Feeling Good - Nina Simone

I love this video ... can there be a better song for Friday afternoon?
Have a lovely weekend, friends!

My Morning Commute

Recently, I decided to listen to French language CD’s in the car on my way to work. Since I haven’t made a special effort to learn it during my down time, I thought this might be a nice approach to improving my vocabulary. But it turns out that the CD’s I have are meant to accompany a text book. I don’t know how recently you’ve had the opportunity to notice this first-hand, but police officers tend to suspend their support of education and self-improvement when it comes to driving and reading text books simultaneously. So, for now, I’ve replaced those CD’s with Pink Martini as a surrogate. I can now, with confidence and perfect pronunciation, sing useful phrases such as, “I have body parts scattered all over the streets of Paris.” and, “I do not want to have lunch, I only want to forget.” and, “Where are my feet?”

I digress. I’ve been paying particular attention to the music I listen to and the effect it has on me lately. There’s a little project I have underway that merges my interest in music and photography. I should have more to talk about in a month or two, but for now, “J’ai perdu mes bras sur la Place de l’Opera.”

Petals

Every Spring, I think I take some iteration of this picture; petals fallen on the sidewalk. There's something compelling to me about how, once removed from their original context, they take on a different spirit, a kind of pathos. It reminds me of my favorite painting at the Columbus Museum of Art, a rather small poetic thing by Odilon Redon called The Two Graces. Elegant and simple, the two figures, arm-in-arm, with what appears to be rose petals at their feet. Lovely, no?

Freedom

I'm just back from an all-too-brief visit to Chicago, and with a packed schedule, had little time to shoot anything but the view from the balcony of my (all too chic) room in this hotel. Between meetings today, I dashed across the street to B&N to buy the latest issue of B&W and Color magazine. On the flight home I read an interview with Nobuyoshi Araki about his career in photography. In it, he said something that struck a chord with me, "The more freedom you get, it becomes less free. Art always has to be against something. Otherwise, you can't have motivation." This helped me to recast my perception of restricted time in an amazing city. Looking at the first picture, I have to wonder, what were those projects taped to the the wall? What was the beverage left unopened on the desk by that office worker?

Ravine

I've been spending a lot of weekend mornings in the ravine a few blocks from our house, which is a pretty sweet way to start a weekend day. While the primary goal is to spot migrating birds, it's also a nice opportunity to watch nature move colorfully from one season to the next. Do you have such a place, a refuge from the daily hustle?