Poor Paul Simon!

This post requires you to know that I'm a bit of a shutter bug. While my level of seriousness varies over time, from periods of slackness where I'm content to carry around a pocket digital, while my film SLR and lenses languish in their bag, to periods of fever pitch insanity where I'm ready to run out and spend money I don't have on an elaborate mahogany and brass 4x5"; where I back everyone I meet into a corner, where I talk at them about leaf shutters until their eyes gloss over. As obsessions go, I think this ranks among the more harmless ones, just so long as I don't really decide to get that 4x5".

I don't pretend to be a professional, or even, to be a good photographer. I just know I enjoy it; the heft of the camera, seeing the world through the finder, dividing it up, composing it how I want it, stealing a moment in time and keeping it for myself. But most of all, I love getting the film back from processing and pawing though the prints, or, slapping them down onto the light table, seeing what worked, what didn't, and what surprises you. It was magic for me as a kid, and it still is now. It's part of what keeps me coming back, and part of what keeps me from really taking digital seriously. Don't misunderstand. I'm not some sort of Luddite who would rather we hadn't progressed beyond wet plates and tin-types. I know that digital has its place, that it isn't going away, and that it's even getting to the point where it's as good as film, but I can never shake the feeling I get every time I squint at the LCD on the back of a camera, that I'm cheating.

And so, in spite of the cries about the death of film that come ringing in from the digital frontier, when it comes to things besides snap-shots, I will continue to use film, if only because it's the only bit of magic that I really have left in this mundane little world. It's what makes this news all the sadder for me. While I've never shot a roll of the stuff in my life, my childhood is bound up with it, in the interminable slide-shows in my grandpa's basement, in the pages of National Geographic, and Arizona Highways. It's the reason I wanted to point a camera at things, and kept wanting to point a Camera at things until I could make a picture that matched the world that I saw in my head, and why I needed to wait until I was 16 or 17 to know who Ansel Adams was (that guy with a beard and that annoying zone system I need to remember for the test next week), but knew Steve McCurry was great when I was six, even if I didn't know his name.

And so, heedless of my nostalgia, progress marches on, leading us all to a cleaner, sleeker, more convenient world where I won't have ever have to wait for anything ever again, let alone mourn for something that I never missed until it was gone.

A Report of Random Observations

Talking with a friend the other day, I stumbled into what can only be described as a bit of mental silliness. It's something that happens with semi-regularity, where I'll say something, blink, think a little, and reduce what I'd just said back to something that is barely intelligible, having no apparent similarity to its original form. The conversation in question was about the relationship between language and thought, and the thing that made me blink was something like, "Well, I've been reading Orwell..." And that's all I got out, before the aforementioned blinking and thinking.

It's a commonplace usage, really, to read an author, rather than an author's output, but what does it mean? Are all texts such an extension of their author that we can refer to them the same as if they were part of the author's body? To read is to understand. To say that one reads the weather, or the auguries, or what have you, is to say that you gain understanding of the thing read. So it follows, that to read an author is to gain insight into that author, his way of thinking, his worldview, his ethics, his hopes, dreams, etc. But, at the same time, it feels very wrong to reduce a life down like that. To say that you know someone because you have read their books is arrogant. It makes me think of Hamlet scolding Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in III.ii:


"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me."


Men are more than the sum of their parts, certainly, but does that make understanding someone through their output a useless exercise? To say this, is naïve. Were this so, Milton never would have said that "a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life"; never would have made the same connection I did, by calling the book the author's life-blood; never would have made the book a physical part of its creator.

So, how much is it proper to gain from reading an author? How much is it actually practicable? How much is a responsible amount, and at what point does it become arrogant? I'm not sure, and really don't want to hazard a guess. I just know that I like reading.

A Brand New Year

I can never really get too worked up over holidays. I enjoy the time off, sure, and the time I spend with family and friends and all, but, the actual event never really touches me, and I find myself looking in on the inevitable pomp and ceremony of the thing with a knowing smile, of the sort that you usually reserve for over-eager children, or adults who pretend to know much more than they actually do.

It's the sort of smile I see a lot of, so it's easy to emulate when I need to.

In any event, for better or for worse, we and the terraqueous globe upon which we stand have been thrown 'round the sun once more. Hurrah for the inverse-square law of universal gravitation, and hurrah for the only national drinking holiday in honor of physics!

And so, it's in honor of Sir Isaac that I make a resolution for the new year, and not to placate the howling masses of the unwashed; the faex populi. Listen! and I shall tell you the goal I place before myself in the new year. Draw near, and hear!

I resolve here, and publicly to fail more.

What's that mean exactly? Well, think it though. If I'm failing at things, that means I'm doing something, working at something, working towards something, and learning. Failure has always been something I've been afraid of, something to avoid at all costs; better do nothing then to fall on your face.

I have no idea where I got this attitude from, but it does me no good; it keeps my blogger account full of half finished entries that were abandoned in disgust even before they could rightly be called an 'initial draft'. I'll blame my public school education.

But still, I resolve to fail more, and learn from it, grow from it, and be a better sort of person all around. Might even venture out into the social sphere and get my fail on there too! Glorious!

So, with that, I bid you fare-well, and wish you think upon Sir Isaac at this time of year, remembering that he's the reason for the season!