Day: November 29, 2013

Sunday I was at a book talk/signing in Chester, Vt., and my voice started cracking mid-way through, it got scratchier and scratchier, I kept clearing my throat. I suspected I was getting sick and the next day I got walloped with a grade A cold, I lost my voice completely, I was just exhausted and moved around in a fogy and haze. I got to the nurse practitioner Wednesday and she listened to my froggy squeaking and ruled my illness a common cold. Just make sure and rest she said, and i thought, oh sure, I’ll rest a lot on a book tour. But I didn’t have much choice.

Maria had some fun with my voicelessness, we went off to our Inn and I couldn’t speak at all, it was funny for sure, but it also got to me in an interesting and peculiar way. My throat hurt so much I began to wonder what I would do if I didn’t recover, if I lost my voice for good, what it would be like to live in a world of listening. I don’t think I have ever lost my voice, even at my worst I always spoke up for myself – sometimes too loudly. I value silence now in meditation and I kept away from my technology all through the Thanksgiving holiday, the  break was refreshing.

But the experience of voicelessness was a powerful experience for me – I can’t quite speak yet, although it is better. I had to find other ways to communicate with Maria, I used hand signals and loud whispers, she understood almost all of what I was saying. I listened to conversations, I experienced a silence within my self that I came to like – our world is so noisy, so filled with messages and alerts. I like contributing silence.

I seemed to pay attention more, to hear more and notice more, without my words scouting the world in front of me.

The quiet felt melancholic to me after awhile, almost lonely, I began to think of the voiceless, literally and metaphorically, the people who can’t speak or are never heard, even if they have a voice. Speaking is our way of navigating the world, I felt some twinges of panic at not being able to express myself, I carried my camera with me everywhere, if I could not speak with words, Perhaps I could capture some images that would speak for me, photography can do that.

I couldn’t make phone calls, couldn’t engage in the small talk that occurs when one runs into other guests at an inn, did they think me rude for nodding at them and walking by? My voicelessness made Maria nervous at first, she said she was not used to a Jon Katz without a voice, neither was I. It is remarkable what we take for granted, we humans, I cannot remember ever losing my voice before, I will appreciate it when it returns, I will be grateful for this eerie and different (and spiritual perspective) in the meantime. I had a dream last night about monks in a silent order, I wondered if they didn’t learn to trade emotions by feel and smell, the way animals do.

My voice is not back yet, neither is my strength.

They take signage seriously in Vermont, they banned billboards decades ago, and the state is strikingly beautiful to drive through, Vermont always seems to remember there are other things in life than just money. This homeowner had his own original way of communicating with dog lovers. This tension occurs wherever there are people and dogs, my father would never have dreamed of walking around Providence with a plastic bag, times, of course, have changed.

Genius does not die, it simply evolves, it can not really be quashed or ignored for long. George Forss is a kind of Cinderella story, he was peddling his photographs on the street in New York City when David Douglas Duncan, the famous World War II photographer came walking by on the way to a meeting. Duncan was transfixed, the encounter would change George’s life forever.

In his book about George Forss, “New York, New York, Masterworks Of A Street Peddler, ” Duncan wrote that the street peddler’s setup had nailed him in mid-stride. He never got to his meeting. “Astonishment, disbelief, excitement, confusion and admiration held me captive while my eyes swept the vendor’s display of prints on a sidewalk between Madison and park Avenues in midtown New York. Almost every scene was a transfigured cliche of Manhattan. All of them were deluxe format and incredibly mounted. Some were masterpieces; the one beside my food was incredible. Promises of romance and the mystery of Greenwich Village lurked in the evening bloom behind the World Trade Center whose twin pylons of industrial power still shimmered in an aurora of sunllight – modern cathedral spires painted with silver against the threatening sky.”

Duncan and his book brought George Forss to the attention of the world – Time Magazine, the Today Show – and to the world’s  premier photographers, who flocked to New York to find out how George mastered his evocative and powerful  double and triple exposures. Fate and human nature did not work for George, when the towers came down his career seemed to collapse also, his fame faded, he left New York City for upstate New York, a survivor of a family riddled with brilliance and metal disturbance.

