Graeme Mitchell Photography

NYC Journal 48, and 1 plus 1

excerpt, nyc journal, still & 'scape work | June 4th, 2008

B/c it is seems to fit the pattern of how everything is here right now: palpable disconnect. It’s terrible in many ways…maddening actually. When I watch people on the street, on the subway, sitting on the park benches, driving their cars, living life, following the traced lines that seem to have been set out long before them, when I watch this it makes no sense; they’re all unfinished; they’re fragmented outlines that were never put in order. It’s as though a fog has settled over that which is usually inferred, that which is usually taken for granted. I don’t know when one plus one didn’t equal two anymore, but I’m not confident it does. It’s like we’re on a deep superlative bender, but without the feeling good, just the psychological tremors and quakes and underpinnings of disaster…this could be a matter of projecting…but I don’t think so. I’m not getting this across very clearly, am I? But, listen, it’s has me worried. Even these simple little pictures, this record of someday what was, seem to have become slippery, so to speak, as if they’re without reason. My only reaction is resistance, a push to take them out to some other limit. B/c sometimes they’re all I can hold onto. The continued study of a ____, at whichever end of the spectrum it exists. You’d think it would exist at some end, right? That it’s a sort of maximum. Doesn’t strike me as something that would be subtle.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 46, and characters

excerpt, nyc journal | March 28th, 2008

My room faces the Hudson and some nights the wind comes across hard and cuts in and through my windows and howls at a pitch you can’t imagine until you’ve heard it for yourself, seems like hell’s own machinery, and its cold rubbing up against the kind hiss plus drip-drip-drip heat of my old steam radiator. Kind of ominous and it re-inspires brooding thoughts from earlier today that people are all characters, types, prearranged narratives…old news, which I guess Shakespeare covered centuries ago and Foucault decades ago, but still the consistency and predictability of said characters is stunning. We are stereotypes. We are cliches. We’re not, despite what has been suggested to us, very unique at all.

Honest to God this disappointments me as much as it does anyone. Inspiring contempt and compassion at the same moment, the thought is surprisingly remorse, and rightfully so, but there’s more to it b/c then after all I think there’s the capability of one, even while understanding that their entire being is completely obvious, to at some point muster some authentic action, to create some new thing, to manage out of their fragmented self an entirely distinctive new fragment…something new to add to the pool of fragments - ad infinitum. And, this, I suspect can happen on large and small scales, like little tremors or like fundamental alteration of the paradigm.

The thing of it is, the point is, at the end of the day, history or gawd or some memory of reckoning, these forces will only remember acts, not intentions.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 44, and a letter to you

excerpt, nyc journal | March 8th, 2008

It’s been so very linear here lately, with hairy heads down, with seriously forged lines of direct direction, with every motion seeming to be endued with an ineradicable notion of progress. Eyes and hearts and lives are set on that glittering goal, that green light manifesting distant across the bay, burning like a cold soft brutal gem. Naturally, you can imagine that all disruptions are frowned upon; relaxation and imagination are intent-full…inefficiency at some point even became efficient…still, sometimes, even with that, I stop strange on the corner, like a rock dropped in a fast shallow stream…and when I look close a heavy thing fills my chest as I see most self-awareness - of which there’s plenty - smothered out buy a mix of obsession, hope, and a group-wide conviction that the purpose is absolute. You know, I can’t help but think this momentum is not innate; think that there’s the possibility of a whole lot being tremendously let down at some point… A student of history might know that this movie’s been played before, or might not…I don’t know. Yet, we manage to elude or maybe reconcile disappointment, b/c what is innate is the ability and skill to convince ourselves of anything to satiate our basic motives. For good and bad.

