Egg

It’s hard to justify to nonbelievers what makes William Eggleston’s work so resonant.  In fact, there were plenty of people who hated it 1976, when color photography was still frowned upon, and I’m sure there are plenty who hate it now.  Notwithstanding his popularity in the world of galleries, and the art press, his work is paradoxically democratic and elitist.  He dares you to say, “I don’t see what the big deal is, I could do that.”   He is everything that people outside the art community hate about art, and the subjective appreciation of one over the other.  A good example of this is Eggleston’s picture of the inside of a freezer or the underside of a bed, or the fact that he doesn’t give audacious titles to his images.  He just does what he does and dares the world to deny it.  

While you can look at a photo like Untitled 1965, (the one with the kid pushing grocery carts), and figure out what makes you feel warm and fuzzy about it (the golden tinged nostalgia of 50’s era America, in brilliant color), there are plenty of others that to most people seem like you handed a disposable camera to some kid and sent them out in the neighborhood to take pictures of things they found interesting.  Often times, body parts are cut off at the margins, and mundane objects like a haphazardly placed axe, or Christmas lights strung around a pole in a parking lot are the chosen subject matter.  Everything you are taught to do, is thrown out the window, and composition and color take prominence over all else.  I can see why the critics were almost unanimous in their scorn for his first MoMA exhibition, and the only thing that surprises me, is that he somehow survived the battering and kept going.  It’s a commentary on the absurdity of the human condition that in the early days, he was battling the very same people who are his greatest champions today.

I won’t tell you that you should care about William Eggleston, you either like his work or you don’t.  But if you are a photographer, I can tell you that it’s worth your time to find out.  As a resident of the South, it’s easy for me to identify with the familiar landscapes that are represented in Egg’s photos, and his embrace of the mundane.  Eggleston is also an interesting character, whose life seems to be a work of art all it’s own.  For further study, his film “Stranded in Canton” is a weird, wild ride that gives us a glimpse of his world and the underground characters that were part of his social circle.   

Eggleston blazed a path and revolutionized modern photography by embracing and uplifting the mundane and everyday, and I still haven’t seen anybody who does what he does any better.  I think of him as being out of the same mold as a William Burroughs or Henry Miller.  A man ahead of his time who is willing to bear the scrutiny of critics in pursuit of his own unique passion.  He stands out as a fearless, debauched weirdo from Mississippi, shooting roll after roll in empty parking lots and dusty second hand stores.  Now that he’s written about and praised so profusely, he probably still doesn’t give a damn whether he is considered an artist, and I’m sure he doesn’t spend too much time thinking about each and every frame he’s shot over his decades long career.  My guess is that he probably would have done the same had he never been recognized, and that is something that is truly admirable, whether you like his pictures or not.  

My Last Ride

(This is a piece that I wrote last year, a story about some adventures I had hitchhiking, a lifetime ago.)

It is cold, and the wind fans the dry patches of grass in the ditch where I am laying.  I am still and quiet, trying to keep myself warm by thinking of the Thanksgiving dinner that I would have had if I had stayed home, and not gone off to try and shed my skin again.  The stars above me are brilliant and bright, I welcome their company.  I am trying to stay awake, although there is nothing more that I want in this world than sleep.  I hear the occasional hum of tires on asphalt in the distance, and every so often, the rustling of some creature of the night.  I hope it is not the man who is out there, looking for me.  By now, the fear has bled out, and I am spent.  If I am found, I wonder if there is enough strength left in my limbs to strike out in my own defense, because until I felt my legs give way, I ran.  

I ran and did not look back until I could no longer hear his cursing, as he fumbled around for a flashlight and pursued me through the red dirt somewhere in Western Oklahoma.  If I am killed, I will disappear into the landscape, my ghost cut loose to roam these lonely roads that are the guts of America.  In the long hours that pass, from the dark of midnight until the sun begins to lighten the Eastern sky, I dream my death.  It is not at all what I expected when I set out from Fayetteville, a few short weeks ago. 

I did not hesitate when Poppy asked me to walk away from my job,  It was warm, for November, and we were out back sharing a joint while Carolyn, my co-worker covered the register.   Poppy said that if we left in the morning, we could make Albuquerque by the weekend.  He told me that Albuquerque is a good place to spend the winter, and he knew a few people out there that wouldn’t mind if we crashed on the couch.  When we walked back inside, I told Carolyn that I was leaving.  

