Thursday, September 28, 2006
DAY TWENTY-THREE: PROVIDENCE III
Jen has a late shift, so we eat brunch at Nick's on Broadway. She tells me that many of her friends are going through dramatic and difficult times at once, and it's hard to remind herself that she is O.K. We talk about my mother and walk around the neighborhood. She finds a hot livingroom item in an antique store, but it's sort of a secret at the moment. And she goes by a friend's house, but that's a secret, too, and I don't want to ruin her plans by telling.
At home she re-dresses and runs out, bound for the hospital. Scott comes home from a shoot, eats, and leaves again to meet with a former student who attends CCRI. My tasks are to email various people and become entranced with looking for a job and apartment in New York. I also begin a resume of my ancillary skills. Like parrallel parking. And my ability to pick out tunes in a grocery store.
(Jen's afformentioned flow chart)
Somehow I end up on the East Side, driving past a house I lived in on College Hill with 8 RISD students. It was a hole, but an interesting one. After a year we were kicked out and a family refurbished it to a lovely state. Up the street in Prospect Park, which looks out over downtown, I read about a movement in England in the late 1930s called Mass-Observation. Scores of everday people collect random facts from what they observe day-to-day. It's a not-completely-scientific anthropological catalogue of that time period's behaviours. The three figureheads were most intrigued in tracking the impact of events of great importance on the everyday. Vaguely like "People's History...," for England.
I found this part interesting:
"The reader feels as if he were eavesdropping on an enormous, citywide party, all the more appealing because the typical partygoer is both in and out of the game—playing along with the mass-produced artifice around him while a practical, ironic self survives inside."
I feel like I place myself and a viewer of my photographs in this position. Or that I'm photographing this "in and out" state.
Scott meets me for a sushi dinner. It feels like a one-sided conversation. I decide there's a lot on his mind, or he's tired. We go to his studio to prepare for his hotel shoot tomorrow in Newport, and to frame 5 photos for a show next week.
Back at the ranch, Jen is even more subdued than last night. I bought feta and quince paste for an late-night unwinding treat. It feels like the other third nights during this trip: my hosts notice the absence of privacy with a guest. I wasn't quite sure if I should go in to another room or let them do so. Their's seems like a natural response. I'm here for another three days.
Jen has a late shift, so we eat brunch at Nick's on Broadway. She tells me that many of her friends are going through dramatic and difficult times at once, and it's hard to remind herself that she is O.K. We talk about my mother and walk around the neighborhood. She finds a hot livingroom item in an antique store, but it's sort of a secret at the moment. And she goes by a friend's house, but that's a secret, too, and I don't want to ruin her plans by telling.
At home she re-dresses and runs out, bound for the hospital. Scott comes home from a shoot, eats, and leaves again to meet with a former student who attends CCRI. My tasks are to email various people and become entranced with looking for a job and apartment in New York. I also begin a resume of my ancillary skills. Like parrallel parking. And my ability to pick out tunes in a grocery store.
(Jen's afformentioned flow chart)Somehow I end up on the East Side, driving past a house I lived in on College Hill with 8 RISD students. It was a hole, but an interesting one. After a year we were kicked out and a family refurbished it to a lovely state. Up the street in Prospect Park, which looks out over downtown, I read about a movement in England in the late 1930s called Mass-Observation. Scores of everday people collect random facts from what they observe day-to-day. It's a not-completely-scientific anthropological catalogue of that time period's behaviours. The three figureheads were most intrigued in tracking the impact of events of great importance on the everyday. Vaguely like "People's History...," for England.
I found this part interesting:
"The reader feels as if he were eavesdropping on an enormous, citywide party, all the more appealing because the typical partygoer is both in and out of the game—playing along with the mass-produced artifice around him while a practical, ironic self survives inside."
I feel like I place myself and a viewer of my photographs in this position. Or that I'm photographing this "in and out" state.
Scott meets me for a sushi dinner. It feels like a one-sided conversation. I decide there's a lot on his mind, or he's tired. We go to his studio to prepare for his hotel shoot tomorrow in Newport, and to frame 5 photos for a show next week.
Back at the ranch, Jen is even more subdued than last night. I bought feta and quince paste for an late-night unwinding treat. It feels like the other third nights during this trip: my hosts notice the absence of privacy with a guest. I wasn't quite sure if I should go in to another room or let them do so. Their's seems like a natural response. I'm here for another three days.
