Favourite food: Bitter gourd

“The self … is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.”

–Erving Goffman, “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”

(How I love this book, let me count the ways…)

Favourite food: Bitter gourd (called karela in Hindi).

On moving from one class to the next, often classmates would ask you to fill a diary, especially in Convent schools in India, and answer generic questions regarding favourite things like book, food, movie, song before coming to the main point, ‘what do you think about me?’ Whereby a person duly wrote some pithy falsehood without a twinge on the conscience (despite all the teachings of the good nuns in the moral science classes). How to co-exist with other people is an early learning in India, given that we grow up with over a billion of them. Whether we learn our lessons well is another question altogether.

Needless to say, what I thought were honest answers weren’t always appreciated. Consider the answer above. My responses were seen as flippant, sometimes outright lies. But bitter gourd has been (and continues to be) my favourite food ever since I could tell apart taste. However, putting down chocolate would have made everyone comfortable and kept up appearances, I know.

“If we see perception as a form of contact and communion, then control over what is perceived is control over contact that is made, and the limitation and regulation of what is shown is a limitation and regulation of contact.”

For me it was an early learning: in any given situation what do you do? Maintain popular perception, or break the contract by acting out a whim and thereby altering other people’s perception regarding you, as well as, the situation being played out? (And not necessarily in your favour.)

Yes, it is as complicated as it reads, but in human interactions it plays out casually in the blink of an eye. For much of my growing years I was troubled by understanding the limits and regulations of contact, and communion. More so given the fact that my teen years for the most part “played out” literally in the public eye. After all, success in life depends on “reading” the situation and “acting accordingly”. (Case in point: Donald Trumps pitch perfect role in the US Presidential nomination race.)

Then I came upon Erving Goffman’s seminal book on social interaction, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)– needs a revisit/update in this age of thinly sliced identity politics and carefully curated social media profiles. And soon after that followed Ingmar Bergman’s seminal film Persona. Both enriched and continue to enhance my understanding of the self (as one perceives it) and the socially interacting self (as one plays/the society perceives it).

Above all, since then I’ve found my place (and a comfortable one) in the social scene. 

To See or Not to See

 “Jack can see he sees

       what he can see Jill can’t see

and he can see

       that Jill can’t see that she can’t see

but he can’t see why

       Jill can’t see that Jill can’t see.”

– R. D. Laing, ‘Knots’

‘Who are you going to believe, me or your eyes?’

– Grucho Marx, ‘Duck Soup’

It is spring. I am considering the Bigleaf Magnolia, quietly and as unobtrusively as I can. Or so I think. Yet, my being still and looking at a flower has caused an unintended ripple. For this is a much visited tourist spot. Many determined people solemnly, briskly walk the highline, only stopping to take photographs. As expected a few stop next to me, click a quick picture and move on, others shrug their shoulders (probably thinking ‘what’s she looking at’) and the more mindful people (concentrating on one thing at a time) quickly estimate a way to bypass me without slacking their pace.

An elderly woman asks, ‘what flower is that?’ I reply, ‘Magnolia, a bigleaf magnolia.’ She, ‘It looks nothing like the magnolia in my garden’ and shaking her head walks away.

(Bigleaf Magnolia has the largest simple leaf and single flower among all native North American plants.)

A season of birds in NYC. Some prominent ones missing because there was no camera on hand.

“Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

–Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘Psychological Observation (Studies in Pessimism)

It is summer. In Chelsea, a robin is singing (Cheer up; cheer-ee-o). The song can be discerned among the human noises, only if you listen very hard.

Yesterday at lunch someone said that the only birds you see in New York are pigeons. Perhaps she belonged to that category of Americans who according to a Cornell Lab poll thought that house sparrows grew up to become pigeons.

Meanwhile on this summer day, by listening very hard I heard more than a handful of birds call out to the morning. And all before lunchtime. (The birds were: White-throated Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, American Robin, House Sparrow, Starling and Northern Mockingbird.)

