I am 58, going on 59 (time for a song anyone?), and am discovering this new person called Tim.
There was a wonderful guy I used to know called Tim and Laing, for the sake of convenience, let’s call him Tandl. He was a strange person. Sometimes brash, mostly cautious. He didn’t have a circle of friends since one friend cannot be called a circle. This friend of his was somebody he didn’t need t speak to very much. What was curious was these two were able to not say anything but understand each other as though there were only one brain controlling the two of them. They walked in synch, each able to second guess if the other were turning right or walking straight ahead. Though the Laing bit of Tandl was always irritated that Tim could get through the smallest of spaces between other pedestrians and march on ahead.
Now I liked Tandl a lot. He was able to take photographs of the same thing but use a different camera and come up with a totally different image. Tandl rarely took photos of Tim and Laing, since Tandl viewed the camera as a means to record not a holiday, but the sense of a place. Here’s one of Tim’s, the Punta della Dogana as seen from a bridge.
For Tandl this sort of thing is what photography was about. Mementos of a trip, but an attempt to say something more. Tim had several attempts at this image, but this is the one he liked best. As was nearly always the case,it was the first attempt. Tandl found that both Tim’s and Laing’s efforts were usually better the first time around.
Now this effort from Laing may, on the surface look like a plain old boring photo of some terracing and paddy fields, but look closer.
There are the divisions within the image, the sky and the land are producing more or less horizontal lines. Where Tim would have found the road a distraction in the image Laing saw it with his eye as a curved line breaking up the monotony of the horizontals and consequently more or less cutting the photo into two thirds mostly horizontals and one third with the curve to break up what would otherwise be a monotonous image.
Tim is trying to see things from Laing’s point of view nowadays, and revive that inspirational spark which consequently Tandl would approve of. It is not having Laing’s point of view that is the problem.
Now to go back a few paragraphs. I find I am saying things people have just said to me. I am unable to remove a thought from my head until I utter it. It clings to me like a fly on flypaper until the words are uttered. Tandl would never have that problem. The conversations would flow with “I know” and additional remarks amplifying the already understood. It irritates me that I cannot converse like once I did since Laing died.
As much as I miss Laing, I miss Tandl more than I realised.
