[A cord is a long flexible string or rope, often made of thinner pieces woven together. A chord is “three or more musical tones played together.”
how multiple meanings can multiply intent . 
The fig tree is about choices of paths .. Sylvia Plath […I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just becaus I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one they plopped to the ground at my feet….]
and, taking a break from my fig tree thinking I returned to a question about musical chords ..arriving at :
nick drake… success after death.. finding the commercial in the commercial . The time for memory selling the past .. The acoustic over automobile speakers … mechanized memory .
Even successful artists carry doubts. Success is never fully sustaining. Success never reduces doubt among the most creative artists.
[ often grouped with existentialist thinkers, Camus consistently rejected the existentialist label, insisting that his philosophy of the absurd was distinct from both Kierkegaard’s leap of faith and Heidegger’s ontology of Being. Instead, Camus argued that the confrontation between humanity’s “appetite for meaning” and the universe’s “unreasonable silence” constituted the absurd, which must be lived with clarity rather than resolved by appeal to transcendence ]
The analog rebound is more in the mind than in the hand. A rebound that never recovers to a prior high is termed a “dead cat bounce” — as in, “even a dead cat can bounce.” The Analog Revival is a low point in revivalism. This is a dream of those with more past than future. More memory than plan.
The companies, groups that lasted —
Freestyle and Lomography kept supplies flowing, now, CineStill has become strong enough that Eastman Kodak sees revenue. The new companies, those providing film scanner solutions, those automating the wet steps, these are the small cadre looked to by the incoming users. The green, energized under 40s. They may come to a darkroom, but by the time they do, products will be so expensive, only the richest, or most dedicated will buy. That is apt to be the shortest lived bounce. Without digital, film would never have been revived.
The resuscitator was Instagram photos of camera carrying celebrities. *Lauren Lauren’s Leica, with very long leather strap. Brad Pitt’s Hasselblad 500.
November 24… Another camera/ film store closing
Mechanical Analog Chemical Photography was built assuming a darkroom in which the unseen, slow, contemplative work was undertaken, or realized. The camera was the first part, not the key distinctive part. Even today, that public, camera centric portion of photography continues. It has been rephrased as “lens based” photography, thereby including the digital camera, the spine of 21st century imaging.
items of the fad aren’t always well made.. fads fade… more times than they succeed.
People want to believe. A gathering of the loud, too easily believe they are heard by everyone. They aren’t heard, even among themselves. Instead, believing their arguments of importance. In the land of money, there are no other motives by those who make the machines used. Fads are opportunities for advance which the foolish think are permanent, an annual. Wiser money understands the difference between crops; between land, soil types. When it is better to reap, or sow. Money is only money when it is mobile.
Will a new coater arise? Yes. But they won’t have a stronger future than the existing coaters. They will have to remain small scale, surviving only if their best first product exceeds anticipation. And/Or, they have physical barrier… a close, local market. Perhaps one offering camera rentals, tea, tours of a surrounding area — a destination site for the young, perhaps the retired.
Without paper and associated chemistry, the darkroom will die. Already, the range of coaters capable of absorbing the possible losses involved in coating and distributing photo-sensitive paper declines. Fujifilm is the only company financially durable enough to risk making papers Their remaining paper interest is in supplying European ready printers — amateurs. Fujifilm is paying attention to Instax coating in their homeland, where enthusiasm, free time, disposable cash, continues growing among the young city people. The visual Karaoke, seems durable. If not, a small write-off to a company Fuji sized.
The Forum Effect–
Forums provided no benefit on any dye transfer revival. It was actually a diffuser of intensity, by allowing people to believe that someone else was doing it — that there was a grand benefactor in the sky. They didn’t have to invest anything more than they ever had. Wait long enough, someone will realize how fabulous a market there is, just awaiting new product.
Even now, forums focus on cameras, old lenses, attempts at digitizing –just as bad salesmen never improve, neither will they. Dispersed, disorganized information leaves the field open to more brag than awareness.
Forums are a remarkably fertile field if you are interested in becoming an old, white male, having strong opinions about photography prior to 1980; before its growth, before the silver explosion, when it makes it way into commercial galleries. Opinions formed using knowledge gained in piecemeal fashion.
People buy tickets to ride steam trains. They get there flying in a jet, or driving in a car. Steam trains are not making their way onto the tracks of life.
Texans are urbanites. A different country viewpoint. An accent that is easily discerned; not southern. They die rather than diet.
Since last fall our alleyway has changed; five households. Three from death; two from moving out of Texas; returning to the saltwater states. Those were the gardeners. We exchanged harvests, staying away from topics of the day, unless it was weather.
friends along the shared driveways
They moved to safety, barely saying, in whisper: “I don’t know your politics, but we don’t feel safe anymore…no telling how far things will go.” They moved to a Saltwater State; not the surfless salt of the Gulf of Extinction (formerly known as a Gulf of Trump).
the alley in the internet: alley allies
in texas the power is uncertain. texans love their myths, independence and god a divine independence:they keep the grid away, thinking the clock is set to 1830 or 1964.
texas power failures bring many together; checking to see if your power went out as well.
as in new york, snow bringing out impromptu push, direction, and help. The grid failures open the houses around us. People checking to see if they are the only one affected. They aren’t.
Texas is built on the fiction of Republic, of Monarchy. The first dictionary of the United States authors called a Sovereign, that thing with a Sovereign, a King or Queen. Dynastic Ruler. These days, we stuff words like trash bags, overloading them. Sovereign is now, what? — something with a boundary. Perhaps we have lost the concepts of democracy, replacing it with wealth metrics. Autonomous isn’ sovereign.
Texas Pride means we barely have interstate highways. Alongside runs a Texas highway. Texans shrink from thinking they’re American, preferring the Texas flag when Democrats are in the White House. Only with a Republican in Oval is the US Flag displayed without scorn and contempt.
People Die. Anonymous and Unknown. Their death makes their life standout — asking our attention; what didn’t we know about them. How much did we miss by being on paths of easy hand waves, idle talk. Let them resolve their life not as a King, not a Sovereign Life. Allow them to make their judgements without requiring them to answer my curiosity.
april in the alley Eclipse in the alley and by September She is buried, her house is sold. Grand children with a universal northern accent arrive; sort the closets, close the garage.
They “Remember the Alamo” even though they don’t want to be reminded of its History.
i’ve been in Texas so long this tomato seems good enough .
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