Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives will be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-- from Selected Poems, Wendell Berry, 1998

On yer Bike!

I simply love bikes, the simplicity, frivolity, versatility, a bike is such a personal means of transport, I am slowly collecting a portfolio of bikes, enjoy.
http://www.google.co.nz/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=Bikes&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=0hCCTJnOJoL4swOXpsD3Bw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=6&ved=0CFQQsAQwBQ&biw=1205&bih=1086

Winter Light.

 "We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. the rest is the madness of art" -Henry James

Vintage Black & White vs Color via a Leica M9

It's an interesting conundrum, I shot in Vintage B/W and I also shot the same scene in Low Contrast Color, this is all on the M9 with a 50mm 1.4 or a 16/18/21mm lens. None of the images has been changed in anyway.

Bikers are a breed apart, I love bikes.

Winter when it comes, comes in spades!

click on images to enlarge

Rambling thoughts on film and other stuff :)

Hey, it’s Thursday, and i’m still struggling, albeit more comfortably, with a set of strained back and stomach muscles. Bugger!

My ex refers to it as my “Duck Disease” and I can’t laugh at that as it makes my back spasm and my abs hurt :) Last night I swallowed aka ingested, the big dirty chemical tablets and they have worked to a degree, now my body has to deal with the legacy of pumping it all full of drugs, shit! That being said, the relief from spasms is a huge relief, I can’t tell you how much better I feel. Anyway, that being said, it’s a glorious day here in the South Wairarapa. Clear blue sky and warm, aaah! 

I’m sitting writing on my MacBook at the kitchen table, yep, brought it inside from the studio, too bloody cold for me and I don’t like sitting sideways, yep, I know, possibly contributed to my renegade back muscles :) mind you the studio desk top is humming away digitizing my American West footage just nicely. Maybe I could set the kitchen timer to tell me when the tape has finished. It’s a DVCam so 45 minutes, great idea, will do. It’s done :)

I have loved modern technology as long as I can remember working I guess, yes, I know, a long, long time, I remember way back into the 60‘s, when I started my first editing company and we bought the best editing and sound gear from Italy and Switzerland. Intercine and Nagra. I also loved looking at new ways to service clients and how to create a fun work environment. We created the very first independent editing boutique in Sydney. Mind you, over the years, I have come to realize and accept that it was one of the very first in the world of advertising, anywhere. 

My manager Roz and me, along with my wife at the time worked our butts off to get it going and paying for itself. I just wish someone had given me the DNA for prudent financial planning aka saving some of what I earned rather than simply earn and spend. Oh well, that was then and this is now, maybe I have learned, maybe not :)

Today I have the latest, the most up to date technology available but today I am more prudent and today I buy it simply to make my life and work experience better. Today my studio is just for me and my equipment. I don’t need room for clients to hang out, mind you I never ever encouraged clients to hang out while I edited. I always loved the solitude of me and the film. It was a particularly personal relationship. It’s like we enjoyed our own private dialogue, I could quite easily shut everyone out, even if they were in the room behind me. Yep, I did manage to encouraged the director to sit and select with me, maybe, with the very good ones, they were even encouraged to sit while we roughed a loose edit together, then it was up to me to trim and polish. But  the very best work I did, I did alone, it’s the same today be it film, photography or writing!

I loved it. My own secret relationship with the film. I also loved the isolated seclusion. It’s how I work today, even with clients who live hundreds of miles distance. I am not a zoo, I am not at all interested in someone sitting over my shoulder. I guess that is why I love photography and writing, they are such personal experiences. Me simply exploring myself via my environment. Makes sense to me. As a balance to that I do make a far better fist at my personal relationships, sort of :) I have few friends but the few I have a re diamonds, unfortunately many of my diamonds live overseas and that doesn’t always create an easy dialogue but I manage okay, sort of.

I guess that if I loved an audience I would be a teacher and I have no desire to be one, once upon a time maybe, as a naive 17 year old I thought of being a teacher but the education system and my teachers certainly killed any thoughts of that. I do love mentoring though. Sharing my experience, strength and hope with others. Sort of a father figure but not. I love sharing with young people about what is possible and what is unrealistic. I certainly never had that conversation or anything approaching it with my father or siblings, at least as far as I can remember :) But that was then and this is now. And I must admit to not having a great deal of patience and sympathy for older people today, funny that. It just appears to me at times that the retirement age we have created for ourselves is like the kiss of death. I love the american system where you can take early retirement from 59.5 and your retirement benefit, social security, is adjusted accordingly. Work longer, get a far higher benefit. But that’s for another day, I’m out of here, cheers. Richard.

