Oscar Niemeyer: Rio Netori Art Museum
Joan Didion reminded me a few times:
A few times our paths crossed: My portrait of John and Joan: Our origins: Our education: Our migration.
Oh, I have teamed up in some fashion with Homer, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Miller, Kerouac and others: I placed them deskside hidden and cushioned inside my cultural vaults: I rarely remember why I remember: I do feel more lucid when I need a dream about past literary influences: All of the words and volumes spin endlessly before my eyes: Have you ever seen electrolytes naked:
There was something about Joan: She was decades ahead of me: Her mind seemed to ghost mine: Maybe truthfully I ghosted her mind: We did not talk/walk in the same circles: We (my imaginary self suggests) did walk where the other had been yesterday or tomorrow:
Herzog and de Neuron Laban Dance Center: London
Joan Didion recounted a story that she knew about: I tried to match her step by step: Joan’s ideas were more furtive than mine: A church’s congregation may exude “thank god”:
She recounted a nineteen-sixties murder: It had a particular stranglehold on my mind: It might be as the muscular flex an anaconda might dictate how I might breathe: Seconds or a few days of sensational power overcame me, my eyes:
Joan’s peace and mayhem story had in a very abstract way become a template for how I see: Her stories stilled my heart: Close encounters of haloes hovered: Haloed lights illuminated a city: Joan navigated: I followed her eyes not merely in Los Angeles but in a significant way, across a planet:
The nineteen sixties murder was a very simple slash and decapitation assault:
Fashion Institute of New York{FIT}
The home was a corner lot with a freshly painted garden fence and proper garden that inferred an idyllic idealism habitation newly built Los Angeles future: The story wasn’t about an American housing moment: The story was about beyond the quiet was blood and death: Not a church mouse stirred: Not a single fallen leaf was heard: Death roamed on one side: My side was lily white and not a suspected stir from afar: Two sides lived: The clearly defined picture was almost Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now: Maybe more acutely referred to as the famous Christmas Truce: The World War One truce where enemies became friends: Both side witnessed a story of war and peace: On either side of a story are two sides: I realize every new moment about architecture has sides to share and sides to dream about: Dreams to be told dreams to live.
Photography and photography’s history are always upon me: I capture imaginations: I capture the images and angles of dream: A Didion whisper is heard:
So many sides: Where might I begin: Another secret: Familiar and unfamiliar places have been hallmarks of my career: Names have become visual laboratories for my cameras: New places of anonymity rise and fall before every shutter is heard: Secret names, secret places rule my past and future. Possibilities live: I have arrived at the homes of respectively very famous: I have arrived at the built environments of complete strangers: I tease eyes: My eyes are invited to possibilities: Witnesses may or may not see me coming: I am there: I am here:
Fascination is a demanding word: I am fascinated by what has been and what Joan Didion’s murder and mayhem allow me to dream to interpret: The photograph has not yet been made:
I am alone with Joan: Highway 101 slows as I near the LAX: Landing lights haloed over a city I have visited many audiences: What may be captured is side of architecture that has many sides: I am a lighted drone: Illumination dances: Multiply the experience exponentially and maybe we will see what I have come to know:
A single Joan Didion memory has allowed me to revel in my mysteries of photography: A universe of mysteries: A treasure trove of analytical perspectives: Ouija boards atop one-hundred cities:
Was the man in the Hightower revealed:
The promise of so many perspectives: The familiarity of the drama from above motivates me to my tomorrow.
Frank Gehry: 8 Spruce Street New York