If the pictures are wow or teasing it won't matter much what you say, she says, and if they're crap words won't save them either which is fine cause I tend to be tongue-tied not easy finding words that ring wholly true and tied-up neatly with a ribbon lick pink or black R.I.P.
I was long shy which is why I shoot buildings. You see the bright harsh neon light at night beckoning me in but keeping me out too apprehensive with my camera. People ought to be judiciously avoided, she says, but they keep creeping back in and to the good, like the girl waiting to cross the street, the banner on the building says: "you live 30000 days but kiss on 180 only," so suddenly it's a live-wire moment out of the permanent concrete. Yeah I see, she says, the cliché.
Buildings yeah well, Bill Wordsworth roamed the hills of Windermere daffodils and all, but now here we live in cities hemmed in like mice in mazes amazing while what's left of nature is become walled in like a park or cemetery or the garden of Eden after the expulsion.
The pictures that look foreign are from Romania the country my folks are from, now struggling to put behind it a lifespan of tyranny wanton and egregious while all the best and brightest who dared or were able left. You've seen the orphans and coal dust. So here I am in Bucharest confronted with these inscrutable buildings and streets.
Anyhow, the people in the villages welcomed me in with plum brandy. They sat patiently while I set up my shots. Art is a piece of artifice, framing a piece of something like an icon while leaving out all the rest. In the stove, before I came, after I left.