Silver Fern Party

Vacillating on drink drive regulations is not government in action. Alcohol abuse, as well as substance abuse, child and environmental abuse, is huge issue here in New Zealand. We are out of control, it's that simple. We need to act and we need to act immediately. 

While I am all for consensus, however :) on such life and societal threatening issues we need strong and decisive leadership. It’s that simple. We need a strong moral compass. We need leadership and we need it now. 

Attending the NZ Film Festival in Wellington I am saddened that I do not feel safe walking the streets of the City in which I was born. Mt Victoria and Marjoribanks Street is a case in point. I was born on Mt Vic. My partner and me have parked here for the past week and there are signs banning alcohol and the local young people, up to 35 fits that category for me, abuse that directive 7 days a week. Then there are all the bars, cafes, restaurants along Courtenay Place and the young people here that are younger and younger and appear to be at risk. The young girls dress like hookers and the guys are aggressive and guess what? Not one policeman to be seen on the beat. For years I have believed that the Police in Aotearoa NZ need to get back off their bums and back onto the beat, patrol cars don’t do it. Cops on Bikes will. I have seen it work in LA to great affect. Visibility and zero tolerance are needed to get the people of NZ back onto the path we need, to create a moral compass. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not in any shape or form a christian or a prohibitionist or a moraliser and I am not touting christian beliefs when I talk of a moral compass, I am simply talking about leadership to provide us with a healthy guide to living well and responsibly. Common sense appears to have died the same death as the often touted #8 fencing wire philosophy. We were re-known as a nation of innovators but there has always been an underlying culture of abuse. 

Teachers, politicians, priests, nuns, financiers, sportsmen, the list goes on as to when and where the abuse has come from and we appear to not have the willingness to make the hard choices to get ourselves back on track. 

The dollar appears to rule. 

Quality of life has gone down the same road as has our environment, health, education, business acumen and innovation.

It’s time for change.

As I walked Mt Victoria this past week, taking a break from movies, I thought of a name for a political party. I have long been critical of the Maori Party, even though I joined it on return ‘home’ in 2006. I have also criticized the Greens for elitism. I am a paid up member of that party. Both parties really don't invite a broad section of the community. 

Maori is obvious as is Green.

The Silver Fern Party could be an amalgam of the Maori and Green Parties. 

They represent the underbelly of Aotearoa NZ, they represent the silent ones, those who dream of something better but find no where to put their hope and energy. 

The Silver Fern is an iconic symbol of this country. In the forests it acts as a conduit to feed other plants, which it also protects. It’s spread fronds filter the elements such as rain, sun, wind. Beneath these fronds all manner of life takes place. It also filters sound. It is a food, and has been to indigenous peoples for hundreds of years. This, to my way of thinking is a great metaphor for politics. We need politics at the same time we tend to disdain politicians, one of the great ironies of life. But then what we sow is what we reap and politicians have sown lies and deceit from the beginning of time. 

That, to my way of thinking, is why Marcus Aurelius continues to have such a great following today. He practiced what he preached, he had his own moral compass. 

We don’t. Ours is broken. 

We need leadership by principles rather than personalities. To me it appears that simple. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s too late. My faith tells me it is not. 

And so, I propose The Silver Fern Party. Based on a set of principles not far different from those practiced by members of Alcoholics Anonymous. How ironic. Think about the number of poisonous plants that also provide the antidote to the poison, there are many.

Think about it.

Paris 2010

Los Angeles, and the sheer hell of LAX - long slow lines, customs, immigration, security . . . outdated, overrun, attitude, lousy food and a lack of truly comfortable waiting space; to London, and the sheer hell of the London Underground - no escalators, no elevators, simply a moving throng of pleasant people who helped muy lovely lady and me lift our overloaded bags, up and down stairs from one train track to another. Heaven help the mobility challenged! We stayed but 4 hours in London, saved by a quick exploration along Portobello Road - vibrant and with so much more color than when I visited last, in 1977 and a long slow walk towing our suitcases to meet emily's sister. 
Portobello Road is great place for street photography and a coffee or two or three and the changed color of english society.

