Ever the Specter

"...I see you downtown sometimes. Always on the go."

I closed out my friend's e-mail and thought about her last four words. Actually, I only started thinking about it, but then my cell phone rang and I was suddenly late for a ribbon-cutting on the other side of town. Or was it a prostitution round-up? I don't really remember. Nor do I recall exactly how I felt the very first time I took a fancycam out for a day of errands. Chances are I felt important. Logos and lenses will do that to an unschooled rube from the sticks. Since then of course I've pursued my education - but not that fancy book learnin'. No, I've stretched the corners of my mind by dashing from one blind news item to the next. Sometimes, I don't know why I'm rushing to a certain locale until I arrive. Other times, I still don't know why(?) by the time I'm leaving. Not that it matters; as I'm usually due somewhere else - quicker than I can get there...

So what's all this fugacity done to your overly wordy camera-nerd? Hard to say; I have nothing to compare it to. Ever since I flunked out of used car salesman academy, I've churned out groundbreakings and train derailments as if either had a lasting effect on the community at large. Along the way, I learned to stop paying attention. It's not that I don't care about my assignments, but after covering a couple of thousand school board stand-offs/untimely demises, you learn to shove a few extra batteries in your pocket and compartmentalize your emotions. How else is your above-average TV news photog supposed to withstand multiple months of processing newscast fodder? Take it from me, there's no support group for surviving years of county commissioner melodrama ... I've checked. The closest I got was Narcotics Anonymous and they get all jumpy whenever I substitute 'mayoral press conference' for 'overloaded crackpipe'. It ain't like both won't kill your brain-cells.

But there I go again, overstating the implicit, pouring on the hyperbole, re-capping at every juncture. It's just the kind of broadcaster doublespeak that gets me glared at in polite society. Maybe that's why I never get to hobnob with the higher-ups. They're afraid I'll dash in at the last moment, say something scurrilous and take with off with a few pictures and impressions in tow. Come to think of it, that's exactly what I'd do given the choice. I've hurried from one advertised calamity to the next for far too long to know anything but how to shoot and move. No wonder my cocktail party invites all dried up. I'm crass, transitory and swaddled in look-at-me logos. At least I ain't alone. Across this great nation of ours, an army of anonymous photogs wanders the fruited plain in search of the next forty second burst of filler. For proof, check out the musings of The Senator, pictured above. Chances are he'd regale you with the stories behind all those pockmarks on his soul, the kind of thing you pick up from traveling the same road over and over and over again...

Just don't ask him what he shot last Monday. That was like, a whole week ago!