David, this was quietly magnificent. I love the way you let enchantment slip through weather, architecture, memory, and stray conversations; never pinned down, but always felt. The metaphor of magic as “wetness,” something drained by rationality, really stayed with me. And that Seattle airport passage? Pure cinema. As a manic shutterbug, your reflections on photography as projection and suggestion, not merely documentation, hit home. It’s a way of thinking I don’t see articulated often, and you nailed it.
C. Northcote Parkinson, in one of his laws, says that an organization is past its prime when it moves into fancy, purpose built headquarters. The great days of an organization are in rented quarters with Army surplus file cabinets and secondhand equipment. Walter Chrysler’s magnificent building was built when his company was past its peak. But he left us that building. So it all worked out. His memoir is one of the best books about the heroic age of business and free enterprise, and that heroic age is replicated every time a new technology is in its infancy. I purposely did not use the word capitalism, which is a Marxist term, which I object to generally. But since it means rule by the people with capital, it really fails to describe the innovative era in any industry, or in any economy. Those industries are hungry for capital, they aren’t the masters of capital, not yet. The scenes where Chrysler is trying to generate the capital for his new company are terrific. No spoilers, it’s worth getting the book! Realizing that your teachers did their best is the sign of maturity, if not nascent elderhood. I feel the same way, I feel gratitude toward them, even the ones who, at the time, I didn’t think were fair to me. They had a lot on their minds. They had lots of students to deal with, they weren’t there to hold my hand, they were there to give me what they had, in the time they had available, by the means they knew how to employ. It’s almost unimaginable, how naïve an adolescent or a young adult is, and no amount of words from an older person can change that. You can tell them how things are, but very few of them can process it, they have to live it, and learn a lot of things the hard way. We were that way, the young people of today are that way, and the young people of the times to come, long after we are gone and forgotten, will still be the same. Good post, great photos.
David, this was quietly magnificent. I love the way you let enchantment slip through weather, architecture, memory, and stray conversations; never pinned down, but always felt. The metaphor of magic as “wetness,” something drained by rationality, really stayed with me. And that Seattle airport passage? Pure cinema. As a manic shutterbug, your reflections on photography as projection and suggestion, not merely documentation, hit home. It’s a way of thinking I don’t see articulated often, and you nailed it.
C. Northcote Parkinson, in one of his laws, says that an organization is past its prime when it moves into fancy, purpose built headquarters. The great days of an organization are in rented quarters with Army surplus file cabinets and secondhand equipment. Walter Chrysler’s magnificent building was built when his company was past its peak. But he left us that building. So it all worked out. His memoir is one of the best books about the heroic age of business and free enterprise, and that heroic age is replicated every time a new technology is in its infancy. I purposely did not use the word capitalism, which is a Marxist term, which I object to generally. But since it means rule by the people with capital, it really fails to describe the innovative era in any industry, or in any economy. Those industries are hungry for capital, they aren’t the masters of capital, not yet. The scenes where Chrysler is trying to generate the capital for his new company are terrific. No spoilers, it’s worth getting the book! Realizing that your teachers did their best is the sign of maturity, if not nascent elderhood. I feel the same way, I feel gratitude toward them, even the ones who, at the time, I didn’t think were fair to me. They had a lot on their minds. They had lots of students to deal with, they weren’t there to hold my hand, they were there to give me what they had, in the time they had available, by the means they knew how to employ. It’s almost unimaginable, how naïve an adolescent or a young adult is, and no amount of words from an older person can change that. You can tell them how things are, but very few of them can process it, they have to live it, and learn a lot of things the hard way. We were that way, the young people of today are that way, and the young people of the times to come, long after we are gone and forgotten, will still be the same. Good post, great photos.
Thank you!
What a brilliant piece. And Comment