PHOTOG PROLOGUE

(To a photographer friend-o-mine)

Dear Whack,

Even though I'd been before, I looked at all 30-some-odd-pages of your pictures. You're alright for a white chick. Keep snapping those moments in time...you never know when a Pulitzer Prize winning one is lurking around. (Yes, they give those out in the photo journalism category as I'm sure you must know!).

That is why I cannot stress enough to you the importance of attaching that camera to your ass like a fresh pair of undies every fucking day of your life. Remember the mundane, the immediate and the tragic...like your picture of the "Christine" fallen headstone.

You never know when something is going to happen and you don't want to be thinking "Fuck!, I don't have my camera!" or "Shite!, I don't have FRESH batteries!" Get with it, wanker!…If you have a true passion for something then do it, and do it some more because life is short, but you can lengthen it through photography because photographs will go on and on (hopefully).

I can see you "have the eye" for taking photos, but go further...go beyond what you know or what you think you know and stop thinking the shot as much as feeling the shot. I know you already feel things and that now you might just wish that I’d just STFU but I'm not trying to give you a sermon on the mount, and I’m probably just talking out of my arse, but even if something doesn't happen for you to "chronicle" you could also go beyond that and set up odd contrasts of items in weird places. Make something happen! In a way it may be setting up the shot...but that is also ART...the art of seeing what it is in need of creating...even when you can't put your finger on what "it" is!

I know that I haven't taken the steps with photography that I'm asking you to consider, but I'm a musoid more than a photographer. I absolutely love photography and find it extremely interesting in all facets, but it's like my drawing...I'm not willing to put the time into it that it would take to be really brilliant at it. On the other hand, as we douche-bags are oft to say, I do the best I can just with the music thing because that is what I am the most passionate about artistically. There is no rule that I can't delve into other mediums but I'm still not where I want to be as a musician...still not as good as I'd like to be. On a good day I might admit I'm fair...maybe even great at times...but I have never reached the pinnacle for which I strive. I'm not talking about fame or record deals or even completing yet another album of a bunch of daft, sentimental songs...I'm talking about listening back to something I’ve recorded and knowing that I have created a genius-inspired masterpiece of timeless proportions!! I guess I’m just talking about the ultimate sense of self-satisfaction!! I can see you want that with your photography as well!

Oh yeah, sure I may be a virtuoso at masturbation…but is that ART?

8-)