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I think this was taken around 1993, at the Scottish Rites Temple in Oakland, California. Some friends and I had gone there for a camera swap, basically a camera show cum flea market event of the type that is held periodically in various cities in the US. My friend Mark had bought some outdated Polaroid film for his SX-70, and we decided to test it out outside. Someone must have taken a shot of one of us coming out of these extremely heavy doors, and what started as a test became some sort of collaborative project on the spot, each of us taking turns exiting the door or taking a picture, and all of us being so taken with the discolorization of the outdated film, the random bursts of color here and there, and how that combined with the heavy-handed yet somehow tacky freemason imagery on the doors. We spent the afternoon going in and out of that door, trying on different expressions, and assembling and re-assembling the polaroids on the ground. A few days later color copies were made and we attempted to make a poster out of the photos, but as was typical in those days we started disagreeing about ownership of the photos and in the end we never made anything. However, some years later I took my set of copies and made a poster on my own, which you can see a photo of here.

1973. 8 years old or thereabouts. In case it’s not obvious, I’m standing next to a portrait of me as a 1 year old. But I didn’t sit for that portrait, it was done from a photograph several years after we arrived in Honolulu (there was a similar one done of my brother as well). I can’t possibly call up now the thoughts I had back then on living with such a large portrait, of someone purported to be me though the similarity at the time escaped me. But I think it’s safe to say I found the painting disconcerting on some level. This photo is a bit disconcerting as well, especially the way my hair has been positioned to match the the fall of the hair on my forehead in the painting.

I remember this apartment well, the last of several apartments we lived in before we finally moved to a house (although we would rent that as well); the bookshelf assembled from plywood and bricks, those candlesticks, that red baby’s breath looking stalk of dried flower arranging something or other, and the stack of records next to the chair I’m standing on. Those records probably resonate the most with me, now….Wayne Newton, Joan Baez, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Pete Seeger, Jimmie Rodgers (“She had, mmm, mmm, kisses sweeter than wine”), the soundtrack for Love Story. From there I float to the songs my mother sang to my brother and I when she tucked us into bed….”Waltzing Matilda,” “Besame Mucho”, and a lot of Pete Seeger songs like “Little Boxes,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” the chorus of “Guantanamera,” and “We Shall Overcome.” If I think hard enough, I can hear my mother’s voice quietly repeating over and over again “we shall overcome.” But I can’t linger too long with that memory, or I start to cry.

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
we shall overcome some day.

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
we shall overcome some day.

Some day, indeed.