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| Expression |
| 06.17.04 (10:02 am) [edit] |
After having commented about the Wayne Wang movie =http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0...Smoke to =http://slynne.blogspot.comLynne, I read Roger Ebert’s online =http://www.suntimes.com/ebert...review of this film. He ends his synopsis with this observation, inspired by the movie:
“Of all the handicaps in life, the worst must be the inability to express how you feel.”
And I agree. Even people without arms paint pictures. Beethoven was deaf, and he composed music. Stephen Hawking is in about as bad a condition as a human can get, yet he reveals secrets of the universe.
My grandfather painted regularly, and was satisfied. My eldest sister drew and painted, but didn’t keep up with it and moved over to heroin (and to the grave). My brother showed musical interest, until he became bored with life (he often said) and also moved over to heroin and, likewise, on to his grave. My other sister had baby after baby (four, from three guys) to keep her occupied, until she went on to alcohol and heroin, and then to Hepatitis C and liver problems (…).
Myself? I used to try to write. I moved onto acting, which saved me in my teen years. And 20s. And 30s. Since 12 I have been doing photography. Since 20 I have been keeping journals. (And in my 20s, lots and lots of sex – not for relationship satisfaction, but for some kind of validation or identity-quest). All of these are ways that I express(ed) myself. When I do (or did) none of these, I become bored and depressed. Self-expression. I need to express myself.
So did my brother, apparently. And my sister. As do people who blog. Without our expression and audience, who understands us? Who really knows us? And without these questions and yearnings fulfilled, are we anyone? Are we alive? Are we justified in using up a share of oxygen and other resources? Without the freedom, ability and facility to convey how we feel, to know that someone knows that, and how, we feel, indeed aren’t we handicapped to the point of not even feeling human, of not feeling alive?
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| Photos I'll Never Take |
| 06.14.04 (9:08 am) [edit] |
Between Fairfield and Vallejo, CA is a segment of Highway 80 (the freeway that runs from CA all the way across the country) that has zero "city," it's all rural. Just three or so miles, this section of highway cuts right thru some magical mountains. I want to photograph them but, being along a very busy highway, I'll never be able to walk around taking fotos of these low hills. I would love to be the Ansel Adams of these overlooked hillocks.
French Impressionist painter Claude Monet often painted exactly the same scenes (a ravine, haystacks in a field) in different seasons, in different light, at different times of day, to demonstrate how all these variations change the same subject. I drive this section of freeway often, and these low rolling hills (maybe 200 feet high?) are forever changing by season and by time of day.
In spring, the hills are first delicately green with sprouting grass, and the oak trees' trunks and limbs nearly black after a rain; later, the hills are densely green with thick grass or weeds or with whatever grows on such hillsides. Depending on the time of day, there might be scatterings of cows grazing. A few weeks later, the grass begins to fade toward yellow, with patches of light brown. Finally - this weekend, I noticed - the hills are fully brown and the green of the oak trees now contrasts against what was earlier similarly green.
Time of day, too, changes the texture of these hills. These low hills are old, so there are no sharp edges. They roll and dip and rise like the depressions a child might make in thick mud: random, varied, unpredictable. Atmospheric conditions too - cloudy, overcast, sunny - and time of day (angle of light) always reveal soft rolling crags forever in new ways. Last Friday evening I happened to glance to my right - toward the west - while passing one particular spot and for the first time noticed deep shadows of three close-together vertical crags caused by the sidelighting of the western sun as it neared sunset. These indentations in the hillside would have been invisible to me three hours earlier, as the sun would have been shining directly onto this side of the crags instead of from the west causing their deep parallel shadows.
Like Monet's ravine paintings (I don't know the name of the ravine he often painted) these mountains are forever changing. From the season, time of day and atmosphere, the color and texture of these rolling hills are never the same. I wish I could spend days upon days, each day for hours and hours, season to season, photographing these hills. I'd never have the same shot twice. Merely conveying what the hills are telling us, my photos would demonstrate the magic of nature.
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