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happy turkey day!

image by reckenned

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peace on earth, volume 2

this marks the first of my christmas posts: and it's not even thanksgiving yet.

normally i try to hold my christmas excitment at bay until at least black friday, but i just can't do it this year. thankfully, there is good reason.

i recently stumbled across a great blog, it's hard to find a friend, written primarily by caleb palma. and somehow i noticed that he had a holiday album for sale for $7.50 the proceeds of which are donated to charity. only volume 1 was available when i visited the blog the first time, but now both volumes are out.

caleb's explains this amazing project thus:

"peace on earth started as a simple idea to have some musicians that i have the pleasure of calling friends record some christmas songs to raise money for toys for tots so some less fortunate tykes would not wake up to an empty living room on christmas morning 2007. the project grew to an 18-track collection of freshly penned originals, covers of holiday classics, and a few previously unavailable tracks, all recorded or released exclusively for the project. with a track listing which included chris walla (death cab for cutie), great lake swimmers, the long winters, rosie thomas, via audio, someone still loves you boris yeltsin, & 13 more, the project was a huge success. peace on earth was featured by countless webzines and blogs and prominent media outlets such as npr music & pitchfork media, and to date has raised more than $3,200.00 for toys for tots"

i don't know if you know this about me, but i'm the hugest sucker for a holiday cd. i'm constantly looking for good covers to mix in with the old classics, and this mix does just that. plus your $7.50 goes to a great cause; this year's proceeds will benefit the children of uganda fund.

i obviously bought volumes 1 and 2. but since i assume you might not be as huge a christmas nerd as i am, i'm asking you to at least check this out and possibly get at least one of these.

you can purchase this year's album here.

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friday night...

light + magic traps + gen-oh-vieve = wings

unexposed thoughts (revisted)

about a year and a half ago i wrote a post concerning the idea of unfilled creative ideas. i referenced the following excerpt from the year of magical thinking by joan didion:

"why had he forgotten to bring his note cards to dinner that night? had he not warned me when i forgot my own notebook that the ability to take a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being able to write?"

i recently read a passage in david lynch's book, catching the big fish, that rekindled my worries on this theme:

"...this idea comes to you, you can see it, but to accomplish it you need what i call a 'setup'...it's crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen...if you don't have a setup there are times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. and the idea just sits there and festers. over time, it will go away. you didn't fulfill it - and that's just a heartache."

for all intents and purposes, when i really boil it down, the only crucial element to my 'setup' is a camera. of course, i happen to shoot film, so i need that as well, and eventually i need to deal with processing that film, but really, as long as i have a camera of some kind, i have all the setup i need.

as it turns out, i own 6 cameras. 6 little magic traps.

and yet: i didn't shoot for most of the summer. i'm not really sure why. i can say for sure that the humid days and the trees full of leaves didn't fit well into the ominous spirit that i envision for this project. but as to why i didn't shoot an interim project, i simply cannot say. i just never brought my camera out with me. or rather i didn't bring any of my cameras out with me. i did, however, spend a considerable amount of time gathering my thoughts and just looking.

i think there is something to be said for that too, for just thinking and looking. recently i returned to most of the places i had cataloged and photographed them. these are places i had observed nearly every day while walking to work. i had imagined and re-imagined specific photographs over and over again each time i passed by. i knew what times of day i wanted to visit each scene, how the light would be compelled to fall at such times, how i would choreograph the frames. so the images were there, already well formed in my mind, all that was left was to expose them to film.

as of today i haven't seen any of the pictures, but i feel very much like i have been shooting with purpose these last few weeks, that this idea that has been growing in my mind all summer is suddenly palpable. all of this thinking and looking has not been wasted time. i haven't lost anything yet.

but the trouble is i have no way of knowing if the pictures i originally conjured in my mind are actually what i ended up photographing. i keep tripping over lynch's phrase "over time." because i have to admit, that given enough time, yes, those latent imaginings might have been lost. the idea's magic might have evaporated when i wasn't looking. the scenes could have rearranged themselves overnight.

(after all, magic is fickle that way.)

it seems, for now at least, that i have rescued a few of my unexposed thoughts from the brink of oblivion, but who really knows. this creative concern of mine has proven to be a constant companion. increasingly though, i'm realizing i'm far from alone. here is one last passage, by anais nin from henry and june:

"...last night, after reading henry's novel, i couldn't sleep. it was midnight. hugo was sleeping. i wanted to get up and go to my writing room and write henry about his first novel. but i would have awakened hugo...i lay very still and forced myself to sleep, with phrases rushing through my head like a cyclone. i thought that i would remember them in the morning. but i couldn't remember, not even half."

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the pleasure of being robbed

directed by joshua safdie. written by joshua safdie and eleonore hendricks. starring eleonore hendricks.

i want to see this.

i need a digital camera

i snuck this picture with my phone at a show at mccarren park pool this summer (i'm not sure if this kid realized it or not). in case you're wondering: i do not have a fancy camera on my phone. this file is not even a megabyte. what you see above is essentially the largest this picture will ever be. i do however really like the color i get on that phone. i don't really know why, except to say that there is a definite allure in viewing a color photograph lit from behind (jeff wall was obviously on to something).

my point: i really need to get a digital camera that i can keep in my bag. the phone is just not cutting it. i've narrowed it down to either panasonic's lumix dmc-lx3 or the canon g10. i really like the lumix, but my other camera is a canon so i feel like i should keep it in the family.

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gen & flem

genevieve huba of sun in my chest and mike fleming of gonna do it anyway

(i stole this picture from genevieve's blog; i'm pretty sure she'll be okay with it.)

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