North to Cambridge, sitting back in comfortable mode snapping with my Leica, flashing fields of yellow mustard seed and blurry railway platforms covered with graffiti 'art. A taxi to our hotel, a B&B bordering on Fawlty Towers in style, no view of the ocean and the food . . . pure 1960’s which was nowhere near as good as the 20’s in my reading of John Buchan’s Thirty Nine Steps! I am being totally picky, we only ate there once, even though breakfast was included. Food in student town, the center of Cambridge was somewhat better but still no advance on years gone by. 

Saturday the 22nd June, we joined muy lovely ladies lovely family for birthday celebrations. Emily’s mum’s 90th. From all over Europe they came, to celebrate. Mother, aunt, cousins and all her children and grandchildren from London, Copenhagen, Leipzig and Barcelona. And the two of us from Aotearoa NZ. It was a surprise to Emily’s Mum that we came as it was not intended, not expected. Emily had visited a few months earlier. It’s a long and exhausting journey from New Zealand to Europe. Worth it when you get there but hard work, as the airlines and bureaucracies do not make it easy at all.

The Hilton Hotel on the Cam River in Cambridge, a truly beautiful setting with truly bad food, but a truly great day overall. Looking out at punts, pedestrians and cyclists and tons and tons of students, all in 80 degree weather. Yep, all that in modern day England! I shot about 1500 snaps of the day and was totally exhausted and should have taken the next day off :) however, I didn’t, our relationship survived :) intact and enjoyed a long walk down the river interacting with swimmers, punters, kayakers and pedestrians. All taking advantage of what they see as a god given right, to ramble. Like I am doing right now, rambling. I want to cut to the chase. 

First we did we did Nelson for a wedding, we did LA for me and my friends, we did Cambridge for my lovers Mum and we then did PARIS! 

Ah yes, Paris France! We did paris for ourselves. So at some god forsaken hour we left Cambridge by bus and plane to Charles deGaulle. A truly great airport, easy to enter, easy to navigate and very, very French. Modern, efficient, unlike their football team :) but that’s another tale.

In retrospect, all the guides were right, cut out the train, catch a cab from the airport to the hotel asap and then enjoy Paris at leisure. The train cost me, big time, nearly US$200! Ouch! I got conned, first time in my life by the way but I did get smoothly conned and I couldn’t see how he did it, still can’t :) today I can but smile at the experience. The only bad one on the whole trip.

Our hotel was in the 15th Arrondissement and in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. A two star hotel simply means clean rooms and sheets but not much more, a breakfast for 9euro, not worth it and a staff with attitude. I would always rather pay more for food I want to eat and do. We slept, catching up for a weeks travel, a weeks airports and flights and trains and buses and stairs up and down with our overloaded bags. It’s been a while since I travelled regularly and I had forgotten to pack simply and light. The sooner I get back into the habit the better.

Our first walk we discovered a great view of the Eiffel Tower not far from our hotel. Steel beams rising above the apartments, filling the long narrow streets. Amazing that it was never conceived or built to last as long as it has. It is the central pivotal point of the city. Where paris comes together to celebrate life. To stand at the base and look up is a grand experience and never ceases to inspire . The girders with light and dark are great photographic symbols but more are those who gather beneath. The tourists and the touts. Children and the elderly. Parisians from the far reaches of Paris. It’s fun and the interaction is even more so. We didn’t climb the tower, simply too long a lines and too many people to enjoy. But one day I will go back, many days I hope. The bridges over the River Seine, the small narrow streets of Ille st Louis, the Palaces, museums, art galleries, cafes, all fighting for my time and energy. But to me, Paris is people. A city to sit and observe. A city to linger with my lover, hand in hand, arm in arm. A city to devour slowly. Many visits. A year is my dream. A year in Paris, Odeon if I won the lottery :) a small apartment, where to sleep cook and write. A base upon which to plan the study of french and france. Trains to the coast. Bicycles and walking. Roller blades if I were 20 years younger. I have no need to drive. I have no need to eat expensive or drink old vintage wine. To study Paris, day in day out. Late hours, short hours. To experience time and place in a city of lovers. 

7 days we spent walking, talking, sleeping, sitting, enjoying, gallerias, cimetieres, fromage, cafes, charcuteries, patisseries, livres, vetements. All the idiosyncratic french elements that I could imagine, we tasted, we drank we explored, we enjoyed.

I could say more but find myself lacking in descriptive power. 

