Streams
100realpeople.substack.com
The rain forces us to stop and wait. The changes in the breath of this air, the movements which chill. I am in a cafe. I cannot leave without becoming waterlogged - I think we could run for it - I want to see you wet, we’ve not even met, yet, but perhaps this is an introduction of sorts. The rain is an audience’s extended applause. Well done it says or is it chips frying in a saucepan - hot oil bubbling angrily against the moisture exuded by the cut tubers as they fry. There is a balcony outside, your desk sits in front of the windows that overlook it - the french doors are opened onto it and you are standing smoking, deep in thought or vacant, impossible to tell which. Who are these people who have such time to waste in newspapers or books? Other people’s meaningless ramblings, nothing you couldn’t have worked out, guessed at or made up for yourself. Fienkost. Kroger. Krüger. Leipzig. Hamburg. Colour in summer. B&W in winter. I sit in a great glass box, ten stories high. Chairs, tables a polished concrete floor some wood to soften the brutalism. The tones are hushed and muted. People whisper, telling secrets to each other. Several are in tears, perhaps it is some form of concrete-pollen hay-fever, perhaps it's the secrets. There is a definite green cast to everything but there is nothing green. No-one has a single item of visible clothing that is green, is this odd? I sneeze and everybody, apart from those in tears, look at me. There are a group of girlfriends in their forties talking politics and I smile at the one closest to wearing green and she asks me what is so funny, not in a hushed voice. I decide to move - her condescension has stung me like an executioner wasp. I hold your shoulders firmly and look into your eyes earnestly. I’m unsure why - you do not matter to me but I want to matter to you. Monroe tattoo. Noah Webster - an attempt to simplify spelling which makes Americans look dumb to Brits and vice versa. A lot to ansa’ for bro’, lexicographologically speaking. Photographing the gestures - the open palm which suggests an internal question, a raised eyebrow and wry smile, the tapping of fingers or feet. A wall of windows. Apartments with white blinds closed - a hotel. Dusk. One blind raised. Red/brown interior, a bedside lamp with shade that glows orange and hints at inhabitants, humanity, other people awake, thinking, dreaming, fantasising, hoping, breathing, sleeping, watching TV, reading, learning or drinking themselves into a pit of misery and self-loathing, away from the rain. Or perhaps it’s no-one at all.
Shot in London on the trusty Nikon FM2