An Evening With Shannon

I was having a perfectly wonderful Saturday. The night before resonated with the sounds of rain and sticks following from the trees outside. I would be awakened by the sound, and then would hear the purr of one of my cats reassuring me that everything was perfect. I went back to sleep.

I'm restless these days. Kent is away on a trip and where we live, it's quiet. So when I'm alone in the house, it's very noticeable to me. Fortunately, I had an appointment with Karen, my hair stylist. I don't know what the hell she was doing to my hair, but it ended up taking three hours to complete. I must say though, that I look like Tom Cruise -- at least until I shampoo it. I asked her, "Does this come in red?" She was less than amused. I left, and went home.

Then, I got a call from work. Actually, hours had past and they had been trying frantically to get hold of me. With messages like, "...our domain is no longer valid...", "...I can't log into the domain...". I wanted to say, "...take the domain and...", but, I didn't. I can't. I'm always on call. That's what I do. I'm always on call. So, rather than trying to answer all the damn phone calls, I did the next logical thing. I turned my phone off. I tried to connect but was unable too. I came to two conclusions; either Hartford has been hit by nukes, or we've suffered a power failure. Given the ice storm the day before, and the heavy rains that night, I decided it was probably related to the weather. But, I had to drive in to work.

I was right. Power outage, which brought down all the domain controllers. So, I had to restore the power, let the domain controllers find their collective minds again, and reboot every single server to let them all know that order has been restored to the universe.

After that, it was a toss up. It was 5:30 and I hadn't eaten anything all day long. I was hungry. I decided to head across the river into Hartford, to Hot Tomatoes, where my friend Donovan works as a bartender. The place was packed. Some damn sport thing -- super bowl or some shit. What a nuisance! It's practically impossible to get into the place. When the man behind the little podium asks, "May I help you?" I replied, "No! I can help myself. Help THOSE people." I proceeded to the bar where Donovan was working. He had created a martini for me without me even asking. I said, "How did you know?" He said, "You look like you need one." I said, "You have no idea." He asked what I wanted to order and I replied, "I can't decide...", after looking at the menu for ten minutes. I told him to order dinner for me. He did a great job. Starting out with a goat cheese salad, with candied walnuts, goat cheese, spinach, and a lite dressing. I scarfed down the salad quickly. He said, "Boy, you were hungry." I told him, "It just occurred to me that I haven't eaten today." He brought out chicken saltimbocca, with garlic mashed potatoes, and fried spinach. I asked, "They can fry spinach?" Well, I know it sounds awful, but it's really quite amazing how concentrated the flavors are.

So I'm sitting there enjoying my dinner, and this lady starts talking to me. Her name was Shannon. She said that she works for one of the major hotels in Hartford as THE event planner. After shouting at each other over the noise of the restaurant and all the sports jocks coming into the bar to talk jock talk, I decided to move over next to her so we could talk. And after I told her that she looked just exactly like my cousin, she told me about being fluent in French and very good at photography.

I told her, "I suck at French, although I do drink champagne well. Does that count?" And we talked most of the evening about photography. She is old school (film). I said, "But isn't film expensive and basically a pain in the ass to work with?" She replied, "Yes, but you have so much control, and I only process in black and white."

This I understood. I told her, "Awww, technique." In music, if you are performing with an orchestra, there's a lot of space to hide a mistake. Even if you are soloing, it's not the end of the world if you miss a note here and there. And it happens to everyone, even the most advanced. But when you are all alone on the stage and it's just you (the only noise heard), there's no room to hide. Everything is exposed. It's important to know that.

This is true with photography as well. In color, there's noise. Yes, and other things also.... like composition, focus (or lack of), depth of field, and all the other rules. But in black and white, there's no color to hide behind. Your errors are magnified because they are either right or wrong.

With all of this in my mind, with my logic muddling it's way through my martini logic, I told Shannon, "I'm not good enough to do black and white yet. I don't have the technique." She replied, "The fact that you can say that to me shows me that you do have the technique. You are lazy!" I then asked, "No, I'm old as hell and, are you Basque?"

She's probably right. I do have the technique. It's more a matter to time. You see, there are two different worlds of photography. There are those who take photos all day. And, there are those who take a moment in time, and then that moment is gone forever. That is the artist. And, let me tell you, it can take hours to create that. Most people simple do not have the time or patience to do that. But for me, it is interesting to see what I end up with, and if that's good, then I'm pleased. The down side is that I can invest in an entire weekend and end up with crap.

So I ended my conversation with Shannon, a very outgoing and pretty woman. I'll probably never see her again, unless I let her plan our wedding. That would be cool.

Oh, and I'm really starting to understand the very very complex world of Gustav Mahler. I don't know if that's a good thing. He's so disturbingly and depressingly complex. I thought I hated him, but am I becoming him? Is that why I am starting to understand him? Does anyone out there know what I'm talking about?