We had a list of three cafes, famous cafes of an era gone by, the days of Degas and Hemmingway of ManRay and Sartre. So many great and complex minds, so many varied talented and less talented artists, writers, photographers. We never found those three cafes but we did find Cafe des Editeur in Carrafour Odeon. One of the new cafes. Who knows, in one hundred years, who will have sat and talked and written the great philosophical shift in our thinking. Maybe it will have been me, who knows. But find it we did and enjoy it we did. First we sat, facing out, on the pavement, in the open air, surrounded by like minded lovers of the cafe life. Right next to us a couple of americans. One white, one black. Both from LA. My imagination in full flight had the black man as a great writer. Maybe it was Walter Mosely! Fancy that. It could have been but I didn’t have the balls to ask. We did chat at the end though, we did find that he was from LA and we did part on good terms aka he smiled his thanks. And then the very next day, back at les Editeurs I sat alone, and wrote for two hours. What did I write? I wrote about sitting in a cafe in paris writing about nothing really. Which, to my way of thinking is a fairly good place to be in, writing about nothing. That has me smile and it has me ready to call it a day on this Blog piece. It will also reside in my essay folder to be worked on again at some later date. I love writing and it was Hemingway, in his A Moveable Feast, who taught me I do not have to finish what I start as I start it. Five years later I can visit, re-visit and re-visit what I save. To work at and over anything I do, that is the journey of the artist I guess, but I will not call myself one, I will leave that to others to call me what I am. To me, I am a film editor & . . . 

and, of course, Henri Cartier-Bresson but that is for another time my friends . . . enjoy, R.

Freedom to say whatever comes into our mind . . .

I just had a thought, on reading about the BP spill, the corruption, the lip service of Presidents, the sexual predatory foibles of All Blacks and the disgusting behavior of Roman Catholic priests and nuns, and that was that I am fearful of saying what I need to say because of the resulting argument . . . but then I realized that I do not need to engage, I can simply share my thoughts and leave it as that, my thoughts are simply my thoughts. 

If some one takes umbrage or wishes to engage, I have a choice, yes or no, to engage or not. Everyone has the right, the responsibility even, to express an opinion. Once given it doesn’t need justification, explanation or even defending. There are those, I am sure that will vehemently disagree with this but I can suggest is, think about it. Think about the idea, that if we were to encourage and empower people, all people, to express their thoughts on any subject at all then new ideas would flood the airwaves and we would not be prisoner to the Rupert Murdochs’ and Christopher Hitchens’ of the world. 

Every single being on the planet has the right to speak, to be heard. Why is it that we fear this? Why is it that I fear this? Why do we listen to the same old same old. It matters not if someone posts a column that makes no sense rather than a column that guarantees an income to the owner of the newspaper or radio or tv or whatever. We are mired in fear, fear of retribution. The right to free speech needs to be guaranteed to even the most out there of terrorists, politicians, atheists, religious extremists et al. 

Then we get to see who people truly are, including myself and surely, this is the great strength of Blogging.

Once more unto the Coal Face

25th June 2010, it’s a milestone day, 18 months after I first started to ingest and edit my project known back then as Searching for Zane Grey’s America, 6 and a half years after I started on the road at the beginning of the search and exactly 7 years to the day that my wife of 15 years came home from work and told me, totally unexpectedly, that she had rented an apartment in the marina and was moving out the following Saturday. Ouch! She did to me what her father did to her Mother :)

And so here I am, seven years on, living in a new relationship in my our shared cottage, in my new old country, New Zealand, land of my birth that I left at age 21 and returned at age 63. Here I am, in a mini version of my Venice Beach studio, ‘Venice Bach’ :) totally focussed on my creative process’s of film, photography and writing. It really doesn’t get any better than this. I feel as though this has been a long day coming but whatever my thinking, it is here. Today I start the process. My studio is all set up rearing to go. It’s now up to me and my daily practice. I get to see my American journey all over again. Who knows, I may need to fly back to the American West to shoot some scenics, shoot a couple of much needed interviews or . . . Take the finished film to Ridgeway, the big small town in the Rockies that became my home for 4 months in 2005, exactly 5 years ago, yep, this day is the anniversary of many experiences, 67 years and 10 days after I dropped in on this planet we call earth. It is a continuing fun trip, long may it continue :)

Now I need to make sure my money doesn’t run out, that I get to travel overseas at least every two years, LA, NY, Paris and elsewhere for a month at a time, in spring. To sit and absorb the atmosphere, write and capture the imagery. That is my dream. As my sister kindly suggested, “you are a romantic” yeah! Thank you sister and thank god for the incurable romantics of the world. I could not live otherwise, this would be a very dry and deadly place to be otherwise!

