Friday, July 15, 2022

Last Train

I am going to my last birthday happy hour with the kids from the factory today.  I'm pretty sure that is the case.  The woman who has organized these outings for the past years, the same one I go to the museums with, says she's had enough and is handing the responsibility off to whoever wants it.  I don't think anyone will want it.  I think that, by and large, people don't really care about going to these things anymore.  I never want to go initially.  I've asked others, and they feel the same way.  Once there, however, it is always fun.  But, you know. . . such socializing can be tedious, too.  Today is a pub crawl beginning at 11:30 and ending at 8:30.  The schedule is determined by the train schedule.  The crawl is traveling about 20 miles from one town to another and back with pub stops along the way.  I don't know how many people will make that trip.  I plan on meeting them for two stops.  I would feel like Fido's ass if I tried to keep up with them.  I'll meet them for lunch and for dinner.  

And then the thing will be over and done.  

And so, in essence, I'll be making a big break with the factory.  It only took about two and a half years.  It will feel like beginning again, I think.  Or I will feel as if the last contacts I have maintained in the world have vanished, and I will truly be the last Japanese soldier on a small island.  

But hey--I have photography.  


I've turned my living room into a studio. . . kinda.  I took a couple self portraits with instant film yesterday to see how that backdrop looks.  It sucks.  It is like one that the photographers use at the kids soccer or baseball photo sessions.  I have to find something else.  You can get this sort for under $100 on any photo sales site or on Amazon.  The best hand painted canvas drops that are used for magazine work start at $1,100 and work their way up to. . . I don't know.  Thousands.  There is a real art to it.  Cynthia Altoriso is a stylist in NYC who once upon a time, when I had a studio and was working at it every day, used to be a friend of sorts.  We corresponded quite often, she often giving me advice.  I visited her once in her studio in SoHo.  It was filled with hand painted drops that her husband made.  It was his business.  I forget the prices on those, but it was jaw dropping.  

I may buy a piece of canvas and try painting one on my own.  There are tutorials, but everyone I've seen says it is difficult.  Still, I may give it a try.  

But why?  I'm doing environmental portraits now.  I need to get out in the streets.  

Just practicing, I guess.  

An old friend of the blog who we call "Red" texted me last night.  She wants me to come play in LaLa Land on a wicked yacht to photograph a bunch of beautiful women.  I don't think I could keep up.  She's still nine and I'm a hundred and two.  She wants to kill me there and Q wants to kill me at Burning Man.  These are rare opportunities, I know, but time and circumstance. . . .  

Q left for Europe today for a couple weeks.  I'll be free to write about him with impunity.  I can defame him in ways never done before.  

I would, but he has the goods on me.  We are blackmailers, both of us.  We have to walk the razor's edge between sweetness and treachery.  This is what friends are--blackmailers.  

I need to scoot if I am going to get anything done today before the last train ride.  I hope to be a bit productive today.  And for that. . . we need music.  

And believe it or not, I can't come up with a song that is apropos.  

Wait--no. . . I remember one!


1 comment:

  1. When I first glanced quickly. When it was fresh. I only saw the outlines of geometric shapes - a painting. The jags and lines and shapes.

    It felt like some chaotic maleness.
    All of them. Somehow. But there is a fading to it all. As well. A durability and a fade.

    Whoever you are, we’ll done.

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