California: I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE FEARLESS LIKE JOAN DIDION

#Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne 1998

“A world vanishes but does not die, for I have only to become still again and stare wide-eyed into the darkness and it reappears. There is then a world in me which is utterly unlike any world I know of”.

Henry Miller

I was too young to know the truth.

I cannot remember the first time I hitchhiked in Los Angeles. I might have been ten or eleven. It was something that “we did”. I do remember when I was on my way to see a girlfriend. I think we were going to play spin the bottle, or maybe just match our lips together. It was like dancing the “Jerk”, a bit awkward.

I managed a ride. The guy was older. At that stage someone twenty could be fifty to a young kid. We headed south. He was going to take me as far as as I was going. We drove by a few blvds. I was too young to know the truth. His eyes were halting. The vibe in the car was new. His hands were halting. The car stopped at a red light. I jumped out. I ran all the way to my girlfriends’ home. I did not know what halting meant at the time. I was too young to know the truth.

The age was enlightening for a thousand good reasons. Not long after that episode I was standing on Wilshire blvd and 7th street when a car pulled up. “How far are you going?” The actor James Garner said. It was James Garner for gods sake what could go wrong. The Great Escape was my favorite film and James Garner was my 4th or 5th loved star in that film. I hopped in. He too asked me how far I was going. We talked about so many things. I cannot remember a single one. He drove me to my front door. He asked, “do your parents know you do this?” He asked me if he should come in and tell my parents. I said no no. Hitchhiking was my way as a kid. I remember hitchhiking all over the west side.

Not long after, I was with my parents in Watts (South Central Los Angeles) at a concert to heal. The riots (1965) had torn apart the city. Everyone was on edge. It is possible that Count Basie and Joe Williams (and more) were the panacea for our times. My visual education was already absorbing a city’s life. That Los Angeles seems like a long time ago.

The youth in me has since retired.

I was from Los Angeles. I am now from New York. I became like Paladin: Have Camera - Will Travel. The Los Angeles I left behind was an intersect between James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice), Russ Meyer( Beyond Valley of the Dolls) and Walter Mosley ( The Devil in a Blue Dress). I have since crisscrossed the globe. I escaped my easy days.

I met Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne for a photography assignment. It was like meeting my future’s past. The life they prognosticated for me was the life I had already led. I did not know it.

Joan and John drove to destinations unknown in Los Angeles. Every weekend they landed in an alien territory just to feel the systolic pressure that inhabited the Los Angeles pulse. They spoke volumes about the magnetism that these experiences brought to the table. It was as if if they heard Homer’s Sirens calling them. Those Sirens caress my ears and eyes every time I return to Los Angeles for work and to revisit my stomping grounds. I have attempted the same challenges in New York. The DNA is not transferable.

My adult eyes are married to my youth. My camera always weds the past with the present. Joan and John awakened in me what I subconsciously knew. Joan wrote about sitting on the hood of her grandfathers truck. He pulled out a gun and shot a rattlesnake. Joan wanted to be fearless like her grandfather. I always wanted my pictures to be fearless like Didion’s words.