A side note

I never did finish any of my useless ruminations on guitar players, rock music, and the albums of Led Zeppelin.

I probably never will.

This blog has utterly lost its focus which is in some part a mirror of its author's internal clutter and messiness.

Alas.

This is a bit I posted to a discussion thread on Flickr.

For those too lazy to follow the link nor read the discussion (okok, I know all four of you are really busy) it was in the context of the trend amongst many Flickr photographers to get caught up in the technical perfection of photos and perhaps losing sight of composition and, most importantly, subject and impact. The famous photo of Jimi Hendrix on his knees on stage at Monterey in 1967, summoning forth flames from his guitar was posed as an example. Iconic photograph of an out of the world moment, captured on film but not following any of the rules of photography as taught in schools or touted on photo sites.

A bit of back and forth (including an unwanted correction by me about where the photo was taken - the OP said "Ashbury" which had nothing at all to do with Monterey), and then I mentioned this:

We actually agree - if the image doesn't have something to captivate the eye or the mind or the soul, no amount of post processing or multi-thousand dollar gear is going to compensate for that. I do think the technical aspects have their place, and can improve a great image into something beyond that (my superlative well is running dry), but without the undefinable "it", all of that falls by the way side.

When I was a kid I read a lot of books about the Second World War. Many of them were heavily illustrated with photographs, some of them quite remarkable both in terms of subject and emotion, and the technical captures themselves.

One, however, stays with me and played a large role in defining my thoughts and feelings about war generally. It is a lousy photograph, from a technical standpoint - bad composition, lighting, exposure, so on and so forth. But the subject remains imprinted on my brain.

It shows the flattened body of a German infantryman after being run over by a tank he had been walking in front of, as part of a long column. All you can really see is this flat, muddy, uniformed figure, surrounded by a torn up dirt road turned to swampy mud, with a stopped tank behind him. It isn't gory, there are no body parts or blood apparent - you can almost believe it is just an empty uniform, lying in the mud.

Almost.

And that sentiment, that photograph, brings basically back where I started with my posts in March of 2003 - the first one being about the opening salvo of death-bringing bombs falling on Baghdad while Dan Rather tries to suppress the hard on he obviously had going under the news desk as buildings and the humans in them were blown literally to pieces.

My problem has become this: nothing has changed. More of ours are dying now than ever before, Iraq is a squalid, internecine street fight we can neither control nor suppress, and our country is becoming irrelevant to human progress. An impediment, even.

Makes me wish for those old time, over sized barf bags airlines used to have in every seat back pouch.

Fuck it.

Maybe writing convoluted irrelevancies about music and other shit that interests me the way shiny things entrance monkeys is the way to go. My anger is otherwise uncontrollable...