Lines in the Negative

I was one of the lucky few who got tickets for the Gillian Welch and David Rawlings show at the Grey Eagle last night. It was as great of a show as I thought it’d be; the crowd was reverential and Gillian and David seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.

As they played their sets, I got distracted by the open rafters in that tiny space. I get distracted easily.

I was standing toward the side of the stage, so when I looked up and across the room I looked at the white rafters in profile; I could see the triangles of form and function. There was tape on the rafters where some wire had once been set and those pieces of tape formed black dashes across the scene, like highway lines in the negative. I started to think about perspective, how views change lines to curves, change great to small and vice versa; how perspective by its very nature is change.

I had the chance to canoe the Everglades a decade ago (GULP) and our last day we made the choice to canoe to a certain island and stop there for lunch. The island was clearly visible and didn’t seem too far off so we thought this idea reasonable. Not too far off ended up being about 4 miles. We had nothing to offer perspective, nothing to tell us what was near and far and so our best guesses ended up horribly off.

Perspective is the reason I keep a journal. I have to be reminded how I felt. I think it is terribly important to have something that acts as a bellwether, that serves as that buoy between the open seas of nostalgia and that narrow channel of truth.