I left her with my uniform shirt, and told her to hang on to my last paycheck.  We pilfered some snacks and cigarettes from the shelves and went to collect my things from the place where I had stashed them.  That night we had a party in the way that kids do, as if we were setting out on an expedition to Mars, and that we would never see our friends gathered in a room like this one again.  

In the morning we untangled ourselves from the bodies splayed out amongst flooded ashtrays and crushed cans.  We tossed our packs on our backs and marched like soldiers off to fight a war.  By noon we had made it as far as Van Buren, and feeling the wind in our sails, we decided to find a place to have a cup of coffee and sit down to eat.  We made it to the parking lot of a convenience store before we encountered our first sign of trouble, a police cruiser that followed slowly behind us and flashed lights.  

We sat on the hood of his squad car while townspeople slowed down and leered at me, a Manson family reject, and Poppy, a punk rock version of Jimi Hendrix.  When the cop felt satisfied, that we had been made to feel unwelcome in this small place that he protected from those whose only threat was their disregard for the things he held sacred, he drove us out past the limits of his control, and set us free.  We pieced together one short ride after the next until we crossed the border and it was the evening of the first day.  We spent that night under an overpass outside of Oklahoma City, as the wind came roaring in from the north and we struggled to sleep in our thin Army surplus jackets and quilted blankets. 

Another day passed and the grass thinned and the land looked empty as we drifted in a sea of dirt.  We felt the first pangs of hunger and our lips chapped and bled from the grit that constantly whipped our faces.  

A lifetime of experience was compressed into the span of five days as we watched one car after another drive by and told each other truths and fictions, to pass the time.  Every so often, a pickup truck would slow down and we would hop in the back as we inched our way a little further down the road.   We crossed into Texas, our heads hung low and our bellies empty, but we talked about Albuquerque like it was the promised land and there was no turning back.

In the afternoon of our last day in the wilderness, we saw the familiar silhouette of a Volkswagen van crest a hill and gear down, throwing up a cloud of debris as we ran to meet it.  The smiling face of asaint with eyes bloodshot, beamed down on us and we knew that we were delivered.  As the miles ticked by on the odometer, we filled the cabin up with a thick heavy smoke and watched it drift out the windows, until we spilled out onto the sidewalks of Albuquerque at long last.  

We beat a path towards the University, picking up a bottle on our way to find a cozy spot on the flat roof of a building on campus, where our driver told us no one would bother us, if we kept to ourselves.

The two weeks that I spent in that fabled city was a tale not worth telling.  True, the weather was mild, and we found spaces in the corners where we could crash.  But, for me, there was a point when things began to turn.  The easy life got to be just as monotonous as standing behind a register collecting someone else’s money, and when Poppy told me he was taking off with a girl to California, I knew I’d better go home while I still had a few dollars in my pocket.

I don’t remember saying goodbye, I just remember walking away and sitting on my backpack looking to the West at the painted sky, and the sun glinting off the chrome on the cab of a Peterbilt.  I climbed in and looked across at the driver, a great beast of a man, his face hidden behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. 

The first words the trucker said as we took on speed were, “You ain’t one of them goddamn queers, are you?  Because I will kill a faggot.”  I considered the circumstances, and knew that there was no right answer.  I felt the pressure of the folding knife so far out of reach in my pocket.  I answered, “No.”, and saw him glare at me.  He began to rant, and the hate that was covered by pale, scabby flesh made my stomach churn and I began to feel sick.  He would pause, and wait, playing a game to see if I would crack, if he would find his reason, his excuse.  For hours the game continued and the tension made me tired.  I leaned on the door, pretending to drift off to sleep, with one hand searching for the handle.  Through slitted eyes I watched him, wondering what the end of all of this would be.  By the time we crossed into Oklahoma, it was late, and the world was dark.  He didn’t slow down when he hit the off ramp and it wasn’t until we were well out of sight that he began to brake.  

I waited for my chance and I pulled the handle and launched myself out the cab, tumbling ass over elbows as the truck lurched to a stop in the gravel.  I fell face first over a barbed wire fence, and felt it pull at me.  I let it take my flesh, but I did not stop.

