Room to Write

Sorry about the recent lag in transmission, but Lenslinger Central is undergoing renovations. Actually, the Missus insisted I clean my room and somewhere between waxing the action figures and polishing the lava lamp, I managed to unplug my mojo. No bother; I’ve been at this blogging thing long enough to recognize its rhythms, to understand when my late-night keyboarding is producing un-bruised fruit and when I’m just punishing my knuckles. Lately, I’ve been somewhere in between and while I’m more than willing to examine my methods, motives and many moods, I’d first like to pull back the proverbial curtain on my upper lair. Sure, I’ve called it ’The Lenslinger Institute’, The Center for Advances in Cameramanthropology’, ‘VBU’ (Viewfinder BLUES University, natch), but it’s really more of a bonus room over the garage. Actually, it’s not even the whole room, just the one corner of the home where I’m allowed to cower, decamp, and occasionally imbibe.

See, I live in a house full of females. Strong-willed females with lots of ideas, instruments and constant wardrobe changes. ’This place is like backstage at the Carol Burnett Show!’, I often remark as I step over a pile of feather boas - to which my eleven year old asks ’Who’s Carol Burnett?’. Latter day vaudeville’s hard to explain to a kid with an MP3 in her ear, so I usually just mutter something about the genius of Korman-Conway before slinking away to my little corner of the cul-de-sac And what a corner! Books, hard drives, books(!), nautical flotsam, books(!!!) and enough broadcast detritus to adorn the local wing of the traveling Newseum. Sure, it’s nothing more than junk to most folk, but to me strewn tomes and dusty trinkets are nothing less than talismans: earthbound objects that enable your lowly photog to achieve a higher state of consciousness. A trance, if you will. That’s exactly what it’s like when the words come easy, when I watch my fingertips dictate straight from my head. Not bad considering I type about as fast as Sheriff Andy Taylor struggling over a Mayberry arrest report.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, NOT enjoying that transcendental feeling of effortless writing. For a minute there, it felt like I was struggling to describe the very artifacts I stare at every night about this time. How lame is that? Next thing you know I’ll be scanning the web for retro news crew photos or searching my private archives for unpublished mullet photos. Hmm? Yeah, I guess you’re right: I’ve done all that, more times than I care to admit. Still, I can’t get too mad at myself, for despite all the filler I’ve foisted upon my small cadre of followers, I’ve developed the kind of writing discipline I yearned for all these many moons ago. If all this self-aggrandizing blather brings me nothing more than that, I can quit now and be happy. But I can’t quit. Four years into this experiment, I’m still as stoked about the results as ever - even filling these pages does occasionally feel like a second job that doesn’t pay. But what do I know about pay, anyway? I’m a photog - one who’d rather fiddle with figures of speech than focal lengths.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the wife says I have some dusting to do. At least I have my freedom.