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Welcome to the late-Sunday edition of These Traces. As I alluded to in a brief post this week, I’m in the middle of an unexpected end-of-year project that’s somewhat altered my publishing schedule. Part of it has to do with the short deadline, part of it with the involved nature of the project itself; but I believe my brain has also struggled with reconnecting forgotten pathways and workflows. We’ll probably be reading books on the psychological and societal impacts of the pandemic, long after we’ve beat the stupid bug to a pulp and have finally removed our masks for good. For my part, being suddenly forced into action has revealed how deep the changes go: it took a few days for my thoughts to clear and to begin organizing at the level I was accustomed to; packing for a shoot—which used to pretty much be a reflex—took every ounce of concentration I could muster; and driving into the city, for the first time since May, felt profoundly surreal… As did filming in a much too crowded park, on much too crowded streets, as cases here skyrocket to record highs. I can’t deny the dark low-grade anxiety I could hear, rumbling and squirming, so near the surface. But God almighty...it also felt a lot like a sudden, overwhelming burst of life. ... A friend sent me a very generous gift recently: Revelations, a book on the life of Diane Arbus, assembled, I believe, by her daughter Doon. I am haunted by it. I pick it up, begin to read, scribble notes... and reach for the camera. At this rate it’ll be years before I’m done, but it may just be worth it. More on this in the coming months but for now here’s a quote from Arbus, from a project proposal to the Guggenheim Foundation. Words we should all live by, as some of us gaze down the barrel of another full lockdown:
“These are our symptoms and our monuments. I want simply to save them, for what is ceremonious and curious and commonplace will be legendary.”
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