In August 1965 I drove to Gloucester to tell Charles Olson what I was doing. Show him. Take his picture. I knew he'd be glad to see me getting into something. While we were walking along the beach wall, he said that if any of my shots of him came out, he'd like to use one on the cover of The Human Universe, which Grove was about to publish. It was the first picture I sold, for $25. In 1967, when I'd finally saved up enough money ($150) for a camera of my own (I'd been borrowing one from an EDC friend, unbelievable though it seems now], I sent a check to Philip Whalen in Kyoto; he and Gary Snyder, who speaks Japanese, bought it for me there and mailed it to me. And Gordon Cairnie, proprietor of the Grolier Book Shop -- one of only two people at Harvard who made Bob Creeley feel he might amount to something [the other, Fred McCreary] -- let me sit in his store for hours and take pictures of everyone coming and going/ himself.
Relationships must have seasons and rhythms; constancy isn't necessarily the key. By taking pictures in my house, I get a sense of how things change every day. How my relationships change, the rhythms, who comes in, who hasn't come, who's busy, how busy I am, what I feel like tacking on the wall, what I feel like throwing away. How I feel with that chair in the corner, the trunk in the middle room. I have always had the feeling that everything is going to last forever; nothing is ever going to change. We'll never get any older and we're always going to be friends. I can take the picture today or tomorrow or in a week. It will be there.
The one thing that I've discovered about photography is that it emphasizes how life changes, how nothing is sure. When I wish I had a picture of so-and-so, I have to go out and take it right away. In fact, my intending to take a picture is the kiss of death... The building gets tarn down, the person gets hit by a car. Things change. There are cycles. Since I have this urge to make everything very concrete, the camera is a natural instrument for me. I have the evidence. It's a constructive way of being controlling, of putting things there. I always have everybody; I don't have to worry about their going away.
My camera shapes my life and the way I approach it. It makes the occasion. Let's take a picture, I say. We are all together and in a good mood. Enjoying our luxury of being together. I get my Nikon out of the filing cabinet. I put it on the table, the window sill, or beside me on the floor. Nearby. It's there -- impossible not to be aware of it. But it's not a powerful presence for anybody except me. Half of my head is thinking, what will work, what will be good. Should I move over? [The answer usually, no, I opt for the sense/ease of it.] We stay put. Where we are. The other half of my head is into the conversation. Responding to it. There. My manipulation/seduction is naked. I want to elicit response from my friends/relax them. Create a circumstance I can't define before I have it, but recognize when it happens. That's it. The camera reinforces our high.
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