PLAY MISTY FOR ME: Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Gwathmey, Shigeru Ban, SANNA

Frank Lloyd Wrights Designed Carmel Home

Frank Lloyd Wright
Charles Gwathmey
Shigeru Ban
SANNA

My grandmother once told me she heard what sounded like someone’s annoying tinkering on a piano in the apartment next door to where she lived. She said that the neighbor was a black man. His name was something like Errol Garner. I can only imagine what the jazz giant’s piano’s white ivories sounded like. Who knows, I might have heard the keys of (Erroll Garner plays Misty - YouTube )playing during my weekly visits to see my grandmother. I just might have heard the lyrics spoken by Ella Fitzgerald. Hey, why not? Errol lived next to my grandmother, Ella lived a block away from me. Can’t you hear the god’s symphony? It is the kind of whacko angelic reverie that my eyes and ears tango with daily.
The phantasms of that teenager stepping through those cultural corridors, unaware of the greatness at hand seems like a long ago episode of psilocybin rampaging through the blood stream.
My camera has been heartbreakingly in love with all images that have stories to tell. My camera gets to live in the present and share stories of my past for the future. It is a passion I cannot live without. My eyes have lingered over imagery that mere oral stories can’t tell. I have learned to allow the lens to linger so I can dream about what I might see.

I Learned To Linger From:

Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne used to spend Christmas lingering at the Ritz in Paris. They had “their“ table. They told me that lingering at the Ritz allowed them to gain perspective: Perspective on their present and their good fortunes. I have for years tried to reconcile the Joan enjoying the finest Champagne in Paris, from the Joan who has written about Los Angeles in the most ironic voice in contemporary literature. How do you parley Joans measure of Parisian haute living, from her searing essays that imply chaos may live behind the pastoral American dream white picket fences. Well, if Joan lingers, I can linger.
One day in Carmel California, I was standing in front of a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I imagined I heard Didion speak to me. I could never tell you what I think she said. It would be cause for a bed in the asylum. I also imagined I heard “Play Misty For Me” director Clint Eastwood yelling “action”. Joan and Clint as one? Both inspirations on numerous levels. I have always communed with voices from lives lived. It is a cracked way of living, but that is what happens when I am alone. Simply put: it adds dimensions to what and how my camera sees.
The fabulous Charles Gwathmey used to call me when I was shooting something of his. He would say “get it right kid”. I knew what he meant. He told me many times what I should be looking for. I didn’t have Frank Lloyd Wright in my ear when I shot the Carmel house. But I did stir up every voice that came before that day. I think it worked.
In Tokyo there was another version of “Misty”. But I think it was merely imagining the Garner and Fitzgerald duo cushioning my loneliness. Alone in a foreign land is exhilarating, but alone. Every waking moment introduces celluloid love. Swimming in the planets cultures is Alices’ wonderland, my wonderland. The only voice you hear is your own. The visual awakening is life changing.
Quiet rains and my camera queried strangers. I needed to capture two exemplary homes by the emerging architects SANNA and Shigeru Ban. Yukio Mishima supplanted Didion and whispered “Misty”. The music was an unimaginable romance for me. It helped me embrace the new phenomenons before my eyes: Architectures present future.
My gait acquired a bit of Baryshnikov/Gregory Hines from “White Nights”. My camera went snippety snap snap snap. I finished engaging two of the world’s new architectural voices. Their stories and more from Japan will follow.
I shifted my photography gears. I espied an elderly Japanese woman dressed in all white. Her pink umbrella cast the perfect visual spell. The street was long, empty and misty.