Anyway, the point I wanted to tell you is that I considered our savior and our ruin probably reside in equivalent qualities. Hope you’re well.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

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NYC Journal 37: midtown

excerpt, nyc journal | December 28th, 2007

In those irregular opening-ups of space and sky in midtown winter’s pall is heavy on the building tops and piling thick and brown and ominous on the horizon of 5th ave looking north and glowing like a theater set gorgeous with the low sun looking south all of it revealing not aggrandizing but outlining true the immensity of this city the girdles of glass and steel wrapping the spindles of iron and stone saw-toothing the horizon above the avenues and streets stretched into the haze of an old Dutch master and below even the ground belches and shakes and spews its own breaths of chthonic redolence and amongst this most noticeable of all are the small silhouettes of coats and hats moving without waver or end or start for that matter lighting cigarettes turning abrupt to and fro zig and zag talking loud and quiet hello goodbye shifting and rattling and pounding and grabbing and hunching lots of hunching the afraid and the more afraid the greed the hate the hope all in a dance that is based equally on reason as on unreasonableness but for all the affronting of this place this place where love is rare bears neither question nor answer neither opposition nor allegiance in itself but simply is and simply functions so floating in and out of it and realizing it as spectacle or machine or necessity doesn’t matter at all but what does count is the lone and the summation of individuals struggles and remnants that remain in the guts heart minds of people at any given instant amidst the confrontation of it all with this place I suppose.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2007.

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Excerpt, 3.

excerpt | October 21st, 2007

…then at a certain time in the afternoon if you allow for the wind and sunlight to fall upon your face in just the right manner, and if you’re eyes can close for just a moment longer than a blink, then you may be allowed to experience once again the exuberant plainness of your childhood. If this occurs, do not mistake it for sentimentality, but rather embrace it’s sublimity as without reason . And when you open your eyes hold tight on to what you just knew, and when injury comes chanting again, recall that fond fond memory of the sun, of the wind, of your childhood, of that transient interlude that forever suggests something other than the starkness of being that too is sublime in it’s lack of reason. This will be your castle; your revenge; your revolt…

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Excerpt, 2.

excerpt | October 5th, 2007

Lights, the horizon is so many lights, incandescent, warm,
flickering speckles that are so many, so many, not
infinite but somehow possibly they could be. Lights,
watch them across the water - the black water heavy below - and
the sky above glowing slight, falling off, the light’s wannings.
The blanket of lights, patchwork, glow, hard, definite,
and watching from the dark alone believing, no, understanding,
each light represents a life, lives; each square glow
trying perfection in geometry: perfect universes, each an entire
universe’s past, present, future. All near each other
but never rubbing, but never nearing, but never knowing another.
Each square bulb like a parable, and each night they burn on,
soft and without waver, with persistence known only by love and vengeance.
All of it seems born at one time from that dark river below…
born to that endless sparkling horizon, before bleeding into the
hazy glow of the night sky, before sinking back into the bare black.

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Excerpt.

excerpt, still & 'scape work | September 18th, 2007

…like incipient sparks against a perfect darkness. That beautiful thing. That good thing. Like a starry night through wet blinking tired eyes…

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2001

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NYC Journal #20: Resistance

excerpt, nyc journal | May 27th, 2007

There is a theme of resistance. I thought the beauty of free will is love and thought and, and struggle, and here is struggle, and my love for those that do so, for those who turn into the wind and push as hard as they can. Everywhere you see it here: tenacity, attrition…and it makes people glow. It makes me think if you took every person at any given moment and brought them together into a singular point of energy it…Jesus, well, can you imagine? Will this happen? When the universe reaches its apogee, piques, and instantly rewinds in on itself, time and space snapping back, collapsing back, for an instant will we all live our lives again in reverse, every person ever, the individual universe that each person is alight for this instant, a cold blue flame of this struggle and resistance and this love?

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

This isn’t a matter of romance; what it is a matter of motivation and purpose. The Existentialists gave the simple will too much credit I think. Or maybe they didn’t give the mechanisms we face in life enough. Sisyphus bears the rock for eternity, and that’s a beautiful thing, but the will cannot stand alone , the will needs to be bolstered with hope, love, defiance, with rage against that rock. Ennui and anomie are out of fashion right now.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

This isn’t a philosophy, or even an entire line of thought. What it is is part of an observation.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

And I think this struggle can near often the end in itself, the struggle and the love it’s based upon. We build constructs, artifices of reason to live and die for, love and religion and money and patriotism and art and… The truth of any of these is disputable, but the struggle for them, the resistance against what opposes them or for the fostering of them, it is indisputable.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

Nietzsche:

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting and exploiting suffering and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness - was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?