And so, on a cold, damp friday in the Maori new year, Matariki, I watch as footage walks into my hard drives and I pray that this time the process will continue to a finished film. And as it does I can sit here and write to my hearts content or work on my thousands of photographs, screw around on facebook or simply walk into town, watching out for the anti dog fascists of this fair land, and have a coffee or two. I need to find a cafe in Featherston, one I can walk to and call my own, one that encourages me to sit and stay and write, just like Les Editeurs in Carrafors Odeon :) aaah! men!

Cold Bones but great attitude :)

Bruce Springsteen, belting away on my Bose, I love it.

What I don’t love is my cold aching bones.

I seems, to me that is, that I am stuck. No not depressed, simply stuck. 

It is after all the time of Matariki, the Maori new year, it’s also the winter solstice.

Maori see this as a time to step back and reflect, also a time to look forward to the new year. This is not a nanno second, a day, or a week, no it’s more like a month and so here I sit listening to a wailing sax, cold, the heat pump is working, maybe I need to light the fire, maybe :)

I have ideas, I have projects, I have dreams, I even have a lovely lady to share them with but it comes down to me to actually do the work. It’s overcast, cold and raining. No wind though. I am in good health, a tad overweight by my own standards and not as fit as I would like. So what to do? Nothing actually. I love the ancient wisdome of doing nothing and everything gets done. 

I have no desire to spend my time on facebook or twitter or any other social networking tool, not right now. They are actually a godsend for those of us who live in isolated communities. We can reach out and have inspiring and uplifting interaction with friends all across the planet, amazing really. Striking the right balance is the key. An hour a day keeps me in touch with a great many people. I can also, with the help of SKYPE phone anyone anywhere. My friends, family, anyone. I can text muy lovely lover lady, where ever she is. So basically I am simply feeling the cold and by writing I am trying to shift, change even, my attitude. I am certainly not ungrateful, I have much to be grateful for. How I live, where I live, why I live even. I have so much to live for and I know that small bites are the way to devour my life, not big overwhelming gulps but small bite sized, one day at a time pieces. 

Baby we were Born to Run, I love that song, I love the whole story behind the making of it, I love what it represents. I love Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band. Energy, Power.

So for now I can continue to write whether it makes sense or not and post it to my Blog. I could even continue to write my memoir, I haven’t picked that up for quite a few months or is it over a year? Who’s counting. I AM  . . . DOG! Yep, that’s my memoir, written through the eyes of my dog Kiri. I believe it a great idea. I don’t need to look at the conclusion, I simply need to keep writing, refining, moving forward, simple really. But then so is life as long as I don’t believe I can control it :) Nope, I am powerless actually, powerless over people, places and things. That’s the way I see it, it works for me for today. Amen :)

To Dance, is to Live.

Invited to a 40’s party. 

I am on a dance floor, I am holding, sometime touching sometime alone, I am dancing with my friend and lover, we come together, we separate, we twirl each other, each of us twirls separately, or not :)

It’s a bit like life I guess, coming together, spending time alone and so it goes. The music plays as a background, we are alone in our relating to each other, those who surround us on the dance floor are as like strangers. Is this our life playing itself out on the dance floor. Lost in our togetherness tinged with separateness and/ or aloneness. It’s a fascinating dance. Swirl, twirl, back and forth. But, whatever it is, it is a dance. A dance where I am committed to one partner, I am not dancing with anyone else on the dance floor, just she and me. That’s it. That’s enough. 

I am totally aware of our touch, my hand to hers, her body to mine, we turn and twist, come together, we move apart. But in all of this my eyes search and connect with hers. This is my relationship, to my friend and lover. Simple really. Keeping it simple. Sometime, oftentime, our steps don’t work, our glance misses, our touch doesn’t. All a question of degree and perception I guess. I love it, it feels . . . so romantic, sexy even. To close the door to all others, those around us, all disappear. It is she and me. And that my friend, is enough.

The music stops. We stop. We applaud. We stand holding each other, the warmth we hold for each other feeds each other. 

The next day we talk about the experience and we both agree we love dancing with each other. Holding and being held, that is relationship.

Often, on the floor, we brush lips, we hold each other close, we purr.

Yes, that is a great description, we purr.

And that is why I need, why I want, a significant other in my life, to give, to share, to live, to grow. Without that, I am nothing. 

It would seem through shared dialogue that we agree. That is got to be good, that has to be love. That is what I feel. Love. Simple.

the journey continues