Berlin, 1989 to 2009
The Economist has a sister magazine called Intelligent Life. In their web publication, I just found this brief photo essay. Seeing pieces like this makes me want to be a journalist: to have been there in 1989, photographing, and to be back in 2009, following up, with an eyewitness sense of what has happened on the ground under my feet. It also makes me realize, though, that while there's luck involved in being in the right place at the right time, good journalism is a serious commitment involving just being there for a long time, in lots of different theres or in one, patiently, with one's eyes open and often very little payoff. In fact, I wonder whether it is possible to practice journalism that is not so much about hunting down stories as about knowing a place and community and cultural reality deeply, so that one can speak intelligently and even wisely about it even if nothing "news-worthy" is happening there.
Which would make journalism much like writing in general: inspiration can't often be scheduled, but "showing up" (whether at a writing desk or camera, or in front of a book, or just by being present to your surroundings with your eyes and brain and pores open) is like maintaining an address where inspiration will know how to reach you. (This is my re-statement of an observation given by so many writers in so many versions that I don't know whom to cite. Somerset Maugham's: "I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.")
Salem, 1989
I am in the middle of the small living room. It has pale blue carpet and the walls are cluttered with pictures and shelves. In the corner there is a small TV, and the adults are clustered around it. The TV’s colors are like the colors of the room: bland, slightly bluish. It is a crowd: blurred crowd noise, blurred crowd colors. There are so many faces I can’t even make out separate heads and shoulders in the glimpses I get of the TV between the heads of my parents and my aunt and uncle. Something, I know, is happening, a category of thing that has not happened before in my memory. They are riveted, but they are not cheering. They are talking in low voices. My parents watch sports, but not with this kind of attention, and not this quietly. And there is no little yellow ball on this screen; nothing, in fact, seems to be happening.
“And to imagine this is happening now, the first time in years we’ve been out of the country for more than two months…” my dad’s voice is wry, half laughing, but also half embarrassed at the thought. And his tone is abstracted, as though he’s not actually present with the words, as though they are drawn out of him while he’s not paying attention—as though his mind needs his voice to make a foundation of sound, to give it something to stand on.
8.13.2009
Berlin Wall
Berlin, 1989 to 2009
The Economist has a sister magazine called Intelligent Life. In their web publication, I just found this brief photo essay. Seeing pieces like this makes me want to be a journalist: to have been there in 1989, photographing, and to be back in 2009, following up, with an eyewitness sense of what has happened on the ground under my feet. It also makes me realize, though, that while there's luck involved in being in the right place at the right time, good journalism is a serious commitment involving just being there for a long time, in lots of different theres or in one, patiently, with one's eyes open and often very little payoff. In fact, I wonder whether it is possible to practice journalism that is not so much about hunting down stories as about knowing a place and community and cultural reality deeply, so that one can speak intelligently and even wisely about it even if nothing "news-worthy" is happening there.
Which would make journalism much like writing in general: inspiration can't often be scheduled, but "showing up" (whether at a writing desk or camera, or in front of a book, or just by being present to your surroundings with your eyes and brain and pores open) is like maintaining an address where inspiration will know how to reach you. (This is my re-statement of an observation given by so many writers in so many versions that I don't know whom to cite. Somerset Maugham's: "I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.")
Salem, 1989
I am in the middle of the small living room. It has pale blue carpet and the walls are cluttered with pictures and shelves. In the corner there is a small TV, and the adults are clustered around it. The TV’s colors are like the colors of the room: bland, slightly bluish. It is a crowd: blurred crowd noise, blurred crowd colors. There are so many faces I can’t even make out separate heads and shoulders in the glimpses I get of the TV between the heads of my parents and my aunt and uncle. Something, I know, is happening, a category of thing that has not happened before in my memory. They are riveted, but they are not cheering. They are talking in low voices. My parents watch sports, but not with this kind of attention, and not this quietly. And there is no little yellow ball on this screen; nothing, in fact, seems to be happening.
“And to imagine this is happening now, the first time in years we’ve been out of the country for more than two months…” my dad’s voice is wry, half laughing, but also half embarrassed at the thought. And his tone is abstracted, as though he’s not actually present with the words, as though they are drawn out of him while he’s not paying attention—as though his mind needs his voice to make a foundation of sound, to give it something to stand on.
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