Tomorrow is the reception for the photo show – George Forss and me – at the Round House Cafe, 1 Washington Street, Cambridge, New York, 12816. It is the greatest privilege for me to share this evening with George, Red and Maria and are coming, the Round House will offer it’s delicious pastries, cookies and cakes and bread (pizza, too, I think). George and I have photos up for sale all over the walls. I’m giving a talk, we are running some video of profiles of George done by the BBC, the Today Show, Entertainment Tonight. Scott Carrino may or may not have a song about the “Divine Old Dog.”
I’ve sold nearly half of the photos and Maria will send some online once the show is over. I am very excited to be doing this with George, surely a milestone in my photography and part of the wonderful re-discovery of George that has begun. His photos are worth seeing, worth traveling for. George is a genius, he is worth driving a ways to meet.
George Forss and I started Round Three of his new Kickstarter Project – “The Way We Were” – this morning, the project is still under construction. We are working our way through a blizzard of security questions in anxious tech-centered America. There notifications, passwords, odd questions, financial information and spectacular software and loading issues relating to George’s historic home-made computing system. I think he has the first version of Internet Explorer ever made, he goes through more steps to get his e-mail than I do in a week of blogging, his bank refused to even acknowledge his computer’s existence. I can’t quite even describe his very personal Internet access and communications system, I think he calls it Magic Jack.
George is heroic and I am willful, we will get this done. It is important. In a sane world, someone like George would have an assistant handling it, people would be lining up to give him money to see his breathtaking photographs of another time and world. We have some more hoops to jump through. I’m still working on the bio – we are negotiating over how to handle the UFO Investigations – and we’ve completed all but one of the Kickstarter requirements. The Amazon payments system, the manner in which Kickstarter receives and disburses money, is holding things up for now. We got through the identity and security verification process, the tax information, most of the bank account information but because George’s computer frightened the bank, we need another method of verification, and of course, there are no humans to confer with.
George is a technical whiz far beyond me, but this new way of dealing with the world is hard for him, makes him anxious. Amazon has to deposit a few pennies in his account, and once he verifies the amounts, I think we are there. I’m hoping we can get George’s project – “The Way We Were” – up on Kickstarter next week. The project is about his desire to self-publish some of the photographs he took of the New York landscape before the destruction of the Twin Towers, which are featured prominently in his photography. The photos – I have seen many of them – capture the magical innocence of the time before that awful day, the grandeur and sense of our greatest city before it’s heart was broken and we entered a new world of fear and preoccupation with security.
This project with George has become important to me, an exercise, as a friend described it, in humility and genius. George is a genius, the first genius I have become close friends with, we talk at least once a day, and we have really come to understand one another, an act of faith on both sides. George has a great mind, he can do many things, but this process would have driven him mad, Kickstarter, like Amazon, is one of the new kinds of entities that works only through software, there are never any people to ask for help or to call or talk to. George told me a dozen times this morning that he would never have gotten this far without me sitting there.
I don’t actually believe that, George has overcome obstacles a lot more difficult than software programs in his life, but I feel this project is so important and so does he. America and the world are often cruel to their geniuses and George’s brilliant photographs of New York City, taken mostly before the awful tragedy of 911, need to be seen. George was one of the most acclaimed photographers in the world, I believe there is a huge and eager audience for his work. Round Four resumes tomorrow.
It was about five years ago, Maria and I were friends then, we had both begun to understand that our marriages might not last, Maria was working on weekends caring for the animals at the first Bedlam Farm in exchange for the use of the Studio Barn, where she had begun making her art again after giving up on it some years earlier. It had not crossed my mind once that we might be together, that I might fall in love with her.
She would come the farm early on Saturday and Sunday mornings, she stayed only a few minutes, would rarely come to the farmhouse. I was usually inside the house, beginning my spectacular disintegration and descent into terror, a lonely and harrowing time. I looked out the side of the farmhouse – a big window – and I saw Maria come up into the pasture. My sheep – I had about 20 then – came rushing over to her, they were calm, they gathered in a circle, just as I saw them do this morning, as they do every morning. Maria may or may not have brought some bread or treats, I can’t remember, but I was mesmerized, struck by how much these skittish animals trusted her. Hanging around with border collies, sheep have almost never trusted me, not for long. I am the guy with the crazy dog, it’s okay with me, I don’t love them much either.
But I respect the judgements of animals, their instincts are so superior to ours. Animals love Maria, they trust her and respond to her, I believe it is because her emotions are so pure and open, so close to the surface. I was so touched by the way the sheep gathered around me, I saw something new in them and I saw her, perhaps for the first time.
The humble and fickle sheep gather around her every morning, she speaks to them, they seem to need to be near her, it is part of their ritual, they even leave the hay behind to gather, they seem to be imploring her, the sheep first awakened me to the pure love and honest feeling of this person, I think it was at that window that I began to fall in love with Maria, to see the power of her warmth and feeling, to understand how much I wanted and needed that in my life. There, at that time, my life was a cold, black hole, here was something that could fill it with light and warmth and love. It was what I always wanted could never find.
Animals are a mirror, they brought me to Maria, the sheep, Frieda, the donkeys. They showed me the way, taught me to see what was in front of me. I always listen to them, they can be the greatest teachers in the world.
I’m launching the Springtime photo series on the blog, capturing some images from the other side, the world of color and warmth, soon to return. Yesterday I put up a photo of our back porch and was warmed by the almost desperate appreciation so many people had for seeing green things and sunlight. It is 20 degrees this morning, 30 degrees warmer than it was Sunday evening. I love this photo, it is one of my all-time favorites, Simon, Maria and the donkeys gathered around our quite verdant apple tree. This was a beloved morning ritual, Simon just loved it.
After the morning chores, Maria and the donkeys would gather under the tree and everybody would get an apple or two. Sometimes, even me.
