Todd Hido

photo by Todd Hido

Memory

But what really interests me ultimately is not to record the past, so much as how people live with the past and get on with it. There’s a kind of fetishization of memory in our culture. Some of it comes from the experience and the memorial culture of the Holocaust—the injunction to remember. And it also comes from the strange collision of Freud and human rights thinking—the belief that anything that is not exposed and addressed and dealt with is festering and going to come back to destroy you. This is obviously not true. Memory is not such a cure-all. On the contrary, many of the great political crimes of recent history were committed in large part in the name of memory. The difference between memory and grudge is not always clean. Memories can hold you back, they can be a terrible burden, even an illness. Yes, memory—hallowed memory—can be a kind of disease. That’s one of the reasons that in every culture we have memorial structures and memorial days, whether for personal grief or for collective historical traumas. Because you need to get on with life the rest of the time and not feel the past too badly. I’m not talking about letting memory go. The thing is to contain memory, and then, on those days, or in those places, you can turn on the tap and really touch and feel it. The idea is not oblivion or even denial of memory. It’s about not poisoning ourselves with memory.

-- Philip Gourevitch

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Via

Devo " Gut Feeling " first time in live in 1977

Krapp's Last Tape de Samuel Beckett [Subtítulos Español]

Balcony

BBC Documentary - Hells Angels - London - 1973

Patti Smith Group - Pale Blue Eyes/Louie Louie

Brassai

Passers by in the Rain, photo by Brassai

Sara and Randy

If you met Sara, you’d like her right away. She has a round, open face you see a lot in the Midwest, a German-Irish face. She’s not outgoing, but if you say hi to her as she’s ringing up your lunch, she’s happy to chat about her dog walking business or the weather.

Pretty. But not too pretty. The kind of pretty won't intimidate or frighten a man just past his prime. 

So Sara the cashier has a fan club. Guys, mostly in their 40s and 50s, linger around her register if there’s no one in line, and use the chance to bask in the glow of her wide smile and agreeably simple banter.

Randy, on the other hand, doesn’t have a fan club. He rides the same bus I do from the same stop. He's tall, and permanently hunched over, probably from coding for the last 30 years or so with bad posture. He's the sort of semi-autistic programmer who has a hard time socially. 

He seems smart and he reads a lot, but he's incapable of talking about much besides the weather. Day after day we’d wait at the bus stop, talking the weather. At least he chats, I thought; it could be worse -- days waiting for the bus with long pauses as we both pretend to read email on our phones. Instead, we debate the forecast. Not so bad. I tried out a few questions, but only received short answers as he smiled his usual smile.  

Randy worked as a contract programmer for about seven or eight months, then got laid off. I found out a few mornings ago. We got off the bus together at our stop, as usual. He looked more ragged, wearing a frayed t-shirt instead of his usual Ralph Lauren Polo. 

We walked to one of the office entrances, talking about the temperature. When we were nearly there, he said that he'd been laid off. I asked why, but he said his agreement prevented him from talking about it. We paused.  

"I just wanted to let you know," he said. 

"Are you going in?"

"Nope. All done. I'm just going to take the bus downtown." The he asked me if I'd do him a favor. I said sure, sort of dreading something time consuming, but figuring that everyone needs help once in a while. It might be my turn next. So what the hell.

"You know Sara, the cashier, right?" I nod. "Can you tell her?"

"Sure."

"Please say goodbye to her. Tell her Randy says goodbye -- could you do that for me?"

"Yeah, of course." 

We shook hands. 

He loped off without even taking my email.

Heart of Coppola

Pretty great mashup.

Apocalypse Now - Introduction - HD

Today's the 33rd anniversary of the release of Apocalypse Now. 

Better than the Godfathers Parts I and II. Better than just about any movie ever made, partly because everyone in it went beyond their talent into that strange weird place where craft can't reach.

And that's worth a toast of Willard's Martell Cordon Bleu.

September Song - Walter Huston...Long Version

Found an even better version.  Man, what a great song, and Huston sings it so well.

These vintage years.

(Can you tell it's my birthday soon? Heh.)