Above: “Greetings,” April 2011
05
Mar
11
feels like old times
Above: Scenes from the McGeary’s Open Mic, Wednesday March 2, 2011
15
Feb
11
photo friday – breathtaking
For her birthday, for Valentine’s day, for the fact that she popped into my head when I read this week’s theme. My wife, Wendy:
This was a pretty sentimental Photo Friday I guess. Ah well.
Above: “Explain.,” 2010
I also saw some other stuff.
Above: All untitled, all January 2011
There arose last week a sort of unexpected tradition. I’ll start at the beginning. Five years ago, my brother spent his sophomore year of college in France. On the day that he left, I gathered my family together for a portrait to commemorate the occasion.
The result was, obviously, magic. Even now as I was going through the photos, I was sort of shocked to discover that this was the third shot we took. It was perfect, save for my haircut, which is a long story.
When it came time to see the young man off to graduate school last week, I thought it only fitting to take another iteration of the photo. But trying to recapture that magic was never going to work, and I really should have acknowledged that from the beginning.
Things have obviously changed: I’ve gained a wife, my mom has gained a cat. And also it was a different day and a different time and just a different life. It’s funny, all the same components of your life are around, but then, your life is something else all of a sudden.
Like such as: my wife is pregnant, so I set my mom off by noting that the next time we take this photo, our baby will be in it.
So the new photo turned out to not recapture the magic at all, which, once again, we should have seen coming. It was its own magic, and that should really be what we aim for.
Above: “Austerity Runs in the Genes, 1,” 2005; four staging shots, 2011; “Austerity Runs in the Genes, 2,” 2011
Happy New Year
19
Dec
10
best of 2010
09
Apr
10
photo friday – blurry
Well, that didn’t work. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But I’m going to start again, right now.
I was spurred to action when I received this week’s Photo Friday announcement. I have tried, and failed, to participate in the past, but when I saw that this week’s theme was “Blurry,” I thought to myself, if you can’t do this one, you’re never going to do one.
Opting as I do to never use a flash in low light pretty much under any circumstances, I have probably thousands of photos that are blurred. A lot of them just look like nonsense, of course, but there are also a lot that are really cool. So rather than trying to go through my entire catalog and find one that is the “best,” a task whose literal impossibility does not deter me from feeling it to be the only pure and righteous course, I have decided to just pick one from my Best of 2009 list to submit. This is much more literally than I would usually like to interpret Photo Friday themes, but, again, I have a lot of pictures that are literally blurry, and this is one that I hope will just get me off the couch, as it were.
I really am very fond of that photo, actually.
Above: “They Grow Up So Fast,” 2009
Though I missed one, I told myself that I would use this space once a week this year. So I’m going to declare one week of New-Year-amnesty and start now.
I’m still not really sure what I’m using this blog for, but it seems that if I just keep posting photos, things will clarify.
Above: The Future Everybody on stage at the Middle East in Boston, November 2009
