Post Pandemic Blues

Raw – stream of unconscious writing…

Am I the only one deeply affected by the pandemic?  I mean – photographically?  I am sure not!

I am a nomad.  I roam.  I have no space I call “home.”  I have a place I live, eat, etc.  I realized recently that I never decorate my space.  Why don’t I hang photographs?  My own?  I have seen them already and am working on a new batch. 

Perhaps someone else’s photos? 

I think I am going to start taping 4×6 photos around my living space.  My own.  I do have some favorites I suppose.

Usually I am out somewhere or other doing something or other.  It used to be easier but the world is changing so rapidly.  Music.  I hung around indie music shops, perhaps picked up a few CDs that sounded interesting, or at very least had interesting covers.  One series by an artist that really caught my eye was a 4AD performer called the Red House Painters.  Definitely outlier music.  And the cover art, BW photos was delicious.  That was a long time ago, when I could still go into Repeat the Beat, Harmony House, or I think there was another shop called Neptune Records perhaps? And browse the selection.  However I read a year or so ago that the singer had some serious legal issues.  That didn’t change the CD art but it did add an interesting slant on some of his music.  It always amazes me how little we really know about one another.  OR how much we know about ourselves.  You tell me about you – I tell you about me.  But what am I telling you about me?  Perhaps the same that you are telling me about you:  stories. 

Fables. Fiction expressed with the belief that it is real.

Another hang out was bookstores, new and used,  Fortunately used bookstores are still hanging in there but Amazon has done a real number of retail new bookstores. Borders died before Amazon took over which was really unfortunate because I loved that chain.  Great magazines!  I was visibly shaken when they locked their doors.  Two weeks!  There are a few still surviving.  But for how long?  I like books.  My eyes hurt looking at a computer screen for long periods.  Besides – I refuse to purchase digital books.  I don’t want to feed into that system, supporting theft.   Books cost to produce.  Digital books only require a source copy and the rest is all profit.  Huge profit. 

Fuck them. 

And of course there is photography.  That kept me busy for years, mostly heading down into Detroit early in the morning, two or three times a week, going into the some of grittiest areas for the types of images I wanted to record.  Detroit had turned into a real dangerous beast.  I think when the auto industry abandoned the area in search of bigger profits it signed the death verdict for the city.  Profits.

You might think I am anti-profits.  Nope.  However I feel like the economic system is now a big Monopoly game – and we are playing in the later stages of the game where all the properties are gone, rules changed so the player is not limited to one hotel.  Running around the track is like swimming in a small pool of starved sharks, with unbandaged open wounds.

So then the pandemic hit.  Of what was left of the sorts of places I frequented – well, they all closed down for a period.  I  stayed indoors for the first time in my life.  It was novel at first but then it started to wear me down.  I  wore myself down…with permission.  I hardly went out hunting for images, add to that horrendous turmoil in my personal life.  One I saw my cameras sitting in a straw basket, in cased, where I usually kept them and remembered how alive I felt when I was on a photo safari.  I had moved and Detroit was now a fifteen minute ride to even the outer most border.  And the city changed, for the better.  Gentrification was really making a difference in mid and downtown. 

I noticed something very strange about my motivations when I left my space…I was destination driven.  With so many businesses closed during periods of the pandemic – when I went out, it was for a reason other then ‘just because…’  I forced myself out the door and struggled with indecision about where to go next.  How strange – it was like my thinking process was in prison, without the possibility of parole.  It really felt that way.

I am out now, not as much as before and my mind is cluttered rather than more open spaced as it used to be when I was roaming for things that caught my eye.  It is satisfying but in a different way. 

Actually the different way is way different.