I was doing a photo shoot, a double truck spread on fashion, which was one of my weirdest assignments ever for The Paper, (so not my thing), and I needed one more image...my models were flighty young creatures from my poetry class at El Molino High School, were gone for the evening, and I was the last one standing in the field at deadline. Dreadline. I set up the lighting on a music stand, and the camera on a tripod, set the focal plane, shutter and aperture, and hoped for the best. (No light meter, just my jaundiced eye.) It's sort of an assisted selfie.
I had these huge 200-watt bulbs that I stuck into aluminum reflector lamp shades with clippies. Seriously low tech. I used Tri-X, with a slow shutter speed, wide open aperture, and pushed the film in the developing process. Almost no post process. Grey scale was all there. Of course, the Hasselblad negative film was so big, it was practically like making a contact print.
Of course, you can't go wrong with a Hasselblad. Incredible glass. Large format negatives were more forgiving, you could practically use then as a contact print, as is. The Paper (North Bay Bohemian) editor Nick Valentine would loan it to me from time to time. The camera was worth the price of a small country. I quaked whenever I used it. I never expected Nick to use the photo for The Paper, but he did. I remember I was mortified at the time. I really didn't think Nick would go for it... I still have some of the half-tones from some of my photos. In some cases, the half-tone is the only copy I have.
I did clean up nicely from time to time. But I preferred old clothes to new duds. I wound up keeping the outfit, and used it to land a couple of jobs. I still had a waistline and my boobs weren't frequent flyers. I love thrift stores. My grannie and mother were both seamstresses, so I learned to sew at an early age. I was relieved when the hippie look became popular. So much less stress. I will NEVER wear panty hose again. Just sayin'. My friend Lee Perron said I used to dress to challenge—whatever that meant, other than wearing lingerie long before Madonna was a household word.
That's Richard Salzman tickling the ivories, in Forestville. Late 80s? They don’t shoot piano players, do they? Ken Bullock said that I looked like a torch singer. At the time, my favorite torchiere song in those days were
My Funny Valentine, Stormy Weather and
Stormy Monday.And Ewan McCall's
First time ever I saw your face, a tribute to Peggy Seeger
knocked me stone cold with its beauty
. But there's that little thing called words. And the notes, they all have to line up exactly. I was never good at that. I get too nervous and it all flies out the window.
My Torchiere amore, you're the one that I adore...
Even Don Coffin chimed in on my thread. We'd all go nuts whenever he drove up the Celli driveway in that big green caddy with all that chrome grille, ‘cuz it meant the craic was on. Don would step out with his fancy cowboy boots and mandolin. An Irish saying, means to part-ay on like there's no tomorrow! Don always traveled with some musical instrument or other. And Paul was a switch-hitter, he could go either classical or bluegrass.
Sone incredible music sessions at the cabins with Paul, Alistair Ingram, and Richard Salzman on the flute, because he couldn’t drag the piano out into the driveway, which was our communal living room, because there wasn’t a cabin big enough to hold us all. I asked Don if he was with Kate Wolf when she was living in Forest Knolls. I just remember her white ford falcon stationwagon parked in front of the Forest knolls USPO, not much else.
A high school friend, Toni Tierney commented on my photo saying it’s a Stevie Nicks look. Funny she should say that, I used to clean house for one of the band members—tall guy with an English accent. was it Fleetwood Mac himself? Dunno. They lived behind The Drake Club in Fairfax. Still trying to piece together that memory. Wish I could sing like her. I can still see the inside of the house in my mind's eye. They had an adorable toddler. The man was lovely, offered me tea, but she was a cold fish.
I didn't last long as a housecleaner for Fleetwood Mac. The blonde just didn’t like me. But they turned me onto some good music. Probably the first time I ever listened to a lot of Fleetwood Mac. Rhiannon became my favorite song. Weirdly, they turned me on to Michael Franks. He had me at those popsickle toes. I hear they're planning to buy the old recording studio in Sausalio. LOL. Toni confirmed that it was Fleetwood himself—and they probably paid me with checks too...Talk about autographs. But I was never into the fame thing.
You know, it's funny, but I had no real sense of self, or how I looked to others—my inner dialogue was always beating me up and nattering on that I was homely as a mud fence. I was a tortured angst-ridden soul. (Still am). At Lagunitas school, Jimmy Bohman taunted me, called me Skinny, and Flaca. Cruel kids. And trying to fit in at Drake high school, just wasn't within my skill-set. Those were miserable years. Thank god for art. It literally saved me. And my horses. Always the horses. Riding alone along the ridges of Mt. Barnabe brought me solace and refuge from the savage world.
I’m still not a fan of the mirror either...made the mistake of looking at myself at Judy Soga's house—someone had slipped me some acid Koolaid that afternoon at the spillway, and it was a long, rough ride. Took me years to get over that trip. The Pinnochio nose slidehsow didn't help. Yeah, my ride was a darker turn of the soul. Hitching out the The Valley after drinking some peyote tea, I swear I saw the ghosts of Miwoks at the Nicasio turn-off, by the golf course. Must’ve been Geoff Davis’s doing. He said he used to see their ghosts there by the pond. Said there was a village there. I never could shake that image. Window to the past.
I was certainly indoctrinated at an early age not to be vain, or to focus on my looks, etc. And the girls in school were seriously cruel, as a rule of thumb, always making fun of me, because I was from The San Geronimo Valley, I wore hand-me-downs, etc. So glad when the hippie movement rolled in, because it no longer mattered what we wore. Liberating to finally be ourselves in a massive hippie crowd.
My aunts and mother were the gorgeous creatures. My Aunt Jane was the Gallo Girl on the back of the Sunday Funnies, and Time Magazine. Speaking of print ads, Bill Deutra, the Marlboro Man, lived right across from me, lovely man, full of stories, the KS ravaging his handsome face. He'd take me out tea dancing in Guerneville. Told me about JEdgar's propensity for cross-dressing. I know the feeling. I felt like I was (reverse) cross-dressing in this photo. Out of character, out of soul depth, charging right ahead into the abyss. I was madly in love with poetry itself, the rest was ephemera.
2/2017
Added 2/20
