Monday, November 21, 2016

An Example of the Theory



Sick and medicated, lying in bed preparing to sleep, listening to Springsteen's "Nebraska" album after playing the song "Born to Run" for someone not familiar with it, I explained that the final stanza of the song was the masterpiece.  Like many three stanza poems, you have a structure of situation, conflict, and resolution.  The resolution in this song is well done, I said, and is the hallmark of Springsteen's career, the tired, desperate fatalism of an America addicted, succored, then betrayed by dreams.

That's what I said, I said.

Then in a near coma, I listened to the songs of the album as I fell asleep, thinking, "This is the photography I must try to make.  I must try to capture those dreams and disappointments of Trump America."

A much needed theme!

It will take energy and time.  I try to call up the photographs in my head before I make them, mostly black and white and grainy, for if everyone is right, this is a throwback to an older America.  I might be able to capture the disappointment of the America of which they speak. . . if I had the money and time.  You see, I would have to travel.  That America is "out there," not here where I live.  Some, maybe, but I live in the new America, or at least am surrounded by it.

I don't know.  It would be so very difficult, but what isn't that's worth doing.  And, I think, I'm just the fellow to do it.  I'm good at listening and taking people's stories.  I am a disarming sort.

But. . . I have to work.

Am I not a great example of the theory?

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