“Seeing is a neglected enterprise.”

–Saul Leiter (quote from his obituary in New York Times)

“The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.”

– Goethe

It is autumn. We are walking on 20 some street, right next to the public housing projects (that is low-cost housing for the working classes– nurses, policemen, teachers and such like) when she suddenly blurts out, “You don’t see any black people in New York, how surprising.” I am speechless for a split second. To start some of our neighbors are “black people”, the four concierges in our building are “black people” and right now we are walking besides towers that house mostly “people of color”. How blinkered has our vision become? What is the function of the human eye?

But then most people from India who visit us in New York are people of a certain educational and class background, who like people of their kind all around the globe throw around their biases and ignorance as unselfconsciously and as loudly as their voices (especially in public places)– they are unapologetic about flaunting their privilege because for the most part they have chosen to be willfully ignorant.

And no, just because you’ve watched Friends, it doesn’t mean you ‘know’ life in New York City.

(The part of Chelsea we were walking through is the subject of a new documentary on income inequality “Class Divide”: http://hamptonsfilmfest.org/features/qa-marc-levin-class-divide/ )

“Let every eye negotiate for itself,

And trust no agent”

– William Shakespeare, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’

“One hundred tellings are not as good as one seeing.”

–Chinese proverb

It is winter, a freakishly warm winter. I am contemplating the parable about a student in search of a renowned teacher. Every culture has some version of the story. A student seeks a great teacher. But to get to the sought after teacher, the student has to go through certain hardships– ford unruly rivers and climb steep mountains, or else, solve tricky puzzles– to prove to be worthy of the wisdom being desired. Often wisdom is found during the course of the search itself, even before the student sets sight on the teacher. Because knowledge though arguable free, does not come to those who wait passively.

And sometimes, even the best of teachers can’t help you. For as the German proverb goes, if the eye does not want to see it, neither light nor glasses will help.

And then there are those other times:

“(What do you see when you turn out the light?) I can’t tell you, but I know it is mine.”

– Lennon–McCartney, ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’

October State of Mind

Last October while walking in Central Park we made three wishes. In time all three came true. How were we to know that that particular twilight was infused with pixie dust? For if we had known we’d not have been so casual with our wishes. And of course, been mindful of the caveat: be careful what you wish for.

Some years ago, we received a benediction; you are lucky to be able to do what you want and to do it at your own terms. The benediction was heartfelt, but how it weighs on our heads. Can you imagine what the benediction entails?

We say, ‘come to think of it all regrets, if there are any, are about not compromising on our principles’. But it is only the foolish that regret, and only the foolish that collect causes for regrets. So it goes.

*

October is always a state of mind.

October when the harvest comes home. No matter where you live, you reap what you sow. Back home the beginning of celebrations, most prominently marked by the start of the great Indian wedding season. Out here in the global West with the sun low in the sky, the leaves turning color, seeds parachuting in the wind, the harvest ushers in another state of mind, and one that closely resonates with mine:

“Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.”

– Robert Frost, After Apple–Picking

*

October, gorgeous October. 

Today it gently rains and outside my window there are yellowed leaves in the wind: hundreds of twirling dervishes, mesmerizing, hypnotic. Now the wind pauses and a lone yellow leaf launches from the rooftop garden far above. Unlike the wind orchestrated frantic twirling from a few moments before, it makes its way down slowly one floor at a time. It took an eternity, but there it is now one with the yellow pile by the curbside.

 It is only the foolish that regret, and only the foolish that collect causes for regrets.

(For another look at autumn in five pictures and poems begin here: http://on.fb.me/1wRoBpG)

Some things...

...I wonder about when there’s nothing else to do

*

How is buying books, ‘owning’ hundreds of books piled up here, there and everywhere in the house, not a form of consumerism?

*

How do you answer certain questions without tearing down someone’s cherished ideas about human society and human aspiration?

For example: ‘why do you watch birds? What do you get out of it?’

