Showing posts with label touch touch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label touch touch. Show all posts
FORTUNATE
i woke up at seven this morning. made myself a bowl of coffee. read from a book a little while. stared out the window and felt a sense of low washing over me like a morning fog.
juliet woke up and walked around in this weather for a bit and realized, fast, that it was coming from me and not the outside. she tried to dance away the fog but it was real thick, so i left for work, hopefully taking the clouds with me.
at work, as soon as the other guys arrived- around 11:30, i told them that i was going home. i could not be there today. i wanted to see juliet, desperately. i needed to hear her voice. when i got home, she spoke in perfect quotes- little post it notes, saying exactly what i needed to hear.
one of the quotes, she told me in a smart and confident voice-
"love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction." –antoine de saint-exupéry, from wind, sand, and stars
i can feel the fog lifting.
THE FRONT ROOM OF HER PLACE
j s e watching a "six feet under" episode.
like so many people, i wish that there was a way to film exactly what i see in the moment.
i'm really fond of uta barth's work, because so much of it is photographed in the front room of her place.
i try to keep the cameras ready to grab these things, quick. these small things of life. the ones that sort of stop you dead in your tracks.
the light on this day was beautiful. i was photographing it on the walls of our apartment, very barth-like compositions. i suppose the photos i took that day were a bit too much like ms. barth, but then i look over into j s e's office and i see her sitting, satisfied in a television bliss and there it was, oh.
i think many people do the same thing. you want to preserve things. moments in your hands. things that you love. some treasure, some representation of the heart, captured with eyes (and camera), unadorned. i am so fortunate to live in this beautiful apartment with two beautiful beings, our cat, jack boots (very difficult capture on camera) and juliet (very easy on the eyes).
listen, if you like, to a song by the group lali puna called "small things."
this version of the song is from a mix that i constructed for a gift store.
the lyrics are really simple and to the point of all this:
big mistakes
biggest hurt
my whole past behind glass
great divide
great deceit
the whole past on my mind
remember the small things
you say: remember the small things.
photograph by uta barth
WONDERFULNESS
it was right around this time last year that juliet and i worked on our first collaboration for touch touch. it was a video called “parking meter.”
we pay monthly for overnight parking about a block away from our place. our neighborhood is pretty crowded, so it’s nice to always have a space at night. the space is ours until 9am and then we must pay for hourly / day parking by the meter. we rarely leave the house before 12 noon and some days we don’t leave at all. so i get out of bed and walk to the lot to buy us more time.
sometimes i just don’t want to get out of bed, so i don’t.
ticket us ($35)! i say this in a mark e. smith half asleep voice.
i’m independently wealthy in bed. besides, sometimes we get lucky and for whatever reason we don’t get a ticket. it’s totally random.
there is a great newsstand about three blocks away. it’s run by this fella that seems to be a very happy person. he has made a nice little world for himself and his customers. he’s got a couple of cafe tables and a chess board. he sells cool sodas, juices and water. he’s got a television and a decent boombox connected to speakers hung on either side of his l-shaped stand. he plays wonderful music on the stereo at just the right volume for the experience of being there. and magically, it doesn’t interfere with the outdoor speakers at the ubiquitous starbucks, right across the street from him!
it can start your day just right visiting this stand and this man. he is always glad to see you with a friendly word or two. small talk, the kind i like. human being to human being. if you’re not in the mood for chit chat, he’s totally aware. by the time you leave though, even if you haven’t said much, you feel a little better, i swear. i still don’t know his name and he doesn’t know mine.
this morning i felt fine. when i stopped by the stand i was greeted by a bubbly, percussive, percolating sound with a lush and a lovely blue line above it. i said to him, “so what sort of wonderfulness are you playing for us this morning?” he says, “oh man you hit that on the head--miles davis!” i was slightly embarrassed because i usually know miles davis’ trumpet as soon as i hear it and said "oh, yeah, that’s nice.”
i looked up and across the street a couple was dancing outside of the starbucks by their umbrellas. they almost seemed like they were dancing to miles but of course it was something entirely different and marketed by the starbucks label. as i was walking back to our place i thought to myself, you gotta be a special kind of person or a complete dork to start dancing at a starbucks around 9 in the morning.
oh and go here to watch the first touch touch video, “parking meter”
by j s e and r s e.
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