January 8, thePhotoProject
As I prepare this post, I am listening to Lori McKenna. I realize that our the years, music has been a large part of my creative process. I remember distinctly in my early days of traveling, Lucinda Williams and Joan Osbourne, were a large part of my atmospheric wanderings. Photographs themselves are like a bit of music. And in the age of alternative processes that can be accomplished on apps, these little notes come together to tell my story in a poetic way. Hopefully, in a way that fills not only your eyes, but also your ears.
2012 Arcella, Italy. The significance of this photo looms large. It is the cover of my first book of poetry, as well as the first poem I wrote as more of a story. My poetry over the years has evolved, but it still finds its germination in a picture that I take. Here follows is this story/poem… a bit long, but I hope you understand how it connects to the photograph. And also, to music. (Many years later, this graffiti has been obliterated by a fresh coat of paint, and no doubt, new graffiti.
THE HOTEL VIDAL
Every morning at eight the daughter leaves the house The quiet
The mother in the kitchen The father getting ready for work
Once around the corner she stashes the book bag behind the heather Sits on the bike
Puts on the music of Evanescense And rides away with wild abandon
Until she gets to the Hotel Vidal And enters through the secret door
Lost in paradise with the others All of them showing the tracks on their arms And nothing else left
She tries many things So many ways to bleed Always wanting that grip that feels like nothing
Always trying to erase any sense of emotion Wanting to imagine what the bottom of the ocean looks like
She looses count of days At home, a daughter with a careful face
The mother and father no idea of her inner rage My heart is broken, she reasons
Let us show you how to mend calls out the Vidalians
Fall falls falls falls into winter In the snowy heather lined streets
The Vidalians run with no clothes on The cold slaps at the faces The toes have no feeling
The long glorious hair of youth becomes knotted and bitten with the frost of unrelenting drugged icicle tears
The bottom of the ocean The bottom of the ocean
Sometime when this is in full swing It's when the daughter wakes up And swimming home is all she can think about
The bodies on top of her pale Cold scales in winters glare
She remembers her mother's voice singing in private to an Evanescense song 'All the way down I will hear your voice'
Her mother taps the father's shoulder There is tension building The daughter's facade not so opaque
The mother and father know
They've been there before
To the Hotel Vidal They know every corridor
The father knows about rage His is not internal Not anymore
The mother holds him close Trust me, she says, we made it out to the other side
Not everyone does, he replies
The mother stands firm We have to let them go Thats how they come back
Daughter down the street With handle bars only
Everything else in the Hotel Vidal's gaping hole
Mother and father see Mother reaches out Now she will teach daughter how to be a woman
But father's had enough Goes and gets his rifle Hidden in the heather
Near the bag of books forgotten He doesn't see it
But mother knows From the beginning she's always been just around the corner
Left the kitchen every day Checked into the Hotel Vidal
As an anonymous guest
She knows also about the rifle On her trips to the Vidalian resort She never went unarmed
Every room at that place In the ball room and the rooftop terrace
Like the back of her thin arms She only needs to look at them to see the map To know the hallways her daughter walks
Always always always watching Even in the Fall to Winter Eventually to the burning summer
The enticements of resort wear The hotel rooms welcoming slumber
Check in at the counter Check out of everything else
How careful the mother navigated She remembered the father's despair
How she had to lead him out the other side
The change is always hardest on the ones already changed The mother never doubted The daughter never out of sight
The father thinks only one thing With rifle in his hand Sometimes you have to do something
He trusts the mother with blind love She didn't let him disappear
Still the weapon in his hand feels right
At the Hotel Vidal The check in counter's gone
The father blasted it to Hell
The daughter, the mother, the father
Hotel Vidal guests no longer
2013 Venice, Italy. I was a bit stupid my many years living so close to Venice. I had a hard time separating. its ancient beauty from the deluge of tourism. I rarely ever saw it as what it was, a stanchion to ancient times, many of its stone buildings older than anything in the United States.
2014 Arcella, Italy
2015 Vicenza, Italy. View from the Teatro looking to the top of a building in the distance, taken with a very challenged iPhone 6s. Over the years I came back here several times, with more and more sophisticated cameras. I am convinced the photo I wanted to take lurks somewhere in my archives. I just haven’t discovered it yet.
2016 Arcella, Italy. Peeping into the windows of others. For art.
2017 Mestre, Italy. A timeless photograph that could have been taken a hundred years ago. Perhaps the mother and daughter I saw that day on the street were actually ghosts, and thus the explanation why they seem to shimmer in the picture.
2018 Padua, Italy
2019 Padua, Italy
2020 Valencia, Spain
2021 Near Macae, Brazil
2022 Jefferson County, Colorado
2024 Da Nang, Vietnam. Dinner, but whom?