How can people not be amazed at the life of a bird? Any bird.

*

Yet how melancholy we become at the changing of the human made landscape, the passing of things– that Café now a pharmacy; that rundown empty warehouse now an apartment complex. (Never mind that once that Café was a clump of trees on a cliff; that warehouse, a river’s bed.)

How it makes us mourn.

Our memories and aspirations are imprisoned within things.

*

Without books we have no knowledge, without that Café and that warehouse we have no memory. Without these few object– books and other ‘memorabilia’ we surround ourselves with– things we can’t live without, we are nothing.

In the absence of our material world we are nothing.

That is what every wise person since time immemorial has been trying to explain.

*

Kuch pane ke liye, kuch khona padta hai (roughly it means to get something, you lose/give up something)

Writing. Walking. Watching birds is an exercise in giving up a sense of self– the one that is bound by memories and aspirations.

What is gained is nothing.

When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.

In Parable Land

“Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: "Go over," he does not mean that we should cross over to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.”
― Franz Kafka On Parables

Though in all probability both of them have lost. Such is life in parable land.

The Existential Crisis

Where am I? What does it mean to say: the world? What is the meaning of that word? Who tricked me into this whole thing and leaves me standing here? Who am I? How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought from a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn’t it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager? I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint? 

― Søren Kierkegaard from Repetition, A Venture in Experimental Psychology

Søren Kierkegaard was born on 5th May, 1813.

On Failure

In certain classrooms in North America, teachers are discussing the existence of failure. The fact that one does not always succeeding in whatever one does in life. And that is OK. In a culture where nothing succeeds like success, how did it come to this? Here’s one explanation.

Please note: By young adult I mean anyone over the age of 15, old enough to read Emily Dickinson as well as P.G. Wodehouse and appreciate the beauty of both (in theory).

Scenario one:

A young adult gets ticked off in class. After class she logs on to Facebook and decries the “injustice” she has faced. Immediately gets a 100 likes and her hurt feelings are assuaged. One would like to point out that that’s 100 out of 6 billion, but one is too stunned by the parents (and their friends) applauding her rant. How about a chat on ‘learning from criticism’. Or for that matter the perils of writing out loud in anger that leads to loss of perspective. And grammar in today's world.

Scenario two:

A young adult writes a term paper and will go on to write countless more in the (at the least) 6 years she’ll spend in college. But the parents share it far and wide– a term paper on dialectic materialism or some such is suddenly deemed worthy of a Pulitzer. (Good luck dealing with rejection that is the one constant fact in every writer’s life, dear young woman.) I recall my college days. My parents would have said a simple well done and then directed me towards Stephen Jay Gould or Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness to widen my perspective. In short, encouraged me to read more and write better. That is if I had been silly enough to consider a term paper as something they deserved to suffer through too.

What I mean to point out is that there is a difference between encouragement and unfettered praise which is merely setting up someone for gigantic failure and heartbreak. A little jab of honesty is always better than a  lifelong burden that is a lie. What we are witnessing is a parenting fail perhaps. It seems parents are involved in ever minor, meaningless aspect of their child's 'education' but shield the child from the harsher lessons of life.

So we end up projecting mixed messages. On one hand we say, “You are a genius”. Then the young adult comes face to face with differential calculus: 

 

And we promptly produce the meme about how a fish can’t ride a bicycle and so on to prove everyone is different. However, no one tells the young adult that intelligence is neither inborn, nor an entitlement but something learned. It involves lots of hard work. And sometimes, no matter how hard we try it still eludes us. Just like life.

For parents in the above mentioned scenarios, here’s J.K. Rowling beautiful commencement speech on the ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination’.

