- posted by cjb @ 11:47 PM

 

Blaster(ella) Cat, 2003-19.  Courtesy her family.
- posted by cjb @ 10:20 AM

 

The following exchange, two years ago, in an intensive-care ward at VGH with a friend very close to death, midway through a 20-minute visit:

G [out of nowhere, surprised]: Who's that cat you brought in?

CJB: Cat?

G: That little grey...girl cat.  [Points at the end of his bed].  I can see you.  Yeah. I see you winking at me.  [to me] She came in with you!  They don't allow...cats in here.

CJB [very weirded out]: G., is the cat you see a kitten?

G: Looks like it, yeah.  [long pause]  But she's old.
- posted by cjb @ 4:28 PM

 

Last glimpse of a grumpy but loving old friend, attended by a better-natured younger housemate and (unseen) a co-parent photographer and a very old spirit who seldom travels far from me. I am sure of very few things in this life but am certain that animals can feel themselves loved, as this old beauty has been & will be.  Goodbye Blasterella; L. & I were privileged to know you. I will look for you near your chickens, in the shadows on the lawn. 
- posted by cjb @ 4:00 PM

 
"I have disabused myself of any thought of a normal future, but I allow myself a provisional optimism about the possibilities of what time I will be allowed. And I’m determined to experience what life will allow me. I know I have a short while possible to me, but I don’t want to constrict or profane that with recrimination or a distorting bitterness."
- posted by cjb @ 8:35 PM

 
"After the ceremony, I walked around different old neighborhoods, which were remarkably untouched by time. Aside from the occasional person taking photos with their phones, it may as well have been 1978, when sophisticated metropolitan nocturnal decadence like “Josie,” “FM (No Static at All),” and other Steely Dan songs were [sic] floating out of cars driving throughout Rego Park, Elmhurst, Kew Gardens, and Forest Hills in bright mid-afternoon--"
- posted by cjb @ 1:48 PM

 
Sonic archaeology: This Night's 2:44 yowl is pure Roger Hodgson
- posted by cjb @ 10:38 PM

 
Geoffrey James & me on IG:

-Oh, Garden X.

-No, Garden Y.

-I suppose one cactus looks like another.

-If I really believed that, I wouldn't be making pictures.
- posted by cjb @ 10:33 AM

 

Cardoon, 2019

1. The decision re: a subject is already made when the camera comes out.  The "subject-seeking process" precedes the choice of equipment or tools.  Subjects are chosen through a combination of thinking, feeling, reflection, etc., a black-box process mostly impervious to analysis.

2. The subject registered by the tool(s), is a bunch of pieces, of fragments.  I make multiple exposures to confirm them.

3. When I perceive a subject "as a picture," or at least as "a possible picture," what I actually perceive is a gestalt, and the picture-making process is a process of disaggregation, of identifying the pieces that make up the mental whole.

(Editing a prose paragraph)

(Removing what is unnecessary)

(Stating more simply)

(Isolating elements; respecting their autonomy)

4. Everything signifies, as in abstract painting (Linsley, but also "Western tableau form" (Wall)).  The picture's autonomy, its freedom, lies in the equality of its details, as opposed to its "being or bearing a depiction" (Wall) of a preexisting hierarchy in the world: Jesus Christ; a king's or queen's face; the emperor's silhouette; a battle, etc.

5. The bricks; the fence; the concrete chunks; the white oval hoops and the visually rhyming shoot above the wooden triangle; the reflected sunlight in the far right upper corner.

5a. If I discuss my pictures, it's only by referring to details.

6.  "But it's only photography--"

7. Sherrie Levine: something resembling a thing while not being that thing.

8. If I thought I was Edward (or, worse, Brett) Weston, poised to "continue a tradition," I'd be making gelatin-silver prints with negatives from an analog camera.  But my pictures are digital; "dry"; and hopefully not fucking around with nostalgia for the medium or so-called "craft standards."
- posted by cjb @ 10:38 PM

 

Wires and shadows, 2019
- posted by cjb @ 9:29 AM

 

Vessel, 2019
- posted by cjb @ 7:21 AM

 

Charlie Munger, Unplugged [subscription]

"If I have to be a little bit more cheerful about things, then I say to myself, ‘I’m lying, but I’m going to do it anyway.’ [Pause.] I had a son [Teddy] who died [of leukemia in 1955]. I told him he wasn’t going to die. When he started his thing, I lied. It just killed me, but I just lied to him. [Long pause.] He was 9 years old. [Extended pause.] I’m sure I did the right thing, but it hurts. [Clears his throat.]"

Lots of love for Mr. Munger, 95, over here at Anodyne HQ.  No PFB without Charlie, and definitely no Anodyne Inc. either.  One of the very few people I have taken as a role model. Massive contrarian intelligence; independence of mind; rationality; deep concealed empathy.  To get to one of "my" subjects, the Huntington Desert Garden, you walk down a long rectangular alley past the Munger Research Center, and each time I pass it I am reminded of Charlie, whose fine example gave me the impetus to get to the Huntington in the first place, and the means to come back, over & over again, for something like a decade now, to make something of my own.
- posted by cjb @ 8:45 AM

 
"When someone actually solves a problem that he merely has had ideas about, he believes that he understood the matter all along."  (John R. Pierce)
- posted by cjb @ 8:36 AM

 



- posted by cjb @ 10:02 PM