I wrote a thing about this class but I hate it (sometimes I am a bad writer!) and so here are some photos of my friend KJ’s ikebana flower arranging class. This was when I was in OKC last march, for Jason’s thing.
Trying not to think too hard and just push publish.
Been trying to get out on walks more often lately, not just like, the half mile to the little bodega I like, but longer peregrinations. This wasn’t recent, was in fact last year. The little walks, though, they do seem to help.
I haven’t been neglecting this here web site on purpose, I promise. A lot is going on, and also I seem to once again be in that place where I can’t make any photos I don’t hate. the long dark tea time of the soul. It’ll pass, and then I’ll look back at the stuff I was doing now, and be like, that wasn’t bad at all. Or maybe it is and I’ve finally lost the plot. Can’t lose it if you never had it, I suppose.
Some people would have had a day like this, taken one or two group selfies, posted them to instagram, and called it a day. I, on the other hand, took maybe a hundred pictures, waited six months, made selects from them, let them sit another two months, killed the duds (photos that just don’t work for whatever reason), did proper toning and exposure adjustment on the rest, and then now I’m posting them to my own damn web site.
Instagram is not my friend and it’s probably not yours either; this site, to steal a line from my friend Robin, “… doesn’t collect any information about you or your reading. It aspires to the speed and privacy of the written page.” That’s why it’s fast, despite using the biggest images I can get away with. There’s no bullshit loading that you don’t see. Anyway. Here are some nice pictures from a lovely day in the park with friends, sometime last year.
Some people might say, matt, why you gotta go so hard, and to them I say: I don’t know any other way to be. If I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do the thing. I picked up the camera when I was fourteen and I’ve been taking pictures seriously ever since.
This was a great party. It had everything: a pitch deck for a sci-fi show, kimonos, live bands, a pot of soup (maybe it was chili?), hand drawn illustrations, comics, and photos by yours truly. On the walls, that is. Also I shot some pictures too. Ahkil (above, center) knows how to throw ‘em.
While I was there, everybody who had brought an art that wasn’t performance got to get up and say a few words. I said: “My photos are mostly about being in the right place at the right time. Perfection only lasts a moment. Anyway I’m glad to be here with you all right now.” I can’t think of a better way to sum up my work. Right place, right time. Serendipity by another name. Or maybe it’s finding what here and now is the right place and time for? Mostly it’s just a matter of looking and seeing.
This guy was really good: Byron Mayhew. Great guitar playing, good singing, original songs. Great energy.
Then there was the second band, John Turkey’s Nightmares. Solid rock ‘n’ roll. Less of a singer/songwriter vibe and more of a energetic explosion. Everybody was dancing about halfway into their set.
Here is a link to an installation photo of my stuff. 24x36” prints from my designjet. I just barely remembered to grab a photo of the photos at the end of the night, and it’s a little motion blurred, so it’s a link for the curious not a bloggable picture. We Have Standards.
When I was in college, I had a professor that did a bunch of field work in Northern Mexico, I want to say in Chihuahua, but it may have been one of the other states. Anyway, besides relating to us what most of the people there really wanted in life (clear title to their land), he alsa told us that in the bars there, you never order ‘ultimo’ for the last drink of the night, because that would be the last drink ever.
Now this was the same guy that came up with the coyote-pendejo spectrum, and placed himself at the bottom intentionally, so maybe take that with a grain of salt, but I do like the idea. The implication, on the last real day of the trip, that there will be another. These photos, appropriately, are from the second to last day of this trip. It was the last day of substance, for sure.
Teotihuacán is a complex of three large pyramids, and many smaller temples and sites of archeological importance. I won’t bore you with a history lesson, except to say that the folks that built them saw their whole civilization collapse. It was the 6th largest city in the world at its peak, more than just a religious center or burial monument like the ones in Egypt.
Anyway, all of that was a long time ago, and now it’s a place where you can visit and be awed and a little sad that it’s all gone. We took an uber to the main entrance, and immediately got sold a tour on quad bikes, which was actually a pretty decent way to get around. They took us to some fun little shops, I bought sophie a gift, then we parked the quads and walked into the actual preserve, where there are no motor vehicles for the tourists.
It’s a big place. I don’t know if the pyramids are larger than the ones at Giza, but the walk is definitely longer. We walked from the back gate to the Pyramid of the Moon, by way of the Pyramid of the Sun, and then to the temple at the other end of the compound, which you get to by crossing a dozen pre-columbian staircases, up and down, both ways. My travelling companions were both fine. Me, that hasn’t seen the inside of a gym nor had a season of travel and being out-of-doors in far too long, well, I was pretty wiped.
We spent too long, well, went around to see everything we wanted to see, and by the time we got back to the quads, the last place on the quad tour was closed. The dude took us to the bus stop, where we decided discretion is the better part of getting back to the hotel and ordered an uber again. While we waited I drank a liter of gatorade and then another half a liter of water. Little bit dehydrated. The ride home was pretty uneventful; good light, sunset. The sign that pointed to Cairo, maybe not mocking me, but for sure a sign of something.
Copyright © 2008-Forever, Matt Mills.