From Beyond Good and Evil, section 225, translated by Walter Kaufmann.

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NYC Journal #19, and a possible parable.

excerpt, nyc journal | May 27th, 2007

This story begins with the sun coming over the top of the old buildings full of the same histories on Bedford Ave spilling warm orange across the street nearly hitting a bench where a young man sits quietly drinking from a deli coffee cup noting the weak city trees and those people passing intently to work throwing long shadows. The young man is in a mood defined by both disillusionment and inspiration.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

Then an old man who’s homeless walks slowly and intently towards the young man. The old man sits next to the young man, and the old man carefully places a small torn plastic grocery bag on his lap. The old man stares ahead, and the young man continues to watch the day’s beginnings unfold.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

After a moment the downtrodden and derelict old man digs into his plastic bag and produces a freshly wrapped log of Oreo cookies. With his spindly fingers and sharp and soiled nails he carefully unwraps the top of the clear plastic that is sealing in the cookies. Before even thinking to touch the top Oreo he holds them over to the young man.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

“Would you like and Oreo,” the old man asks? The young man, turning to look at him politely declines the offer, but not without surprise. You see, you need to understand that this story takes place during a time of fear and greed, and while sharing would seem common place it is, in fact, not , so naturally the young man is taken aback, to the point in fact that this simple offer being so thoughtless and innate that the young man thinks it may be one of the kindest thing he’d ever experienced.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

To return the kind favor the young man offers to get the old man a cup of coffee. “No, thanks,” the old man says kindly. Again, the young man is taken by surprise. How can this old man not want a cup of coffee to wash down those cookies…especially since he probably doesn’t have more than a quarter on him.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

At this moment the sun comes fully onto the pair sitting on the bench, and the young man, still regarding the old man who is now looking off into the sun having forgotten the young man, sees in the old man’s eyes a pure glimmer of contentedness and happiness. The young man sees in the old man a great clarity and peace, as though the old man is a vessel to an ancient secret of life. And it occurs to the young man, if he’d a million dollars to offer the old man, the old man would probably not turn from the sun and would probably give the same soft decline as he gave to the cup of coffee.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

The old man continues to look into the warming sun; placing a cookie carefully in his soft and nearly toothless mouth. The young man turns from the old man and watches as more masses work their way towards the trains.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

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A death; a note on love; and my families portraits.

excerpt, family, portrait work | May 13th, 2007

My Grandpa, Jack, died. It was my father’s father. Here I want to share - and, please, excuse this father - my father’s rebuttal given at the service:

Eulogy I gave at Grandpa’s funeral:I did not inherit my father’s propensity for public speaking.

Eulogies enumerate the positive. In Jack’s case humor, tenacity, good memory,
and the wise choice to marry a talented, supportive wife. Edith. Mitchell traits.

I have been asked to give the rebuttal to the eulogy. What might Jack say in
response, if he could.

He might start with: I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 3,2).

Ate too much. Drank too much. Smoked too much. Worked too hard.
Obstinate. Stubborn. Didn’t listen. Didn’t talk too much - why bother when you
are right? All Mitchell traits.

Well, with apologies to Bob Marley (not the singer) and Charles Dickens

If you are virtuous and in need you may be visited by three specters
The ghost of Jack o’Lantern Mitchell past,
the ghost of Jack o’Mitchell Lantern present
and the ghost of Jack Mitchell future.

To reflect upon my past, your past and your future.
Learn what you will, and act as you must (should).

For all others I may simply come back to haunt you permanently.
~
God has Jack traits. Quiet. Doesn’t say much and you don’t know if he is
listening

And as we all know Jack seemed to have God like qualities
Now he has matriculated to the next form. one wonders what he and the All
knowing teacher will discuss. And who will listen to whom…

When I read this pride and love swelled my stomach and poured warmth into my chest and throat. When I read it I thought of the saying that you aren’t grown up until your parents pass. When I read it I thought of joking with my father, asking if I could steal it…if he’d mind if I used it at his…but then I wondered if he’s more sensitive than I understand.

