Friday, March 5, 2010

The hemisphere that sees


This picture reminds me of a bull moving in towards a matador, seen from his retreating perspective, his tenuous stance. It has a near-frantic feeling of imminent danger, a diminishing circularity, though without as much threat of unpredictability, of horns, of goring; the cheers and then sudden gasps of such a thing. Modern city life is dull and flat when considered thusly. "No bulls would die today..."

I wonder what long term effects, if any, drugs have on the mind, or the mind's desire to see a certain way. I like some of the photos I take that make little or no sense. The chaotic dance of urban lights, caught only in partial and at a pace. Blurred, distorted, out of focus glimpses of a world that is always there, though the eye retreats from it under most given circumstances, the mind defers. Looking back through the 20th and 19th century there is much evidence to support the idea that the mind had a desire to see things differently long before drugs produced the effect.

Ah, the momentary view of youth... the spring glimpse.

My days of doing drugs are mostly over, though I fondly remember some of the things I saw there, the unique way of leisurely distorting the senses, just for fun. I question many, if not all, of the "truths" I found there, but I still sometimes long to view the world through that wonderful barrel of distortion. To enter that unique magical landscape where much is marvelous and weird. The mistake was believing that the landscape there was ever-changing, it turned out to be quite the opposite.

Many of the pictures that I find fascinating are so because the camera has caught some mystery of light, unattainable to my mind in its current condition. Perhaps they actually are tedious or uninteresting, like other people's dreams. Such is the power and indifference of subjectivity. Such is the power of sight...

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
-Bob Dylan, Mr. Tambourine Man