Thursday, January 05, 2006

Edward Roop, Paonia coal miner: another Avedon portrait person


You are a writer, you are a writer. With just a little table and a pad of paper, you could show (me) the writer you are, though it is already telltale, what with your upper pockets jammed with fountain pen and a pair of eyeglasses. I see it too in your blues eyes, the soft glow of thinking man's eyes. I know you have a song on your mind. Are those wires from your stereo headphones, black tentacles leading from nowhere, jutting out of your pocket today? Is there a song in your eyes, in your mind, to write down? In your face, I see the expression of Sam from Iron and Wine--the Florida soft-singing writer. Are you a similar poet? When you are cleaned up, your sooty arm matching the white of your belly...when you are rooted out of the mine, gentled as the nipple you inadvertently fondle...is there some time to pen your black-day-into-white-night songs of your life, cooing them to life as your wife counts the money, irons your workpants, brings stew to your bowl? I hope it is so. I hope it is so, that you pen and write and remember your albeit song, sooty canary bird of flesh.

2 comments:

La Teatrista said...

Your little ode to him is absolutely beautiful. I read it before, but I was checking to see if you updated it and it was even more refreshing the second time around.

Tammy Gomez said...

Thanks, Claudia.
I miss that exhibit already. I could see it [the
Avedon show] over and over; it grounded me in a way that only sensuous b/w photography and a well-spun foreign film story can do for me.

Great art humbles and inspires...

tmg