Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
She sits in the park on a red blanket with a bottle filled with blue drink. She watches her dog, her child, her husband, while she doesn’t move herself – except her eyes. Lasering back and forth across the grassy patch they stay on target. Meanwhile, the world moves on, unknown.
I’ll tell you ’bout Texas Radio and the Big Beat
Soft drivin’, slow and mad, like some new languageNow, listen to this, and I’ll tell you ’bout the Texas
I’ll tell you ’bout the Texas Radio
I’ll tell you ’bout the hopeless night
Wandering the Western dream
Tell you ’bout the maiden with wrought iron soul
—-The WASP, Jim Morrison
Revolution Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
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Since the advent of digital photography, the whole rhythm of taking pictures has changed. You shoot, then tilt the camera down to look at what you have.
Sometimes you don’t even think. Shoot, tilt, look, delete, shoot, tilt, look, delete. Repeat until you get what you want.
Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
I miss the days when you had to wait. These were the days when every statement about a photograph was prefaced with, “If it comes out…”.
There was the excitement of picking up the thick paper envelope of prints at the photography store. Standing on the sidewalk outside, tearing open the packet, and going through the pictures. Usually, there would be one that you knew was the shot you really wanted and you would quickly shuffle until you came to that one. Then you would pause and stare. You would, “If it came out…”.
Or, even more exciting, was the sweet smell of bitter chemicals, the dim yellow/green safelight, and the ghostly image appearing out of nothing on the waving paper drifting in the developing bath. There was a sensual excitement of the whole ritual – from loading film on a reel in the pitch dark – working completely by feel. Then the mixing of chemicals followed by waving your hands in the rays of the enlarger, dodging and burning and trying to get everything just right. Finally the developing, the fixing, the washing and then drying. Only after all that could you turn on the light and see what you had… art, or crap. Or both. Or neither.
What could be better than sitting on the lawn in a park in the middle of the big city, bracing your sketchbook on your friend’s back while you drew the giant crystal buildings that surround you.
Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
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There are colors not found in nature.
And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way.
Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Style changes, style stays the same, style comes full circle.
Car show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
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Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
There is the umbrella. The umbrella lives under the passenger bucket seat and you pull it out at dawn in the spitting rain and roaring cold wind. Your only hope is that it opens and stays more or less together while you trudge your way across the vast tarmac parking lot at your work. If it does its job, you can arrive breathless and plop down in your soulless cubicle with a few square inches of almost dry clothing.
A parasol, on the other hand, is a completely different thing. Darts of flimsy tissue paper and delicate bamboo ribs – it was not made to stand the power of a howling gale. The gentle rays of the sun are all it can deal with – and barely that. It’s a translucent bumbershoot, a portable shade canopy, standing against the day. Its name tells you that it’s for (para) the sun (sol).
But it’s not only for protection. It’s for twirling.
What better attention grabber than a pretty parasol with hand drawn artistic designs carefully chosen to compliment your tattoos? Ink and ink.
I think of the sweaty hut in some faraway land with workers carefully, quickly, hopelessly putting the things together – cutting the paper, stapling the ribs, or brushing out long-practiced patterns across the delicate field – all the same yet each one different.
And here it comes, spinning down the middle of the street.
And all eyes turn.
“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”
—- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Pinstriper at work, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
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To watch someone do something like this is like watching someone doing magic – real magic. I can’t imagine having the eye, the dexterity, most of all the ability to shut everything out of mind other than the brush, the fender, and the paint. Notice how he has the two colors of paint he is using in daubs on his index finger – he picks up what he needs and brushes it in place. It is completely freehand – no masking tape, no guide lines, not even a design done ahead of time.
Yet the result is perfect. It is smooth, faultless, and symmetrical – even though it is applied to a complex curve on a rusty Volkswagen Beetle fender. The sun was beating down – it was about 104 degrees. It was so hot, I could barely think straight.
“I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life…. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his you th, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the colour-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it”
—- John Singer Sargent
One of my favorite things to do in the city, the Patio Sessions, has started up again. These are small free concerts held on Thursday evenings, in front of the Winspear Opera House in the Arts District. I’ve been to a few of these and written about them before.
The performer sets up at the corner of a large rectangular reflecting pool. The water flows slowly over a field of perfectly level and even black stone – at a depth of maybe a quarter of an inch. The spectators sit on grassy areas, paved sections, or concrete steps around this pool to watch and listen. High overhead, giant aluminum louvers provide some shade from the sun before it falls below. There’s a pop-up bar, food trucks, and a new coffee pavilion. With the surrounding buildings glowing in the setting sun (there are five Pritzker Prize winning architects represented here) it is an amazingly picturesque spot.
The only downside is that expanse of wafer-thin water is a magnet for little kids. Now, I like kids as much as the next guy, but they are noisy and distracting. The pack of rugrats cavorting on the reflecting pool diverts attention from the music. Plus I am bothered by their parents that wander around with that smug, “look at my spawn” half-smile of pride. This would all be cool – except that there is a concert going on.
But, I will admit, they are pretty cute.
Kids on the reflecting pool at the Patio Sessions, Dallas, Texas
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Bill Chance 