I talked with my sister on the phone, her in her house that’s in a town so alone on the map that it is defined by what is not there (”we don’t even have a Starbucks,” she says), and I said, I don’t know if Dad believes in God, or heaven, or…isn’t that something I should know by now? She replied that she’d asked him once and he’d said __…then she added, that was many years ago…b/c minds certainly change in regards such as these don’t they? I was nonetheless impressed she’d the nerve to have asked him. I’m still working it up. Probably it troubles me b/c I don’t know what I’m more scared of, agreeing with or disagreeing with the answer.

I remember specifically the point in my life when I realized my father was human; until that point he’d been an abstraction, an a priori knowledge, a figure that w/o question defined me, a father; then my knowledge named reality and it’s propensities finally enveloped him too, and he became not a father, but my father: fallible, vulnerable, and questionable. It was my first epiphany. It was the point when I began to really love both my parents…a point of origin, if you will, since it seems like the love a child has for their parents is an ongoing journey. No?

I digressed. B/c I’ve nothing to add to death. And I am skeptical of anyone who claims to. But before death, in life, that thing we call love seems like one of the sure good things going, so I thought it worth mentioning. And family is what this comes down to, whoever you call family in life, those definite to you. Here is my family, portraits taken on the side of my parents house, taken the last time for awhile we’d all be together…

photo: David Mitchell; Canby, OR; 2007. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Maureen Mitchell; Canby, OR; 2007. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Erin Mitchell; Canby, OR; 2007. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Graeme Mitchell; Canby, OR; 2007. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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NYC Journal #15, or an Exploration into the Origins of Hope.

excerpt, nyc journal | April 17th, 2007

Spring floated down onto the city like a billowing blanket, wafting away the turpid guise winter paints gray over everything, leaving the soft noise of glasses clinking and children’s laughter rubbing up against my window screen. Yet despite this fecund season of sex and bird song I’m followed where I go by an air of aimlessness; I lay awake at night and think: what is it, after all, I’m getting at with this Journal. I wander and wonder and I tell myself, it must end in August, one year is enough, then you have to move on, even if to another project, even another Journal, b/c this is leading absolutely nowhere, it is an insipid void, a cyclical series of questions that lead to answers that lead back to the original questions, one year is enough, then onward, even if onward is in fact regression, one step back two forward… This is what I tell myself…before beginning it again.

The thing of it is that I started this Journal because…well, I can’t even remember why anymore; it’s that kind of thing. But the thing of it is that it has come to be that thing I do which I possibly shouldn’t be doing, a bad habit; in this regard it is much like a depraved wonderful ruinous lover. She is fun and lusty, but awfully time consuming and energy consuming; in short, there is a lot of other work that needs tending to.

This is too serious, I know. But taking pictures is very hard for me, something you should understand, a dire own worst critic sort of situation, so it’s necessary that I consider these things heavily.

Back to the point though, for me (or my sanity) I’ve recently managed a reason (excuse), being that the unifying theme of this Journal is the attempt to reveal hope. It’s not nearly as profound as it makes itself out to be, but in amongst the strife, fear, loneliness, laziness, and all else we as people are gloriously skilled at, I wish to reflect that which is otherwise, to lift a rock and find, well, anything really. All of this is in explanation of the new official title: NYC Journal, or an Exploration into the Origins of Hope.

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NYC Journal #14 + two pieces of advice

excerpt, nyc journal | April 17th, 2007

I once said to my Grandma while waving a bottle of something from it’s neck that I was going to drown my sorrows. She responded, they’re good swimmers.

When I was quite young I said to my Dad while trying to fold a letter evenly that I could not fold a letter if my life depended on it. He responded, it does.

I’m only mentioning these things b/c I thought if you took nothing from these pictures, then at least maybe I could pass on some words from those much wiser than myself.

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NYC Journal Part 10 (and a tale)

excerpt, nyc journal | February 18th, 2007

All psychologies, all minds, all beings of this city are in sync, ebbing and flowing together in response to the day of the week, the weather, the moon, the stars, and anything else that one can imagine or not imagine. It is one organism of humanity working within what we’ve fashioned, guided by will and contorted by things completely and utterly out of our control. This is observable in long stretches of poor weather that will erode the stability of the collective psyche. In the winter, after it’s been cold for more days than people can remember and the violent heat of Aug becomes a fond memory, it is not uncommon for these crystalline chicaneries to brush up against you, emotionally perverted interactions with people and surroundings, and unlike the apparitions of summer that seem to take place behind a cloud of suffering and surrealism, the winter strums of fatigue and of hopes of hope.

Let me share a such a tale of hope; I declare too, not an uncommon sort of a tale at that.

A sane lady (sane vs. insane being a natural/common/necessary distinction) came to me on an otherwise empty subway platform late at night and began a civil conversation. After discussing the weather she said, in July my mother died, God rest her soul. I replied, I’m sorry to hear that. She continued, there has to be something more than this, God there has to be, this can’t be it, can it(?), I know she has to be in a better place, this, this (looking around the otherwise empty subway station) can’t be all there it (etc)… I stood there silent, looking at her, mesmerized by the rhythmic chant of longing that was her voice. I tell you, it was wrenching. I didn’t tell her how skeptical I was, how I attempted and failed (so far) to believe. And I didn’t need to b/c the next thing she said was, what if there isn’t more, maybe there isn’t, maybe this is it, we’re born to live and we live to die, and that means she (her mom) is resting, just resting, God rest her soul. Yes, I thought, the endless rest: click, like turning the TV off: nothing, not even black. Nothing.

This woman was amidst an existential journey, keeping company with great philosophers past and present and, likely, future. I hope she doesn’t abandon it - possibly it is a quest w/o resolve, but it is not w/o merit.

Then, later, I’d seen a lady with a newborn in a carriage on the train. The lady was quietly in sobbing. Looking closer, I saw the newborn had medical equipment on the carriage and was noticeably disabled. Perspective and sadness and helplessness clenched their teeth and beat their fists, and I wanted so bad to tell her she was ok, that she was brave, that she was more at that moment than many people would ever become.

Then, later, a man and a woman in Tompkins Sq Park, sitting on a bench with the chess players and derelicts, stopped me. They’d just been married 2 hours prior. They wanted me to photograph them and mail them a picture. I obligingly took their portrait while they proudly held their marriage certificate. Their happiness erased all themes of iniquity that the environment supposed.

Et cetera.

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NYC Journal Part 8, or Remnants

excerpt, literature/reading, nyc journal, still & 'scape work | January 28th, 2007

Coney Island is like an old resilient Dostoevsky character, bestowed with that solitary sadness that comes with the territory of prolonged sufferings and a sheer volume of years amassed. It was lonely last time I visited there, except for the small remnants of some, uh, ritual that had taken place before, probably the day before from the looks of it. It was a memory I encountered the wake of. I imagined it had been a wedding, b/c that’s the only sense I could make from rose buds, tamale wrappers and a Virgin Mary hankerchief…but, wedding or not, it all bore little optimism b/c of it’s succinct fading…left was slight remnants, barely visible, almost invisible, giant in their smallness. Times certain and inevitable erosion of everything was, on the other hand, something that was entirely visible and certain and exact. That a chord was struck is blatant, but for some reason the remnants, the entire place made me think of a sentence, which I’m only able to paraphrase, from William T. Vollman’s novel Europe Central. It went something like this, “when we believed enough in books to burn them.” That this line came to mind made no sense, except, I guess, b/c I was for a moment aware of history and what we can believe in. (-and, yeah, if you haven’t read Vollman, do so tonight, b/c he can write…in the Gaddis, Pynchon, D.F. Wallace camp of really-heavy-thick-smart-books.)