George could not play the game, he could not maneuver through the art scene, he could not market his own work or even understand all the fuss about it, he would rather talk to reporters about aliens than about his photographic genius, His work was hailed by Ansel Adams: “I have seen no photographs of recent years as strong and as perceptive”; Henri Cartier-Bresson: “I feel in these striking photographs the pulse of of a sensitive eye that is not overcast by ‘concepts”; Alfred Eisenstaedt: “Unbelievable! Great photographs of New York – This man can see!”; Yousuf Karsh: “Forss’s photographs are portraits that unveil the hidden face of the city, to reveal the magical innocence behind the grime – the surrealistic poetry behind the harsh reality;”  Gjon Mili: “Majestic.”

George does not ever see himself as a genius, I think the idea frightens him. He will talk about settings all day, he has no ego at all. We talk a lot, and when he is pressed or confused, he goes almost immediately to the messages of the aiiens, who have helped him understand his world. He is a UFO Investigator, his investigations van has over 300,000 miles on it.

Life happens and a lot of life happened to George Forss, fame is fickle in America, and corporate publishing has little interested in stories of artistic genius – I know, I’ve tried to get George’s story published. George does not tell struggle stories, he does not speak poorly of his life. He was taken from his home as a young child and sent to an orphanage, he revered his mother Norma, who could not take care of him, she was also a brilliant photographer, she was bent level to the ground with arthritis at the end of her life, she died of a diabetic coma.

Digital photography has pushed the photographic masters to the edge of the culture, but George has never been discouraged, doesn’t lament the digital age, won’t quit. He opened an art gallery in Cambridge, N.Y., the Ginofor, he has just constructed a George Forss Theater Of The Arts inside this tiny space, he takes fabulous photos all the time (and is giving me some lessons) and is in a long and loving relationship with the gifted artist Donna Wynbrandt,  a former street person in New York and other cities. He lives with his step-brother Mickey, a schizophrenic who suffered some brain damage in the 60’s. After he was released from his orphanage, George became an agoraphobic for nearly seven years, he never left his mother’s apartment.  It is a wonder to watch George work, he builds his own lenses, puts a hood over his camera when he works, has a Rube Goldberg darkroom that is right out of Frankenstein.

I think the wheel is turning, I think George’s time is coming again. He is offering his newest masterpieces – taken in New York City a few weeks ago – for $65 plus shipping, the greatest bargain on the Internet, a wonderful gift for any photographer in the world.

What an opportunity for a new audience to find George and discover his genius, as Duncan did, as I did, as many others have.

George does not understand his life, he accepts it. He called me this morning in shock to say he had many, many orders for his new photograph of the New York City skyline, above after I posted it on this blog.  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, one of his favorite phrases, “I better shut up.” No, George you don’t need to shut up. Time to start shouting.  “I’m on a roll,” he said, heading out to the post office to buy some mailing envelopes for his photos. So he is.

You can see  and buy his signed photos  here.

When we got home from Vermont, there was a note from the ever-vigilant Deb Foster, our animal and farm sitter, that one the sheep – it was Socks – started limping on Thanksgiving afternoon. I went out and saw her limping and figured it to be one of the sprains that are common with sheep, they usually go away, I didn’t see anything.  We decided to take a closer look after we unpacked and settled in, and I held Socks and Maria looked at her right paw and a huge, inch-and-a-half nail was sticking out of her hoof, it was right between the two pads, we just pulled it right out and it came  easily, it was not deeply embedded. It was a huge nail.

We applied some antibiotic cream to the entry point, I suspect Socks will be limping for a few days. Red helped us hold her in place, but we won’t be sheepherding for a few days. Old farms are studded with nails, old rusty buckets and other debris from the years when farmers simply dumped their trash out in the fields and there were no dumps. Thus stuff came up out of the ground at Bedlam Farm and I remember many times when the donkeys caught their hooves in metal brackets or parts of old farm tools. When we knocked down the old barn at the new farm, we used magnets to find some of them, but others come up right out of the ground when it rains or the ground freezes and thaws. This one must have been sticking straight up, Socks will be fine. I’m always reminded of the real life of real animals. And real farms.

I check each of the animals every day, morning and night. I am often surprised by what I might find.

Evoking Thanksgiving, Cont.