That night in my fitful sleep, I dreamed my death, and I flew up and over the spiteful land until I reached the shore of a distant sea.  When I woke to the dawn of a new day, I was hungry and alone, but it didn’t matter.  I got a ride from a kind man who had been a traveler too.  He said that he picked up everyone that he passed on the side of the road, because he’d been there.   He let me make a call to Carolyn’s mom who lived in Norman.  He bought me eggs and hash browns, and we talked until she arrived.  Carolyn’s mom took me as far as she could, but when I saw the look on her face as the gas gauge slipped over into the red, I gave her the last of my money and waved goodbye.  

When the rain started to fall, cold and hard I began to walk, and I let the cars pass by me without a gesture.  I walked back into town, bedeviled by the wind and the water.  I went straight over to Carolyn’s, took the key from under the mat and let myself in.  I peeled away the clothing so heavy and wet, and lay down on the warm rug to take my rest. 

A More Perfect Union

We are a transient species.  We are driven to seek out a home where we feel safe, find love, or seekopportunity.  We want to be free to live honestly, reach our full potential, and see our children prosper.  We are always searching for green pastures, somewhere on the other side of the next ridge.  Given circumstances that seem impossible; threatened by war, poverty, or oppression, we are willing to risk the perils of the road.  Finding love, or trying to fulfill a dream, we gamble our future in foreign lands.  It is in our nature to wander, but at the end of the journey, we look for places to call home.  All of us came from somewhere else; no matter who you are, anywhere on this planet.  Winds shift, tides shifts, and continents drift; we are the dust of distant stars.

Wading through the rhetoric of our age, you would think that the American continent was born out of the ether; a vast empty space, pre-ordained by God for the exclusive homeland of a small population of Europeans dissatisfied with their treatment in their own countries.  Once the land was settled, it’s natives subdued and it’s independence reckoned with, it took on a mythic character, where it’s leaders were sage, sober men who, with the guidance of the almighty, created the perfect conditions for it’s people to prosper.  Ignoring some of the uglier truths of slavery, forced resettlements, and the suppression of women’s right to vote; it was a terrestrial paradise, where men of industry rose to the top through the sweat of their brow, and the force of their intellect.  This was the order of the day, and won out over it’s enemies at home and abroad, until it suddenly began to crack under the pressure and strain of it’s own generosity of spirit.  The snake oil they peddle is that some have a claim to this land that trumps that of other’s, and that those who come here now are only interested in colonizing, and weakening the present order, as well as leaching off a system that is already at the brink of oblivion.  The demagogues prey on fear, and an underlying sense of panic among a population that has suffered mightily from an historic shift brought about by outsourcing and globalization, and double dealing by those self-same merchants of terror.

What was once a rational argument over the role of immigration in our society and the valid concerns over border security have devolved into jingoism and naked, aggressive racism in the white hot kiln of contemporary politics.  When you have a leading candidate for one political party base his platform on the assumption that our neighbors to the south are “…killers and rapists”, and the rest of them jump through hoops to avoid contradicting him, you know the train has gone off the rails.  The class of windbag that has steadily degraded the tone of conversation to the likes of a David Duke rally, only knows how to paint in black and white, but I prefer to see the whole spectrum.

Where is the truth regarding this issue?  I think most of us know it; at least those of us who have come to know and build relationships with people who have come from all corners of this wide world to make the United States their home.  It is hard to imagine that in our time, people would willfully choose ignorance, because it is fundamentally, I believe, a choice.  A choice to ignore the family that runs the restaurant down on the square, that has truly embraced the “American dream”, throwing everything that they have into their business and sacrificing their present, so that their children will aspire to higher heights.  It is a choice to ignore the kind doctor who worked nights, when she was not in classes, so that she could use her knowledge to care for and heal our children.  It is choosing to dishonor those soldiers, who have sacrificed their lives fighting for us, proud to risk it all for a flag that they adopted, and earned the right to call their own.

