More from Fort Collins

There are reflections and strange shafts of light here, too. So that's good.

Fort Collins-There is Color Here

Today was my first day of full on shooting in the new town. Walked around and got to know the place a little. Still getting used to the light here, it's different, but I'm not sure how. Maybe it's the lack of air pollution? Maybe that makes the light "purer"? Something to do with the elevation? I don't know. The sun seems to be at a different angle in the sky. And I don't know if this will become a "Fort Collinsville" type project. We'll see how things go. It's a good way to get to know the town, though. I found some color today amongst other things. For more images of the day click here.

The Story of the Asparagus

So, you ever go to clean your sensor and think, "I should probably take out the CF card in my camera. Nah, it'll be alright. You know what you're doing."...Well, yeah, so I managed to erase all the images from the trip out to Fort Collins. Why did they put the "Format" option, which clears the CF card, and the "Sensor Cleaning" option, which does not clear the CF card, so close in the Menu options! I suppose they assume smarter people than me will be using those things. But, I do have this pic I took of asparagus we got the other day from the farmer's market. C'est la vie.

Goletaville: The Soundtrack Vol. 3

Sucked Out- Superdrag
Mockingbirds- Grant Lee Buffalo
Everybody Hurts- REM
Debonair- The Afghan Whigs
Queen- Melvins
Talk Show Host- Radiohead
Down to This- Soul Coughing but this is even better!
Bull in the Heather- Sonic Youth
Down by the Water- PJ Harvey
She Don't Use Jelly- The Flaming Lips
The Distance- Cake
Live Forever- Oasis
Loser- Beck
Human Behavior- Bjork
Piggy- Nine Inch Nails
Hurt- Nine Inch Nails
Bulls on Parade- Rage Against the Machine
In the Meantime- Spacehog
Possum Kingdom- Toadies

I should maybe call this the "120 Minutes Volume". Many of the songs here remind me of that show on MTV which I watched pretty much every Sunday night in high school. 120 Minutes would always play the best videos, or at least the ones I was most interested in seeing, but they could not get a good host for that show! It was just painful. Matt Pinfield and Lewis Largent were responsible for some of the most awkward interviews and video intros ever recorded! But, that too, was part of the "alternative" rock schtick that was so popular at the time. It's "umbra" if you will, to use a recent Word of the Day.

This volume could also be "The Volume of the Riff". Many great riffs here, "Queen"(from the Melvins, the masters of the riff!), "Talk Show Host" (and here Radiohead was entering entering another phase growing creatively by leaps and bounds),"Piggy", "Possum Kingdom", all great riffs that were quite potent to my blobby teenage brain.

One of the interesting things that starts to arise when listening to these songs again are similarities I didn't notice before. Such as the songs "Possum Kingdom" and "Down by the Water", both songs which on a surface level are seemingly about the same thing, murder down by the river. Both songs are part of a long tradition of rock songs about murder at the river, see Neil Young's "Down by the River". His 1969 version, appropriately, follows from a blues and folk tradition of songs which was reflective of that era of song writing . But these songs, some 25 years later, are great examples of the evolution of pop music and the culture as a whole to an acceptance of art (or "art") to go to a darker and more psychological place, and certainly that is in part due to previous artists such as Neil. "Possum Kingdom" now takes us inside the head of the killer, which appears to be some sort of serial killer a la Silence of the Lambs. However, PJ Harvey one ups them all. Her tale of murder, takes a more poetic, symbolic, and possibly darker (depending on your interpretation) tact. She takes that common theme and turns it a little bit. Is it filicide or is it metaphor for the loss of innocence, or something else? Anyways, it would seem that pop song lyrics and themes were evolving and exploring new aspects of common themes during this time.

And, yes, "Everybody Hurts" may be the most depressing song (and video) ever written!

Goletaville-Day 12

So, it finally happened on Day 12. The subconscious agents of whomever's dream I'm in finally recognized they had a foreign element in their midst. "Eradicate...Eradicate...Eradicate" they seemed to moan with each approaching foot step that pervaded and reverberated through every pore of my being like the polluted acid rain of a paranoid future that hungrily waits in the shadows with tensed jowls, an iron lung, and pockets full of the lonely spoiled meat of our precarious and misguided times.

One of the reasons I like going out at sunrise to photograph is that there aren't many people or distractions which allows you to get into a sleep deprived coffee fueled right-brained zone/fog/cloud/antiseptic mist/what-have-you. Most mornings the few people you do run into just give you a tired head nod that says, "Oh you're up too? Yeah, it's way too early." It's like there's some sort of unspoken club. Most times. The morning of day 12 was a bit different.

As I was in my own world taking pictures of cracks in the pavement, garbage, and leaves in the parking lot of the nearby Ralph's I noticed a woman in her car smoking cigarettes and talking loudly on her cell phone. I started to get a strange vibe from her, but decided that it's all in my head and I should just ignore it. Several minutes later as I was smashed against a wall taking pictures of it, getting the real "nitty-gritty," figuratively and nearly quite literally becoming one with this wall, I hear a voice break through that beautiful golden silence of the morning. It was a voice as soft and soothing as a styrofoam cup full of broken glass, vinegar, and bees, that said, "Excuse me, I go to this school here. What are you taking pictures of?"