Other Worlds

“It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind…It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”
― Carson McCullers, ‘Look Homeward, Americans’ 

It's been a while and I wondered, "Does anyone read blog posts anymore?" I'd be lying if I said I was torn between nostalgia and homesickness. For one, I have been posting very regularly on Facebook. But also because I have no such 'feelings' towards posting entries on the blog as I know for certain that nothing lasts for ever. It's because, just like our fellow primates (I have watched the chimpanzees at the London Zoo very closely), we get bored too easily. Look at how we read online: in just 10 seconds we decide whether we should read further or move onto whatever is next.

But I have also learnt that boredom is the biggest motivating force. It can motivate us towards either action or inaction. In fact, to accomplish (or insert any other word you'd rather ascribe to daily existence) anything in life one has to sacrifice boredom, it's not easy but it has to be done. At that the precise moment imagination walks in opening the way to other worlds.

Today I Am Wise

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. 
– Rumi

(Click on the picture to enlarge and read.)

-->

This post is a culmination of ruminations that can be found here and here.

-->

As it happens often when you open a random page of a well loved and much read book it pithily lays bare the path out of the labyrinth that you had been spending months (if not years) trying to decipher.

In another life I worked in the development sector. It is no secret. Nor is it a matter of pride– or embarrassment.  Like so many other things in the world it just is. Leonard Cohen, in a brilliant interview in The Guardian said, “All I have to put in my song is my experience.” Similarly when I say, I left the development sector and found the path to true virtue (I make no claim to be virtuous though I hope to get there), it is based purely upon my experience.

In an attempt to reach the kernel of ‘why’ I felt discomforted in the ‘company’ of ‘organized do gooders’ I may have written what could amount to a decent sized thesis. Though I could summarize it in these few word– Doing good* for the sake of feeling good about you. Intentional acts of kindness performed in the belief that by being charitable one is not just good but somehow better than other living beings that inhabit this planet. That was something I couldn’t abide with. Because Intentional Virtue is not Virtue.

The picture above is from The Tao Speaks: Lao Tzu's Whispers of Wisdom, adapted and illustrated by Tsai Chih Chung, translated by Brian Bruya.

*The good is italicized because like all value judgments what is good is not only comparative but also established by people living in a particular time and age. That is why morality is a double bind and also one of the fiercest and most destructive constrains devised by man.

Paris

Everyone, it seems, has written or is writing about Paris. Yesterday, at the local bookstore, as I browsed the travel section Paris it appeared was the place where most people wanted to be.  Will Self, in Psychogeography (the collection of his Psychogeography columns from the Independent, illustrated by Ralph Steadman), writes, “Tourism is a search for a place that will embrace you”. Paris, I concluded, is the place most people want to be embraced by. Will Paris reciprocate the gesture? Well, that’s an entirely different matter.

Regardless of the embrace or lack of it, all the books on Paris were about the authors' ‘Paris story’ and everyone had a story worth the telling. I, too have a Paris story. I think more than a single story. The closest to my heart are the ones where I walk into Paris that is right out of a Mavis Gallant story. The stories of Mavis Gallant, in my opinion embrace Paris. You can interpret this statement howsoever you want to.

As with every affair, bound by love or hate, it is the first memory that is indelible. That instance when you realize you have fallen in love, or in hate.

My first trip to Paris was marked by extremely propitious circumstances. A few days before the flight I got a call that informed me that the work I had been a part of had won a Gold Lion at Cannes. It was, but of course, exhilarating. But though I had been there to witness the work from its birth, to its growth and culmination. It wasn’t my baby. My name appeared on the certificate just because I had been there. That is how it is with awards. I, myself, laid to claim to it. So, the exhilaration was not for me but for the vindication of an undertaking that had been deemed impossible. That is a story best told on some other forum.

It should come as no surprise then if I say I too embraced Paris (and Paris returned the gesture) though it was a circuitous embrace with detours to Amsterdam, Germany and Vienna. All except the last not part of the initial travel plan. That is what ‘winning’ entails. And that is why awards, especially in certain professions, are so coveted. That is till one wins an award. After the ‘winning’ is done one can assume nonchalance and indifference to all the shenanigans. But somewhere deep down we are still a child dreaming of holding aloft a gleaming trophy, the proof of our triumph. Does the trophy change anything? The answer is a complicated yes and no.

