to have the sound of this guy playing some buckets playing in my head all the time.

I got to see some of Bradley’s photographs Thanksgiving evening. I would link to them if they existed on the interwebs, but they don’t. Yet.

It is really hard for me to talk about photographs when I’ve been drinking, and only get to see one image at a time, on a table in the living room.

I need to learn how to see images on someone else’s terms or in a non-ideal setting, because after talking with Bradley, Dara and Tessa last night, I have realized that I let so much shit get in the way of my seeing or feeling a photograph.

There is the size. The paper. The shape. The type of camera. The photographer. The subject matter. The place photographed. The place in which the photographs are shown. The time. The quality. The “quality.” All of these things, whether or not identifiable, become pieces that are important to me when I look at the photograph. Are they the photograph, though? Is this an “ends” and “means” thing?

After everyone had left last night, I wanted to take pictures. So I walked around the apartment with a couple of cameras. I haven’t left a photo crit like that in a while - wanting to photograph after talking to people about photographs.

I’ve been thinking (despite myself) about John’s photographs of cameras and have been echoing the practice. It is enough sometimes to just look at the machine - in use, around your own neck, on a table.

I cooked my first turkey yesterday. It required a call and a visit to a butcher’s shop (Staubitz Market - my first visit to a proper butcher’s), and three phone calls to my mom. Tessa has cooked turkey a few times, but has never eaten it - and wouldn’t be eating any of this one - so I figured I should try to do it myself. It took a little longer than I thought it was going to, and some of the breast meat was a little dry (I like my turkey really juicy), but all-in-all I’m pretty satisfied with the dead bird.

I have a lot of leftovers.

We were fortunate enough to be with friends for Thanksgiving - pictured is Andrea, Michael, Emilie and Dara. Tessa was in the kitchen heating food, I think Bradley is getting some beer, and I am taking the photograph. We had enough people and hot food in the apartment to steam up the windows.

Last night and this morning, I went through my digital images from September first to the present. I edited a lot less than I usually do - and ended up with about 170 photographs. Link to Flickr set

They aren’t organized into any sort of order. There are some bad photographs. I edited the whole thing as quickly as I could, trying to rely on my first reaction to the photograph.

The Most Famous Photographs

(via reddit)

Many of these photographs are very famous, and many of them are incredible photographs - but that’s not at all what I thought I was going to see for some reason.

Ah, right! Journalism!

My experience, however, is that you can’t manage to think about things simply by deciding to, and that the mind’s deeper currents often need to be surprised by indirection, sometimes, indeed, by treachery and ruse, as when you steer away from a goal in order to reach it more directly or look away from an object to register it more exactly.

—Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, pg. 71

I don’t think you can not say that applies pretty generally. Or something.

Between John, Bradley, and me there has been a discussion about thinking about photographs that is actually going somewhere, I think.

And so, I’m moving a part of the discussion here.

All this talk about thinking can get confusing. At least. And at worst, can get useless - kind of masturbatory and weird… just the idea of three amatuer psychologists all talking about what they know makes me a little queasy.

However, I think that there is also useful information to be had.

Bradley refines the idea of “not thinking” into actually “not trying so hard to think” - which is a useful distinction; his soap analogy is apt:

This might quite possibly be the worst analogy you have every heard but it is like trying to hold wet soap. If you have a kung fu grip you just end up looking at your feet being pissed at yourself.

But you’re still trying to hold the soap - it’s not that you’ve given up entirely - it’s kind of like looking at dim stars through the corners of your eyes instead of directly.

So, I kind of understand that. And then John takes us a little further:

Since we can’t “not think”, how about Feel more?

And there it is! It’s the thing I’m actually worried about, the thing that’s harder for me to do than any other thing when I make art: feel about it! It means actual emotional and personal investment instead of simple intellectual “knowing” (which is probably impossible anyway).

I’ve been working on some video work lately, and it’s very personal. That is, the subject matter is obviously me (because I’m in front of the camera as much as behind it) and it’s narrative, because I’m reading aloud (narrating) something that has to do in some way with the visual content of the video. And I think it’s more successful than any photographs I’ve ever made in that it exposes me and makes me vulnerable in ways I do not otherwise allow.