Dream City

It takes the better part of a day to cross the mountains from the sweltering heat of Guayaquil to the cool, damp air of Cuenca in a shuttle bus. In the fashion of a true Guayaquileño, the driver of our van goes slow when he should go fast, fast when he should go slow, and occasionally steers with his knee while he texts on a vintage Blackberry.  The blind curves of the winding road are seen as an opportunity to challenge slower traffic as well as the fortitude of his human cargo.  Maybe he suspects that I find his driving skills to be less than professional, because I see him looking at me in the rear view mirror with disdain.  Perhaps it is some motive that I cannot divine, but whatever has drawn his ire, I try to deflect it, hoping that he will concentrate more closely on the road ahead.  The view from the window is enchanting, as we cross through various climate zones and the culture of the coast, with it’s striving hustle, gives way to the mountain peoples measured calm.  As I fight the nausea and the urge to expel this morning’s modest breakfast, I keep being drawn into vistas that pass, as elusive as butterflies.  From the dense forests of the foothills, to the foggy peaks of the Andes, I want to shout at the driver to stop and indulge my desire to walk this land at a pace it’s grandeur demands.  The hillsides, thick with foliage, and lakes that mirror the sky above, inspire vivid daydreaming of wild adventures and exploration.   

Having spent much of my life in Central Arkansas, with it’s low hills and meandering waterways, I am always awed by geologically volatile places.  The Andes are young, and like youth everywhere, they tend to be loud and audacious.  Every so often, one of the volcanoes that run down the rugged spine of the Ecuadorean high country spews red hot magma into the atmosphere and the old gods of the earth demand their tribute.  In return they allow us to see the inner workings of a planet that is daily taken for granted as we look ever inward and the small miracles that are offered to us go unobserved.  I wonder if the other passengers in the van think of this country in the way that I do, or if it is just the space that separates two places; a daily or weekly commute to be endured.  With a glance at faces lit by tiny screens, I know the answer, but I deny it the light of day so as not to spoil my fantasies.  Fortunately my wife, who is accompanying me, has not seen enough of the mountains to be immune to their charms, even though this is her native country. 

By early afternoon, we make it to the suburbs of Cuenca, with it’s new constructions and curious abstract architecture.  Even the homicidal driver has not dampened my mood although he has very nearly killed several children and hunchbacked elderly women.  As the streets narrow towards the center of town, he seems to speed up and pedestrians, accustomed to the mania, move at the precise moment necessary to avoid being casualties.  When we arrive at the terminal, our chauffeur is the first to exit as if fleeing the scene of a crime.  We extract our gear and stretch compacted limbs as a cold, hard rain begins to fall.  By the time we hail a taxi, to make the final leg of our journey, we are soaked to the bone.  

We drop our backpacks off at the hotel, a converted colonial residence with rooms that open onto the courtyard, and hit the cobblestone.  One of the first things that you will notice about Cuenca is the abundance of bakeries, each and every one beckoning you to stop and have a bite to eat, and wash it down with the ubiquitous Nescafe.  We gave in to our cravings and grabbed a croissant as we began our tour of the city, heading over to the flower market in front of the San Marino Cathedral.  Naturally, it is a good place to take a few pictures and marvel at the variety of colorful blooms on display.  To our surprise, there was a street fair to showcase the skill of the local pâtissier’s that rivaled the palette of the floral vendors.  We indulged ourselves, yet again, and set out to see as much of Cuenca as we could, all the while keeping in mind we had only 48 hours to pack it in. 

Justin Booth, Outlaw Poet

Justin Booth is a man whose history is written all over his face, and as he is quick to point out, “I photograph well.”  He is full of an energy that makes him hard to capture, but in the spaces in- between, there is truth to his claim.  I had him in mind for a project, that turned in to something else, as my photo projects often do.  We met at Dizzy’s, where he spends his afternoons sipping whiskey and making conversation.  I watch him and listen, occasionally interrupting, asking him to pause while I take a shot.  He tells me about his recent trip to New York, where he read in a bar in the Bowery, and of his upcoming book release.  We talk about fighting, prison, and life on the street, and how all of those things make good poetry.  It is easy to admire a man who started out by selling books, photocopied himself, on a downtown corner, and who still goes back to visit the homeless camps where he once resided.  Justin writes poems that pair well with a strong drink, and read easy in a noisy beer hall.

His book, “The Singer, The Lesbian, and and the One With the Feet: 69 Bipolar Love Poems”, is being released through Cowboy Buddha Publishing, and will drop on Feb. 15.  Do yourself a favor and head over to the back room of Vino’s to support local writer’s.