The Ramones by The Ramones (1976) / Cover photo by Roberta Bayley

From a recent email from my four-year-old son Nick’s preschool teacher:

We also were entertained by Nick and Steven singing and acting out a song we sing called “Five Green and Speckled Frogs.” After singing this song for a few minutes, Nick decided he would rather sing a Ramones song. He kept trying to get Steven to sing “Hey, Ho, Let’s Go.” Steven looked confused but sang along anyway.

The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”
from The Ramones

© Armando Bellmas

Shot with a Holga. Light leaks and all.

I go back and forth about posting work by other photographers on this blog. The primary reason I do it is to show work that influences me and pushes my own work forward. (See here and here.)

I always come back to an old Cuban saying my Mom and my grandmother Mimi use to tell me all the time — in Spanish, of course — while I was growing up:

Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.

This is literally translated as “Tell me with whom you walk and I will tell you who you are” and loosely translated as “A man is known by the company he keeps”.

I’ve always been a little suspect of the phrase. Just because I keep the company of a certain person doesn’t mean that I am like that person or that their ways are mine. However, that may still be the rebellious kid in me bucking the parental wisdom.

The funny thing is that I keep coming back to that proverb every time I consider posting the work of influential photographers and artists on this blog. It’s as if a part of me truly believes the proverb to hold some truth.

I’m thrilled that I can find and wax rhapsodical about connections between people that inspire me and my own creative process. Making and finding meaning in those connections pushes me to be more passionate about my work and my life.

So yeah, I will likely continue to post influential work alongside my own work around here. My influences and inspirations are the company I keep. I couldn’t be more proud to walk with them.

Andrea, Catalina Beach © Baldomero Fernandez

This photograph by Baldomero Fernandez has been a favorite of mine for a few years now. It, along with much of Baldomero’s work, has been an inspiration and a guidepost for my own work.

There’s a sense of tension and mystery in this photo. The telephone appears to play a significant role in the story. However, the woman’s gaze is not on the phone itself but on something beyond the camera’s view.

Is someone coming towards or looking back at her? Is she staring off into space, lost in a thought, thinking whether she should call or not? Is the phone ringing, the woman choosing to look away and ignore it?

This photograph makes me want to linger for a while. It makes me want to know more about it. And, most importantly, it makes me want to create photographs that have a similar impact.

Photo by Maria Mochnacz

PJ Harvey “You Said Something”
from Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

We don’t know exactly what was said and it doesn’t matter. What matters is how the world around her at that very moment looked from a distance, how it smelled as they stood by each other, and how it felt as words were said and never forgotten. It’s like remembering all the peripheral things that we associate with significant times in our lives more so than the thing that prompted the significant event itself. Most times the periphery is what we prefer to look back on or talk about anyways.

My 19-month-old daughter Sophie pulled this bookmark out of a book on the shelf recently. It’s from a bookstore I worked at fresh out of college in ‘93. I don’t know which book she pulled it out of. She just walked over and held it up to me as if she knew I would want or need it.

The phrase I wrote on the bookmark:

…walked with a stagger of experience…

I don’t recall what book the quote is from. The phrase, however, has just as much punch for me as it did back then.

Those days I noted the phrase in a bookmark as I read the book. Today, I scan the bookmark with the phrase on it and post it on my blog.

© James Day

David Byrne, one of my artistic heroes, has written a thorough and realistic piece about the changing music industry.

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

The web is changing things for artists and creators of all kinds. We can all glean some insight from Byrne’s article.

UPDATE 1/9/08: Byrne gets and posts responses to feedback his article.

UPDATE 2/15/08: Byrne’s Addendum to recent Wired Article (Part II)

Speaking of David Bryne, The Knee Plays has recently been released on CD for the first time. It’s nothing short of inspiring and a wonderful listen. Check out this video of “The Sound of Business” from The Knee Plays being performed live:

Photographer unknown/Courtesy Neil LaBute

I just read Neil LaBute’s play The Distance from Here. His work always knocks me on my ass or leaves me staggering, whispering “oh my god” over and over to myself. The Distance from Here was no different.

I won’t go into the action of the play since I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. I also believe that LaBute’s work, this play in particular, is not for everyone. I know for a fact that my wife wouldn’t like it at all. So forgive my being so vague about the story itself.

This quote from the back of the Tusk/Overlook paperback edition piqued my interest when I was browsing the shelves at the library:

No American playwright has written more compellingly about the subtle ways in which people inflict pain on each other than Neil LaBute.

I’m fascinated by the stories LaBute creates. I can’t look away for the sheer audacity I see or read before me.

LaBute writes about the idea for The Distance from Here in the book’s preface.

When I was in high school in Washington State, there was a myth that ran through our hallways; our own little urban myth, in fact, about a boy and a girl who had dated since junior high.

That story stayed with me for a long time, right up until I wove it into the dramatic fiber of this play. I hope it has finally left me now, a part of this world and no longer a frightening image from my teen years. I think that is often why writers write and painters paint and musicians play their instruments. It’s not just because they have a gift, but also to create something slightly more beautiful or coherent or illuminating than the frenzied, scrambled memories of their own pasts.

Our lives up to this point are made up of stories and experiences and influences we carry with us whether we like them or not. I don’t think LaBute will ever shake the story from his high school days. We may not or try not to think about them anymore, but we don’t shake them.

However, I’m intrigued by the idea of looking to those stories and experiences and influences, no matter how extraordinary or awful they may be, for inspiration or a source to create new work.