Last night?
Mar. 27th, 2008 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgLet me take you to...HONKY TOWN!
Seriously. There was the stray Asian - this was the Wiltern, smack dab in Koreatown after all - but after the last couple of houses I've been in the last two weeks, I felt seriously invisible, except for age (HELLO YOUNGEST AGAIN WHAT).
I haven't been in the Wiltern before - it's historic, fascinating...and has the wildest, mildest color scheme in town.
Think terra cotta, some burnished gold leaf...and teal. Like, oxidized copper-rust teal. Art-deco at its height, yummy and a raked house so steep it twigged a bit of vertigo. Wilshire and Western - put a pin in the map, there you are.
Paul Potts was magnificent. He also brought along a nice surprise, a girl group called the Three Graces that could sing circles around Celene Dion and OH CD? OKAY!
Paul did a few things I hadn't heard before, but everything he did from the one CD - he did better last night. It's almost like he's still learning everything...but listening to him talk between songs, it's pretty clear this isn't an overnight fluke. He's been singing like this since he was a small child...it just didn't pay. That's how someone like that is found selling cell phones instead of singing wherever he had a gig to go to.
I've got a least one more CD to go find...and I hope Paul puts another album together soon.
....
"While these people have, on the surface, an expression of pity or sadness or curiosity, looking at the legless guy on a skateboard," he says, "at the same time, they're opening themselves up; they're incredibly vulnerable."
For a photographer that kind of image is the Holy Grail. Connolly, from his unique perspective (he's three feet seven inches tall), seems to have found a way to capture it over and over again using himself as his subjects' focal point.
Fascinating study from someone who gets it - separate yourself from the people (and their opinions or prejudices) around you, and take a closer look. Shut your mouth, settle down...and pay attention. There's more to it. There's ALWAYS more to it.
But Connolly learned something else during his photographic odyssey -- something that raised the issue of identity.
Many of the people he met, it seemed, did not wait for him to explain the reason for the absence of his legs. Instead, they automatically supplied their own narrative, one uniquely suited to their own environment or personal sensibilities.
For example, while traveling in New Zealand a woman asked Connolly if he was the victim of a shark attack. In Romania some thought he was a beggar; at a bar in Montana a man bought him a beer and thanked him for his service, believing Connolly was a wounded veteran of the Iraq War.
Connolly says he learns more from people by not correcting their assumptions.
You want to teach people something - some times, the best approach is to take it all in for yourself...and then look for a good opening. A really good opening.
He's got a lot going for him - not the least of which the patience of Job.
....
Bookmark this and come back when you need to lose it completely. You will.
For now, that's it. I gotta get out of here.
Seriously. There was the stray Asian - this was the Wiltern, smack dab in Koreatown after all - but after the last couple of houses I've been in the last two weeks, I felt seriously invisible, except for age (HELLO YOUNGEST AGAIN WHAT).
I haven't been in the Wiltern before - it's historic, fascinating...and has the wildest, mildest color scheme in town.
Think terra cotta, some burnished gold leaf...and teal. Like, oxidized copper-rust teal. Art-deco at its height, yummy and a raked house so steep it twigged a bit of vertigo. Wilshire and Western - put a pin in the map, there you are.
Paul Potts was magnificent. He also brought along a nice surprise, a girl group called the Three Graces that could sing circles around Celene Dion and OH CD? OKAY!
Paul did a few things I hadn't heard before, but everything he did from the one CD - he did better last night. It's almost like he's still learning everything...but listening to him talk between songs, it's pretty clear this isn't an overnight fluke. He's been singing like this since he was a small child...it just didn't pay. That's how someone like that is found selling cell phones instead of singing wherever he had a gig to go to.
I've got a least one more CD to go find...and I hope Paul puts another album together soon.
....
"While these people have, on the surface, an expression of pity or sadness or curiosity, looking at the legless guy on a skateboard," he says, "at the same time, they're opening themselves up; they're incredibly vulnerable."
For a photographer that kind of image is the Holy Grail. Connolly, from his unique perspective (he's three feet seven inches tall), seems to have found a way to capture it over and over again using himself as his subjects' focal point.
Fascinating study from someone who gets it - separate yourself from the people (and their opinions or prejudices) around you, and take a closer look. Shut your mouth, settle down...and pay attention. There's more to it. There's ALWAYS more to it.
But Connolly learned something else during his photographic odyssey -- something that raised the issue of identity.
Many of the people he met, it seemed, did not wait for him to explain the reason for the absence of his legs. Instead, they automatically supplied their own narrative, one uniquely suited to their own environment or personal sensibilities.
For example, while traveling in New Zealand a woman asked Connolly if he was the victim of a shark attack. In Romania some thought he was a beggar; at a bar in Montana a man bought him a beer and thanked him for his service, believing Connolly was a wounded veteran of the Iraq War.
Connolly says he learns more from people by not correcting their assumptions.
You want to teach people something - some times, the best approach is to take it all in for yourself...and then look for a good opening. A really good opening.
He's got a lot going for him - not the least of which the patience of Job.
....
Bookmark this and come back when you need to lose it completely. You will.
For now, that's it. I gotta get out of here.
