Lizkdc Dislocation

Castine

I finally began working with some photos from my trip earlier this summer to Maine. We were up the coast further then I'd been before, in Hancock County, near Mount Desert Isle, but away from Bar Harbor, overwheening metropolis that it is, and off among the quieter peninsulas nearby. Castine and Blue Hill and Deer Isle were the principal places we visited, and along the way Searsport and Bucksport and even tinier crossroads.

This is a place of character, full of lost pasts, but also people who enjoy their present and work hard at making it possible, work hard at the job of being able to live someplace that is unto itself, and not a way station on the way somewhere else.

All around are the reminders of the past. Castine is a town that has as its point of pride how many times it was destroyed: overrun, burnt down, abandoned, resettled, renamed--and all as a part of a struggle that has largely been forgotten in modern America. It was a waypoint and a battleground in a grinding of frontier against frontier in a struggle of empires we're barely aware of anymore.

Phil Marshall and His Amazing Traveling Living Room Road Show

Last night was one of my favorite musical moments in a year of good music. Sitting under a June sky, on a small green field surrounded by chest-high flower banks, a whole bunch of us sank back in lawn chairs, hanging on to cold beers, while a pretty great singer did his thing on the acoustic guitar.

It was the Granby, Connecticut tour stop of a curious phenomenon.  How Phil Marshall got to this big back yard in Connecticut from Austin via Tulsa, starting out from Yorkshire, is a whole story, with which he regaled us in many anecdotes, in between songs.

Phil is originally from Yorkshire, where they make small dogs and pudding that has meat in it.  So he had the good sense to repatriate to the United States, where we have a terrific musical heritage,  and mighty mountains and spreading golden plains, and also make lawnchairs with beverage holders in them, and Ke$ha.  

Anyway.  With the radio industry bought up by Clear Channel and the like, and the CD market blown to pieces by iTunes and its fiendish encouragement of popcorn singles over chewy and substantial albums, these are harder days then ever to make it as a musician. Unless you're a robot, or Ke$ha.

Maine, Danger, and Andrew Wyeth

There I was on the coast of Maine, and all the clams were singing.

On remote Route 73, the needs of man are reduced to the essentials: fried food, haircuts, truck repair, and Jesus. You can go for miles without seeing more then a tiny four-way stop sign village, but these core things will be for sale at each of them.

Sun Going Down, Wellfleet

My friend Kathleen was just posting about sunset in a distant place.

I started typing a reply and then went on so long that I took it home with me.

She wrote:

Is it human nature to view the sun over the sea as a mystical thing?  I stand there and feel like I’m bopping out of my body, the intensity of the sight just stuns me speechless. 

So--kind of philosophical.  Where does our sense of awe or wonder at this stuff come from, anyway? One thinks it would not be very "adaptive" or utilitarian. 

Bonjourno, Bitches

It is a damn exciting thing to be in Italy, for the first time in one's life.  There's been Venice and Ravenna, pasta with donkey and pasta with pumpkin and braised rabbit and lots of vino. Remnants of an ancient, ancient world and busy people hurrying through the modern one. My buddies Kathleen, Kay and Michael have already headed upstairs after we logged a pile of trains and a bunch of cobblestoned miles today. For once I left the laptop back home and am trying to reunite with the idea of a pen and a journal.  But there was this little Internet station here in the hotel lobby, and I stopped in to do a little dance on my blog.

Crowd, Fire (Waterfire Festival, Providence)

Crowd, fire, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Waterfire festival, Providence RI

This is a wonderful invention.  More towns should make up their own crazy festivals (or lure an artist who can, as in this case).

Forget Christmas bulbs, parades, and other stuff that every Shelbyville has already! Let's line our rivers with big FLAMES instead.  Got to love it.

Actually, this inventive fest works quite well to get a big and yet very peaceable crowd to circulate through Providence's tiny downtown, eat, drink, hug, and photograph. 

The BostonPhotoMob made a field trip and it was good.

Hazy

IMG_2600.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Penn Station subway entrance, NYC

While in Brooklyn over the weekend, got to take a longish Sunday morning stroll with my bud Carol and fellow wedding guests Josh and Aaron.  We headed down to the Promenade, which I had seen in a million movies but never *actually* seen, in hopes of getting pictures of the cool, gigantic Olafur Eliasson "Waterfalls" project.

We could eyeball two of the falls, but a heavy grey haze severely blunted the effect, and all my pics were a contrastless mess :-(  They'll be in place through the fall, though, so we chatted about coming back for an autumn view.

Rain and clouds on Friday night, the 4th, had discouraged us from trying to see the fireworks, though we did have a lovely outside dinner under a thick trellis of vines in the hidden, enchanted back garden of a French bistro called Robin de Bois.

So my plans to come home with a rich harvest of new NYC photos were foiled, except for lots and lots of pics of wedding food being created.

The next morning, as I came out of the subway at Penn Station to start my journey home, I got this shot, out of a moment's accidental glimpse upwards. It was a lovely farewell to a great visit.

Hidden Harbor (Dorchester Shores)

IMG_2230.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Tat guy and his girl, Dorchester Shores

Whuh oh, a week without a post! Bad blogger.  I've got some committments today, so I'll just to this quickie to symbolically get back on the blogging pony.

Did a great walk last weekend along a long stretch of the harbor in Dorchester that most Boston vistors and even residents rarely get to see.

Why You Moved Away (Gregory Crewdson)

Went to see a show of photographs in Chelsea, NYC by Gregory Crewdson.

He makes images of these huge, lush,  saturated scenes of desolate figures on desolate streets of small New England towns, which ironically enough, are staged with crews of dozens of people. Results are sort of Edward Hopper meets David Lynch meets Cindy Sherman. Elaborate artifices they may be, but they will suck you right back to every hour you ever spent waiting at a bus station, walking the streets of your parents' neighborhood at night, or sitting in a parking garage after a failed meeting.  They map the Geography of Nowhere, they represent our terror with being alone with ourselves, our particularly American fears becoming aware of the present moment, of experiencing a loss of forward momentum.  It's why we move away from our hometowns.  They are why we don't turn the TV off. It's what's out there, in the back yard, with teeth.

Wall

IMG_1306.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Faces of Dudley mural, by BYCC mural crew: Dedicated To The People of Roxbury

Little taste from my outing with the Boston Photo Mob walking tour of Roxbury.

Group Flickr photopool here.