I’m not really sure why this seems easy to do with video and hard to do with photographs - when speaking with Bradley the other night, he said that the “solution” (my word, not his) was to try and make my photographs more like the videos.

And I want to - I want to make personal photographic work - but it just seems so difficult - so much thinking to do what I do without thinking when I make videos.

It might have something to do with my still general incompetence about all things video versus my general familiarity with all things photo.

So… how do you learn to feel more? To see more? And how do you allow yourself to be educated emotionally as well as intellectually by your own work so that you’re making progress?

(And how can you write sentences with more italicized words for emphasis?)

Also: how important are semantics when we talk about the subjective? Is that counter-productive? Or is it a necessary part of using one language to talk about another? Are photographs about semantics? Are photographs semantic?

[Origin: 1655–65; < Gk sēmantikós having meaning, equiv. to sēmant(ós) marked (sēman-, base of sēmaínein to show, mark + -tos verbal adj. suffix; akin to sêma sign) + -ikos -ic]

1. Renovation of the brownstone next door
   At 6:30 am, every freaking day.
2. The laundromat
   Or, more precisely, the fact that the television is always tuned to The View. I swear, it’s like some sort of temporal hole where this one hour of television repeats all day long.
3. Not getting any form of steady paycheck
   It’s very difficult to live on a budget in NYC. Or anywhere.
4. The smell that came from one of our downstairs neighbors’ apartments last night
   For some reason, what smells like delicious, heavily spiced goulash in the hallway outside your door smells like week-old cabbage and milk inside our apartment.

Today was really nice - 64 degrees F and sunny - so I thought I’d go for a run. I wanted to run over the Brooklyn bridge, as I hadn’t actually been on that one yet.

It’s a beautiful piece of architecture. However, it is a horrible bridge to run on. Or walk or ride a bike.

Even so, there were about a billion people on it. And most of them are tourists. Taking photographs of themselves with Manhattan and the setting sun in the background.

Tourists love doing things like: walk while swinging their arms really widely, stopping suddenly and turning around against traffic, walk the wrong way in the bike lane (making NYC bike commuters visibily - and occasionally audibly - angry), and stare at you like you’re a total moron for running over the most scenic sunset viewing spot in the city (Hey - isn’t that the Statue of Liberty?! Look, a Macy’s bag!).

I know I haven’t lived here long enough to consider myself truly New Yorkian, but I did feel a little kinship with the angry bike commuters today - we could’ve even exchanged knowing glances if that crazy biker lady hadn’t been so intent on yelling at that woman who was taking a photograph of her mom.

Also: I made it to 8.4 miles today, mostly because I didn’t want to run back over the Brooklyn bridge, and so I ran through Chinatown up to the Manhattan bridge.

That’s the beauty of my particular brand of logic: if I do something that’s unpleasant (running over the busy Brooklyn bridge), I will allieviate that by doing something that’s horribly impossible (attempt to run through Chinatown).

I needed to walk for a few minutes anyway.

I’m not exactly sure what sparked this, but I’ve been craving Ramen all the time lately.

My most recent creation:

1 pkg. Chicken flavor Top Ramen (our selection is pretty slim at our local grocer - any mail-order suggestions?)
1/2 pkg. frozen vegetable medley (green beans, carrots, lima beans and peas)
dried onion flakes
dried parsley
black and red pepper (a lot)
jasmin rice

Cook the rice, un-freeze the vegetables; boil the water for the ramen with the onion, parsley and pepper; add ramen brick (unbroken!) cook until done (2-3 min.), dump into bowl (I like the water, so I don’t drain) and add other ingredients. Sometimes I also add chicken.

I spent a little while the other day at The Official Ramen Homepage. I realized that by most of their standards, I am not a true ramen connisseur (My ramen creations are very boring; I like “soup” instead of just noodles; I buy the really cheap stuff; I usually use the flavor packet). However, I am willing to try new (and better) things!

What are your ramen suggestions?