On the evening before the flight back home as I walked along the Seine after all the winning and detours had been dealt with I knew life wouldn’t be the same the moment I would touch down. In just under a month of wandering the street of Europe, life, as I had known it had ceased to exist. As I type these words the enormity of it all once again overwhelms. How little it takes to overturn the apple cart?

A few years have passed since then. And contrary to my concern (in the lines above) life never overwhelms. Sometimes the sun refuses to shines outside the window, sometimes it never ceases to give it a rest. In darkness, as in light, we manage just fine.

And Paris. Well, Paris too goes on. People move in and out of its streets. Some devastated by its indifference, others glad for its transient embrace. They too, irrespective of their experiences, get on. We all live to see what the next day brings. For, when it comes to life there is only one reassuring constant– it goes on. Unmindful of any particular triumph or loss.

Who can live like the flowers

                      It was wrong to do this," said the angel.
"You should live like a flower,
Holding malice like a puppy,
Waging war like a lambkin."

"Not so," quoth the man
Who had no fear of spirits;
"It is only wrong for angels
Who can live like the flowers,
Holding malice like the puppies,
Waging war like the lambkins."

"It was wrong to do this," said the angel a poem by Stephen Crane

While you were stealing

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter. - Confucius

The Ugly

It starts innocuously. They casually take the links and repost them, without acknowledging let alone thanking you. Then they innocently re-tweet your words without mentioning it. Then they inoffensively post links of your blog to facebook without informing you. Then they blandly start writing posts that are suspiciously similar to something you had posted earlier. But that’s ok. It’s a fluke, you say. It’s even possible that the 100 monkey syndrome is an undeniable reality. What one monkey sees a 100 times, monkey inevitably imitates.

Then they start taking photographs that would be failed photocopies, if only they had not been so busy unsuccessfully trying to replicate the subject, the frame, the composition, the colours: that reflection, those trees, an entire facebook album on autumn. A photo here and an image there would be coincident, maybe even inspired, more likely derivative but entire albums; that’s taking inspiration a little too far, no?

But that’s the ugly side of life, not just the internet. We constantly experience it in some form or the other. We all are also to a large extent defenseless against it. And as with everything else in life, in this too it is the motivation and the intent that is paramount.

So, what motivates people to copy? With links, it’s often simply to be able to say they saw it ‘first’ and pretend that they still are ‘cool’ and ‘in’: in short the same petty emotions that motivates high school kids. That’s especially true for posts on facebook. But in some cases it is something slightly more pathetic. It’s the vampire syndrome: feeding on someone else’s lifeblood so that they may live to see another day.

But one can take heart from the fact that they must not be getting much sleep at night.

The Bad

Some students in New York took excerpts from my rant on an article on Hindi movies in the Guardian and used it as an ‘Indian’ point of view while discussing the overdose of ‘unreality’ that is Indian (Hindi) cinema. They somehow failed to note down my name and referred to me simply as “He”. Even after it was pointed out that they had made an erroneous assumption regarding my gender they failed to make amends. In their defense, it was most likely an inability to ‘see’ and read. While they were overdosing on cinema and Bollywood dreams, I had unfortunately pointed out something quite mundane.

Then there are those who use IP blocking services to troll the blog going back and forth through the posts. Who are they? Well, I’d just say:

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

The Good

In the early days I posted some sets of photographs on Flickr and a few days later got a mail. My Amsterdam and London photographs were to be a part of Schmap iphone travel guide. It signified all that is good about the social media.

Mr. Pritish Nandy on seeing my photographs for the first time via a tweet (he didn’t even know my name) said, “You are a very good photographer. Never doubt it.” It’s been some years since. It still feels good.

