Artisan

"Last night was the best night of my life."

Taking in Water

Tintagel, England; Summer 2009

All That Could Have Been

A recurring pattern: I load the film, and fry the first image. Keeps me humble. Or something. A reminder that the whole process is rather delicate and it doesn't take much for your world to vanish. Still, from the look of that water, I'll bet this would have been the best oceanscape on the roll.

"Was ist die Befindlichkeit des Landes?"

Potsdamer Platz, Berlin; summer 2008

One of those lucky moments. This picture still just charms me and it's probably my favorite picture from Berlin. I don't think we have to be city people to be fascinated by the city and urbanity. Berlin is without a doubt my favorite big city and I'm hoping for the chance to go back.

Two from Tennyson

On flickr

On flickr

It takes me a while to get to some things. These two pictures are personal favorites of mine, yet I had done nothing with them until now. Maybe I wanted them to myself for a while. But after two and a half years I think it's time to let them out.

Though I bet you can find them in here somewhere.

Kodachrome

You should go here sometime. But beware of the locals.

A Visit to Tiny Telephone

Tiff and I were fortunate enough to attend John Vanderslice's special performance with the Magik*Magik Orchestra at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. The concert included the entire White Wilderness album, a lovely collaboration between JV and Magik*Magik, just released this year. They also performed orchestral versions of many JV songs from his backcatalogue. It truly was a unique concert experience, and though I seem to say that with every Vanderslice show I see, this concert really did stand apart from those other fine shows. But the memories didn't end with the concert, for near the concert's end Vanderslice invited the audience to a free tour of his recording studio, Tiny Telephone, the following morning. Naturally, Tiff and I wanted to go, and since we had the whole next day available to us, we went. (Luckily, it didn't take much to persuade Mom to come with us.)

  John Vanderslice - Sea Salt by IndieRockReviews 

The tour of Tiny Telephone was a wonderfully memorable experience for a few reasons. First, it further solidified my deep admiration for John Vanderslice as a musician and person. He's a good person with remarkable talent; the genuine article, as they say.

Second, I learned a lot about sound and recording that I hadn't really thought about much before. Sound is cool and recording an album is a really complex process - at least it is when you wanna do it well. Tiny Telephone encourages analog recordings rather than digital, and for good reason: too much of digital recording is crap. New digital technology should be awesome, but most of it isn't. Unfortunately, our new technology has mostly made studio recording lazier, which only encourages lazy listeners - we get used to hearing poor quality recordings and lose our ear for good sound.

Third, I was charmed by Vanderslice's account of the development of Tiny Telephone and the small community of artists neighboring the studio. According to him, the neighborhood used to be a lot more dangerous than it is these days. The change came in part because of the small artist community that filled in the collection of shabby-looking back alley buildings where Tiny Telephone is located, inviting a much safer atmosphere. Additionally, the once-dangerous park next to Tiny Telephone received a skate park from the city, which has helped reduce crime. Maybe other parts of the country have gotten over the stigmas against skaters and the narrow beliefs that artists don't contribute to society, but in my community some of these naive beliefs still prevail. But the neighborhood where Tiny Telephone resides seems to show that artists can do a lot for a community and having skate parks (and other similar community amenities) doesn't increase crime, it reduces it because kids,and adults, have a place where they can gather and engage in constructive activities rather than wander around with nothing to do but get in trouble. This story was a modest example of community action to improve the neighborhood; something we could all benefit from.

There's much more I could say about my visit to Tiny Telephone. But for now I'll just show off some of the pictures I took while there. Vanderslice was kind enough to allow me to snap some photos and I was rather happy with the results.

Note how much the dude in sunglasses looks like T-Bone Burnett.

Thanks to Mom for taking this picture.

 

For more on our visit to Tiny Telephone, check out Tiff's post at The Art of Place.

Storm King Ranger Station

Remembering London

Next month it'll be two years since I was in London. It would seem rather cliche to say that the time has flown by and I can't believe it has already been that long. I guess cliches are appropriate sometimes.

For college students, summer provides the often much needed opportunity to get away from university and visit various parts of the world, either to study, vacation, live, work, or just disappear. This summer is no exception and many of my friends are vacating Utah County to spend their time elsewhere - Matt, and Lauran & Dustin are studying in Cambridge; Kylie is already doing her study abroad in Senegal; Talia will be working in China; Marshall & Beth have moved to San Francisco; Bentley is back in the English countryside; there are others I'm forgetting at the moment, too. Me, I'm staying here and am happy to be here. There's enough to do right in Utah that I'm happy to stay here and relax, though I'll soon be off for the Washington Peninsula with the family for a week.

Seeing new and/or familiar places is really cool and I really value the opportunities I've had to travel as much as I have. With all that travel I often get nostalgic for the places I've visited and the experiences I had there. It's just that nostalgia that has me writing this post. I went back through my London pictures and was reminded of how great the city was, even if I preferred the English countryside to the big city. After spending several weeks traipsing across the English countryside for my study abroad, the ten days we spent in London was quite a change of pace and tone. London reminded me just how beautiful, even spiritual, the weeks prior to our stay in the city really were. Hiking the stormy and windy mountains of Scotland and northern England, wandering across the haunted and lonely moors, laying on the grass at Tintagel listening to the ocean as the moon reflected off the water, and watching the sun set from Tennyson Downs  are just a few memorable moments of my time in the English countryside.

