on footnotes.
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This was taken what seems like a lifetime ago. It’s only been six years, though. In that time, I’ve changed jobs, moved something like 4 times, became an aunt twice over, made new friends and reconnected with old ones, lots and lots of adventures, many highs and perhaps a few too many lows.
This is the very last photo I ever took of you. Do you remember that day in the park? I do. This is my favorite photo of you.
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post-prandial poses.
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Really, the full title of this post should be Puffy-Jacket Post-Prandial Poses at PS1. From left: Ziki, Fred, and Mike.
We were happily, gloriously stuffed after our Sunday lunch at M. Wells Dinette, now located inside PS1. (Order the BiBimWells!) The grey, concrete walls surrounding the museum made for excellent backdrops, so I took advantage of the situation before anyone could stop me.
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Though of course, the fellas were not without a bit of post-prandial hamming, either. To wit:
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A wonderful start to Sunday, I dare say.
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daniel, domicile.
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There have been plenty of brisk, sunny days in Brooklyn recently, but the times I’ve been outside and with the camera always seem to be grey days, full of muted light. You make the best of them, I suppose. Having an obliging model helps, as does an apartment (not my own, nor Daniel’s) that takes in the light ever so nicely.
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photo swap.
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Ben and I took photos of each other while waiting for the lamb to finish roasting on Thanksgiving.
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ben.
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We were chatting away, Ben and I, after having not seen each other in a few months, when we looked across the street and saw that the afternoon light was ablaze. I grabbed the Hasselblad and away we went. Thanks for being a good sport, BJK.
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recently.
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[Scandalous!]
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Still trying to get the hang of black and white film + Hasselblad. Here are a few from this weekend, taken with Ilford Delta HP5, when Mike’s mom and her husband came to town for a whirlwind, 24-hour visit. A fellow at the film counter at B&H photo recommended that I try the 125-speed iteration, said I might like the grain quality and tones a bit more. So that’s loaded into the camera now, and we’ll see how that turns out.
And here’s one from a few days after Hurricane Sandy hit — the polaroid version is over here.
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dc, before the storm.
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[A friendly reminder of sorts.]
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Two weekends ago, as the hurricane was heading towards the east coast, I was in DC, doing very, very little. And it was nice. And I’d planned to come back to NYC late Sunday night, until, on Sunday morning, I started getting frantic texts from friends alerting me that the NYC subway system was going to shut down at 7pm that night as a precaution before the storm. Plans for a lazy Sunday afternoon were replaced with some frenetic rescheduling of my Amtrak ticket and wading through the scrum of other last-minute travelers at Union Station, all waiting to get back north before it would be impossible to travel.
It was a good call in the end — I made it back to the city by 6pm, and got back to Brooklyn by 7, catching one of the last subway trains from Penn Station. Somewhere in there, though, after the ticket was changed and before we headed to Union Station, we had a lovely, albeit slightly rushed meal of jerk chicken and rice at Taste of Jamaica, and then took a walk around the block so I could at least indulge in a couple of rolls of film with the Hasselblad. This was my first go with Dashiell in DC — am looking forward to future photographic possibilities with this combination, as these test rolls came out pretty nicely, I have to say, even with the overcast skies and my continued inability to meter like a normal photographer.
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sandy.
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[The view outside my bedroom window, during and after the storm.]
The hurricane came in, and we hunkered down in the apartment with our pantry filled to the brim and everything charged up and candles at the ready. When the storm made landfall, and then the surge came, our lights flickered for the better part of an hour, and then our internet went out, and then … that was it. We still had power, and in the morning we were back online. We were so, so, so fortunate. Friends in Manhattan lost power and heat, and some lost water too, but in the end: my nearest and dearest made it through ok. Many others were displaced by the flooding, and others lost their homes in the Breezy Point fire. And, at the time of writing this post, at least 38 New Yorkers have lost their lives.
The hassles of new, long morning commutes and walking uptown to find food and a place to charge the phone — they’re hassles, yes, and I mean, I have the advantage of being in Brooklyn, working from home this week, without any of those difficulties. But the city is slowly, but surely getting back on its feet.
I took a walk out to the Brooklyn Promenade yesterday afternoon, Hasselblad in tow, the luxury of low-level cabin fever compelling me to get outside for a bit. And there it was, Lower Manhattan, mostly without power, but christ, so lovely. So very very lovely.
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brooklyn, recently.
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A couple of parking lots, a brunch, an afternoon birthday party. Not all on the same weekend, but standard fare around these parts. (Happy Birthday, Colin!)
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from the archives: carson (and convolution).
Memory is a strange beast.
I can remember the first time I heard Built to Spill’s Keep It Like A Secret* (though I can’t remember the exact date): Spring 1999, in Ithaca, New York, at my friend Mindy’s house, the one next to that nursing home on Buffalo Street. With the volume turned up, we pranced around her dining room, pretending the light bulb hanging down from the chandelier-less ceiling was a microphone. Two things are special about that night: realizing I’d found a true friend in Mindy, and absolutely falling in love with that album. Especially track 7, Else.
I don’t use the word love lightly (trust me on this one), but I really, really love that song. Once I got my hands on a copy of the album, probably a few days after that fateful night, Else has gone everywhere with me. It goes onto just about every iTunes playlist, is on every gym/running mix on my iPod, and back when I had a car, I burned a copy of the album so that I’d have one for the car and one for the house. I can count on two hands the number of days I haven’t listened to that song since I first heard it. No joke.
Built to Spill were on tour in 2001 and were coming to New York City, to what was then Irving Plaza (I think it’s called something different now?) and an acquaintance of mine knew someone who worked there and did I want to head to the city to go with him? In hindsight, I probably should have said no. The show was on September 16th, just a few days after 9/11. I don’t think I was fully prepared to be in the city then. I’ll leave it at that.
The show itself was …. subdued. Maybe for the best. I would go on to see the band a handful of times over the next decade — once in Cleveland, even, where Mindy had moved to after she got her phD — so the shows and setlists are sort of blurred together. Which is why, when I look at the photograph above of my friend Carson, who had come down to the city with us that weekend, I think of Else. Because it wasn’t until I started writing this post that I realized that that particular show, back in 2001, wasn’t when they played Else and I got weepy and then, about 2/3 of the way through the song, Doug Martsch, the frontman for the band, totally messed up the lyrics, stopped the song, and despite the crowd insisting that he just play it again — I am clearly not the only person who loves that song — he just skipped to the next song on the setlist. No, that happened in 2005 or 2006, and yes, I totally cried on the spot because love makes you do stupid things.
So this post was originally going to be about how this photograph makes me think about a weekend that probably shouldn’t have happened except that some nice photos came out of it, and I got to hear my favorite song in the world played live, except what I’m thinking about now is how I got to be with my New York friends on a difficult weekend, and there’s something about Carson’s face that seems so bittersweet and poignant and a bunch of other adjectives that don’t really adequately describe that weekend.
Oh, and here’s the song. (Sorry about the silly visuals; youtube is hit or miss with these sorts of things.)
And here’s the song in cello form, which is differently exquisite and made me burst into tears when I first heard it because, again: love is probably totally awkward.
[*Leave it to Pitchfork to give an album a glowing review and not even talk about the best track. Fools.]
hong-an tran 