First of all, there's a school here? I thought this was a Ralph's parking lot. Secondly, my brain had a difficult time trying to comprehend the juxtaposition of those two statements. At first I thought maybe she was taking a photography class and had a photo question, but I didn't detect that sort of curiosity in her voice. Maybe it was the use of the word "of" that threw me. What did she mean "of"? She'd been watching me, she'd seen what I'd been taking pictures "of," so that couldn't be what she really meant. Then I thought, actually, what a great question! What am I taking pictures of? And immediately I felt very distant like I was from another planet. I wasn't prepared to answer that question in the context of that situation. At that moment it seemed too pretentious, and maybe somewhat naive or just maybe a heaping of grandiose self-importance onto what I am doing, to say, "I'm taking pictures of humanity and the way our identity is manifested and reflected in the evidence we leave behind, like tire marks on the pavement, or the way those plastic crates were stacked and then fell over." And that probably would have made about as much sense as what I was able to stutter out in my 7am delirium and confusion, which I put as eloquently as a styrofoam cup full of broken glass, vinegar, and bees, "ohhh...light, shadows, shape, uhm...abstract compositions."

She seemed to accept that answer, if a bit confused, and I suppose that sounded enough like I was actually doing "something." But her response was beautiful. I'm still reeling in its understated profundity. She said, "Oh, ok, cuz I was scared." And that's it! That's the big looming unspoken force that can envelope you every time you go out to take pictures. It's that feeling that what you're doing is being perceived as something "bad" or "dubious" that causes an awkward self-awareness that is completely detrimental to the process of what you're trying to accomplish. That's the feeling you always try to keep outside the door. Don't let that monkey into this party! And something like that always seems to happen just when you're starting to let that element go. Once you've convinced yourself that it's all in your head and that's not how people perceive what you are doing. Once you let your paranoia go someone comes over and goes, "here I think you dropped this."

And who or what is responsible for such a nefarious perception anyways? Is it just a heightened sense of awareness people have when there is something unusual happening in their environment? And what does it say about our society? Are we that paranoid? Is the act of capturing light onto something tangible like film or a computer chip so powerful that it can induce fear? Is that a rational response to have? Is picture taking such a strange and unnatural thing to do? Is it my beard? Do I need to start wearing a shirt that says, "Don't mind me I'm not weird or anything I'm just a human being. Would it make you more comfortable if I shaved off the beard?" And thank God I don't drive a mini-van anymore. Or maybe I just need a t-shirt that says, "DON'T LET THAT MONKEY INTO THIS PARTY!"

So, anyways, that was Day 12. And this is what I take pictures of.

An Anachronistic Pause

In the future I think we will be so inundated with technology that this is how all portraits and self-portraits will look. This picture is from breakfast the other day. On the left, in the mirror, is Charlene's hand showing me a picture on her phone she took of me taking a picture. On the right, outside the window, is the Pacific Ocean and chairs.

Goletaville: The Soundtrack Vol. 2

Sex and Candy- Marcy Playground
Fade Into You- Mazzy Star
Brick- Ben Folds Five
Runaway Train- Soul Asylum
Wonderwall- Oasis
Fake Plastic Trees- Radiohead
Lump- Presidents of the United States of America
Been Caught- Stealing- Jane's Addiction
Self Esteem- The Offspring
Daughter- Pearl Jam
Bullet with Butterfly Wings- Smashing Pumpkins
Cannonball- The Breeders
Low- Cracker
Feel the Pain- Dinosaur jr.
Novocaine for the Soul- Eels
Sink to the Bottom- Fountains of Wayne
Bad as They Seem- Hayden
Supernova- Liz Phair
Sick of Myself- Matthew Sweet

I'll just start this off by apologizing for the advertisements at the start of some of the videos. I'm trying to find videos that aren't Vevo, but sometimes that's all youtube's got or it's the best quality video. However, I will say, I should be watching more of these videos for this project. Videos were so strange! At times I wonder just how much these images and lyrics influenced me. Sometimes I think they influenced me more than I realized. For instance, during this time in high school when I was taking pictures I felt I "saw" more (or pre-visualized more) in B&W, but now I am being more attracted to color for the first time. Seeing these videos and their usage of color I think maybe I was influenced by them. It only took another 16 years for it to surface. I'm thinking particularly of the Mazzy Star, "Fade Into you" video, "Sick of Myself," "Fake Plastic Trees," and there's a couple others. It's interesting to see how the '80's usage of gels and color effects started to become more sophisticated at this time.

Random memories here are: "Low"- Cracker, it seemed Mtv would play that video a lot of early mornings as I was getting ready for school, and now it's sort of surreal that the LA landscape depicted in the video isn't so foreign to me; "Daughter"- Pearl Jam, there was a guy on my bus, the "bus clown" if you will, who would sing that song but changed the chorus to "move over butter", it was pretty funny; when "Fake Plastic Trees" came out it was Radiohead's highly anticipated follow up to "Creep" and I remember it wasn't really received that well because it was so different from what they had done before, but I thought it was great, little did we know just how different and weird and great they would become; "Self-Esteem" was totally cashing in on the "low self esteem" vibe of the music at the time, it does capture it pretty well, but it's such a Nirvana rip-off even down to the "yeeeeaaaahhh" chorus; "Brick" (yes, some songs from 1997 snuck in, oops!) reminds me of my first stint in Lawrence when I first started college, some frat guy wearing khaki shorts, Birkenstock's and a backwards hat (one with the frayed bill) pulled up next to me in a jeep at a red light once blasting that song and it just kind of summed up the place for me at that time, in other words, kind of lame, but I kinda like that song...and I'm kinda lame. Or is that just the themes within the music influencing my self perception?! Such is life.