A blog post I wrote on protests among urban Indians, in particular ‘Meter Jam’, generated a lot of discussion online, another on walking in Delhi got posted in Down to Earth, a post on the dark side of  ‘pub bharo’ and the pink chaddi campaign got published as a letter in Tehelka. The posts on books, poetry, movies, Joan Eardley, Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins are helping some students with their term papers, I suppose from the views they generate: though I must add what Dr. Malvankar remarked in the first year of graduation itself, “She writes very well, but her answers will not get her many marks in the exams.”

Most importantly despite being separated by age, nationality, culture, time zones, I have met people who wept at the arboretum, felt akin to the winter bird and had empathy for the worried cows. They were almost like me! That has been not just the good but also the best part.

In The End

There’s a famous scene in Good Will Hunting where the grad student Clark, regurgitates text he has read in some book while trying to embarrass Chuckie, a construction worker, before some girls in a bar only to meet more than his match in Will, a college janitor and the main character in the film.

Will: See the sad thing about a guy like you, is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.
Clark: Yeah, but I will have a degree, and you'll be serving my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip.
Will: [smiles] Yeah, maybe. But at least I won't be unoriginal.

That brings me to the final point. This blog isn’t about me, in as much as any novel isn’t about its writer or any photograph isn’t about the photographer. By that I mean the “I” in the blog posts often isn’t me. The “you” most definitely never is I. And the ‘they’ in this post are all people I know.

So, how does someone justify co-opting someone else’s unreality?

Just like people have different motivations for imitating others, other people have different motivations for not being like anyone else. Sometimes the motivations of the two sets of people overlap. Often they don’t. Somewhere overhead swings the sword of Damocles called mediocrity.

One life, three poems

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

Edgar Allen Poe, "Alone", written when the poet was only 20 years old.

                When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings

of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less

than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up

with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices

like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle

passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.

I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away

from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them.  

How I am, a poem by Jason Shinder.
Copyright© 2005 by Jason Shinder. First published in The American Poetry Review, November/December 2005.

                              An open door says, “Come in.”

A shut door says, “Who are you?”

Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors.

If a door is shut and you want it shut,

     why open it?

If a door is open and you want it open,

     why shut it?

Doors forget but only doors know what it is

     doors forget.

Doors a poem by Carl Sandburg, from The Sandburg Range.

Click

Or on seeing one too many cell phone photograph with burnt-out pixilated skies and yellowy clouds.

Or the camera may or may not be the issue, but your photography just sucks. Period.

Or "Don't do it. There are way too many photographers."*

I’ve heard there is a (not so) secret code

That Bresson, Capa, Adams put on record

But you don’t really care for photography, do you?

It goes like this

You gotto take your pick

40 fans on Facebook

Or 40 hours (or years) to get to that place, that light, that look–

There’s no other way, that’s how it’ll be for ya.

Baby, others have been here before

Felt the same way, gone through all this before.

Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself,

not of proving or asserting one's own originality.**

It’s not that “awesome!” or that “like”

It’s not as if you’ll get any real insight.

True photographs can’t be explained or contained in words***

I just wanted to be the one to tell ya.

Maybe Photoshop is your saviour and God above.

But all I’ve learnt and seen in the real world,

If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough****

And no God can then ever hope to save yea.

You may post it on Facebook, or tweet it all night

200 comments on Flickr but you do know the next line:

It doesn’t mean a thing, if the photograph isn’t good.

That’s all there is to say to ya.

I tried my best to tell you what I know

Even though my words are always easy to ignore

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you

And I know it will all go wrong

The seduction of the "likes" on your Wall

The ego lift, the inevitable (painful and lonely) fall.

You’ll stand alone before the mirror one day

And then whom will you look up to, to save ya.

After Hallelujah a song by Leonard Cohen with apologies.

*Nan Goldin in Guardian– Don't do it. There are way too many photographers. Try to draw or get politically involved in something that matters. And unless you need to make art to stay alive, you shouldn't be making art. Read the rest here.

**Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

***A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. – Ansel Adams

**** If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough. – Robert Capa