Jack Spratt

120807 23:00 personal

There was for me an astonishing level of stress within my practice of photography easily accommodated  given my childhood. My highest function or disability was and remains intuition. In my dotage I’ve been increasingly surprised that the other functions: thinking, feeling and sensing are now achieving parity.

Imperfect I am, as we all are, and I know this better by Jesus who amongst all the ‘prophets of God’ remains my ideal person. Nonetheless I work at not killing those who cross me at the same time, by nature, I am no killer but a destroyer of egos and can remain affable in combat. 

To myself I am chagrined at being unconscionably rude, cruelly & coldly & indifferently analytical. Do not ever test me since I may well leave you in shreds. 

Yet to my several muses who occasionally do remind me not to call myself a bastard I would differ as I do so God or Jesus or Buddha. 

In order to be a whole person I am convicted we must accept and integrate all of our true selves into a singular person. There have, historically, been several occasions when I simply walked away acknowledging the hopeless of compromise. My sense, when it comes to women, that instead of making love actually or metaphorically -- somewhat akin to a cake baking wherein I was the cement sand and gravel she was the flour sugar and frosting. I love ferociously and oddly never stop loving someone who I’ve abandoned for it is true of me that I am loyal. At that I conclude myself as of little good to those would use me to define themselves as better than they are. 

Here I will speak of M who in my estimate and esteem is vastly superior. To whose face I frequently acclaim her as my Impress and/or merely The Sphinx gigantic for which I am in comparison less significant than a fruit fly with only one life lived in one day while she is of eternity.

When I say, “I will follow you anywhere” she has replied on more than one occasion, “Oh dear?” in exasperation. 

But she & I are not the topic of my nattering this night passing soon into the next day.

I frequently, when alone, wear few clothes and thus am able to feel the vagrant breeze of God’s affirmations laughter or sighs. In winter more fully clothed the windows and doors closed I hear the wind shouting at times shrieking.

This evening during a meeting of The Dona Ana Camera Club, the topic being what was to be presented November 10th by way of topics for discussion at a symposium for amateurs who seek to know photography better. I was electrified to notice from the get go that God was more than near but about something I couldn’t imagine by way of coincident's so arcane that it would bore me and you to express or explain them to you . . . think of yourself awakening from sleep naked on I 5 in LA rush hour traffic with a Rhinoceros moving at one-hundred-ten miles per-hour in your face.  Instead of weeping and falling face down in homage the grace of God present I moved forward in equanimity.

I have no use for men of any kind or rank and would and do pick on women just for play. This woman in particular was flustered to put it mildly. Yet it was she who became prissy prim and stupidly asked of me to be gentle in what & how I proposed to teach. Initially it was to be portraiture but a last minute change was made. I was left to deal with “Creative Photography” W ever TF that means. Obviously if i can go face-to-face with anyone including God I am gentle in my observations regarding the creativity of others. It is a tradition amongst us now old guys who were taught by or predecessors. Passing forward the torch of truth, as it were, to the next generation especially amongst photojournalist. We are or were the wild children of photography incapable of merely calling someone up to talk about the why, what and how of them. Daniel Pearl was of my ideal with words.

I was soon dripping venom and suggesting that I should not teach anything as part of the symposium. It was like talking to, or so I imagine, Rupert Murdock about mercy and kindness -- impossible and pointless. 

Creativity is, when good, is too good to believe. And the prospect of being fucked with is terrifying in that my response is terminal. With all due reverence Jesus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer had it easy. I had lived a lifetime of being fucked over by the Bitch Queen of hypocrisy & bigotry Incorporated in mom.  For me to trust a woman she must of needs be capable of hurtling the moon and beyond flat footed.

I would not be so unkind to anyone as was unkindness done to me. Bonhoeffer and Jesus forgave as I have forgiven mom. But in the former case there were important causes to defend. In the latter, mine, nothing could be further from the issues they died for. My trashing's were simple stupidity/ignorance moving my mother to destroy me &/or my sister. Crippling us for lifetimes of dysfunction addicting us to dysfunctional people somewhat like attempting to talk a shark into not eating you and loving itself.

Add to which she was insane and allergic to alcohol. Dad confessed to me before he died that he then thought it sophisticated to have a drink before dinner, then wine and drinks afterward. By fascinated observation he would become blotto while mom ran screaming around the ceiling . . . i do know a few things about dealing with crisis and chaos. Things that would make Josef Mengele, The Angel of Death, seem a pussy cat -- merely a kitten. . . .I do not believe in Evil since not only do I know it within me but know better the intoxication of power expressed by those who rape and those who love. Those who rape do so because they can and know no better of themselves and we who love do so know that it is you who must give birth to yourself. The first instant and the latter long but worth the effort since we actually in death remain in eternity vital.

Why me? I’ve been trained in chaos & crisis to what end? To better heal those of us who were trashed; at least the ones who survived. Those are God’s job.

The point of this meandering maundering is that creativity is one way out of the Heart of Darkness. The Great prize you already have built in but seldom inhabited; exercised or exorcized. I never taught photography but instead the art of seeing what you are looking at with the genius you have. Photography like writing is merely a different sort of mentor -- anyone can do it -- I should and do know because of M & God.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved