships, vulnerabilities, insecurities, strengths and mental, emotional and spiritual internal confrontations.
That's my promise and that's what you can expect. How this will all turn out, only time will tell. Now, what could be more pretentious than that??!
