images part one

many film images have been shot and are waiting development.  here is some of the work we have thus far.

new orleans and the coming tide

There is nothing quite like pulling up to a ridiculous complex of buildings in the middle of the Bywater in New Orleans and watching one of your best friends bounce out into the road to greet you.  Baked a golden brown by the sun and clutching a Pabst long neck in her fist, Lindsey embraces and then ushers us both into the dimly lit interior of her new home, as Dickie, her cow spotted pitt whips us with his tail in frantic excitement.  We step over a rusted metal fire grate that serves as a dog barrier and into "The Pearl".

I don't know how old the compound is.  The owner has lived and hosted a variety of house guests and dogs and shows and parties and insanity for the last 25 years.  About four separate structures make up the indoors, one an ancient shell of an iron works building.  Eclectic objects cover every room and the outdoors, random lights and signs from long ago, rust blooms on outdated appliances and various doors form the walls of the outside-ish shower and dining room.  Each room has a name, The Cave, The Nursery, Danger Level 2.  We are brought up the attic were thousands of rolls of wallpaper occupy cubbyholes, for no apparent reason.  We are shown our other friend Summer's recently vacated bed, in a huge attic space with little ventilation, sometimes reaching what must be 110 degrees.  Summer isn't in New Orleans for the time being, but I say a silent hello and acknowledgment to a familiar, albeit absent, presence in an new place.  

We run across the street and meet KooKoo, an older New Orleans resident, proclaiming to the sky, underneath the giant green and white parachute that is his cool outdoor area, that "you just can't bring girls over anytime! you know how horny I am!"  We laugh and are told the dangers of the creeping black caterpillars and squash a few.  Paling around in the heat makes me a little dizzy and everywhere I look are the spray painted X's on the houses, the damage from Katrina still obvious.  So much so, that when I question a group of volunteers at a coffee shop later that evening, I find that they are in town just to rebuild and not against the oncoming tide of oil that threatens the entire Gulf Coast.  It's been almost five years since the hurricane..

The coming summer and storm season are on the back of everyone's words.  It's not defeat or anything close to it, but there is a definite sense of awareness on how fragile it all is at this point in time.  I hear the words "Oil-cane" more times than makes me comfortable.  The idea is that the storm season will be one of the worst and oil will be thrown all over the town and then burn.  People laugh with a tinge of bitterness and buy you another beer, continue to make music and jokes, but in their eyes I see a little bit of resigned fear.  Who wants to leave their home, yet again, and be thrown into an unknown world of bureaucracy?  Who wants to leave New Orleans, ever?