But London brought its own joys and overall was a very enjoyable experience. Much fun was had playing ultimate frisbee in their parks with really crappy grass; seeing really sweet plays like Death and the King's Horsemen and Arcadia; visiting the very impressive museums (the Soviet propaganda room of the Tate Modern was particularly awesome); and buying cheap CDs from street vendors on Portobello Road, then wandering the streets listening to Parts & Labor's Receivers. London has a charm that is all its own. It really is a unique place to England and to the world. Like Berlin (my favorite big city), it has an intriguing tone that is both modern and ancient. There is history there, but it's a city that has not lost touch with modern society, containing both positive and negative aspects of our day and age. It's a rather frantic city, but, if you're looking, you'll find ample opportunity to slow down and relax. All in all it's a place that I have fond memories of. But when you visit London, be sure to take some time, or a lot of time, and head for the countryside.

I could continue, but I'd rather just show some pictures and be done writing. The pictures are more interesting anyway.

Enjoy your travels.

Pictures at Stonehenge

My good friend Heather Walker got me looking at my Stonehenge pictures again. It turns out that I'm quite fond of many of the pictures I took there. So I thought I'd highlight a few here. I don't think that my thin England journal contains any thoughts about Stonehenge, which I think is a shame. Now, almost a year and a half later, I'm still not sure what I'd say if I were to write about visiting Stonehenge. For now, the pictures are my journal entry, and they are probably better than any words I would have, or will write. If anyone who has visited Stonehenge has a thought or two about their experience, feel free to share it, if you like.

Where do we go from here?

This picture was an accident. In my haste to snap a picture of these deer, I forgot to switch my settings. But I rather like the picture. I don't know if it's a good picture, but I do like it.

This is from on top of Hurricane Ridge, Washington. I've been visiting the Washington Peninsula for years, and this was the first time I'd been on Hurricane Ridge. I wanna go back.

Berlin: a book, a review, and some pictures.

Berlin by Stefan Dauth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book is a wonderful collection of black and white photographs of my favorite city. I felt that this book captured the multitude of personalities, tones, histories, and cultures that make Berlin the fascinating city that it is and has been for at least the last century. Major city landmarks like Berliner Dom, Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag, and such are all here, but there are also the great pictures of the alley way at Hackesche Hoefe (where you'll always find great graffiti art) and the street book market in from of the Humboldt Universitaet. You also get a good look at some of the people and fashion that populates the city. I like that the while you have the glamorous shots from down at Potsdamer Platz, you also have the less glamorous shots of anarchy symbols painted on walls and peeling, shredded poster ads pasted on the walls advertising concerts, protests and whatever else. A good collection that uses nice camera work to give an interesting portrait of a very vibrant, historical, and modern city.

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Looking at Dauth's photographs got me all nostalgic for Berlin and I felt like adding some of my own pictures that I took last fall when I was there doing a research project.

Renovations in the Alley at Hackesche Hoefe

Observing the Dead

Modern Times

Fall in the City

Golden Arch

Never Land

"I had this vision. You know in the summer if you lay on the grass and stare at the sky, you can almost see beyond the stars, but cannot quite get a grip on what's there? Well, sometimes it's very difficult to work out exactly what it is that keeps you pressed between the earth and the sky and why you don't whoosh off into oblivion." - Andrew Eldritch

The Stalwart

During my recent return to Berlin, that city of cities, I took a stroll down Unter den Linden. And who did I find, to my utter joy, but Werner, the street bookseller; still at it, but now bundled up to ward off the frigid fall weather. I've posted on Werner before, and his contribution to my first Berlin experience is more resonant that he knows. While Werner has forgotten me, I won't forget how I asked him what German books would be good for an English speaker to start with, to better practice and learn German. I asked him this question in German and he responded in English. Thus began our lengthy conversation that consisted mostly of Werner expressing his dislike for Guenter Grass and Thomas Mann (who you'll note in the picture Werner is still smart enough to sell, because he is popular), his cynical amusement of tourists wandering up and down Unter den Linder snapping boring tourist pictures with their point & shoot digital cameras, and his wish to do late-night readings of Berlin Alexanderplatz with me to accelerate my learning of the language. Fabulous memories.

This sighting of Werner remained but a sighting, for I didn't want to bother him and knew I wouldn't buy a book. It was enough to know I'd earlier bought a Reclam copy of Kafka's Der Prozess and would now snap a picture of the man at work, making me one of the tourist "Apes" he laughs at.

Werner, keep the flame alive.

People As Places

"We're the people that we wanted to know,

And we're the places that we wanted to go."

You can't actually see Bryce Canyon, but we're there.
I see it in Kylie and Tiffany.