typewriter musings on unsent postcard 1976-77

Mood is lingering
on demonic self.

Is it a creative mood?
Or is it in all actuality
the creative mood?

Poetry can be written by
anyone, with a photo*

Graphic sense of tine
Graphic sense of space in
which to spend that time
to write that time
*graph under their arm
and a space below that
photo on which to wirte.

[Image verso: Campus Scene, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.]

during the week of Aug. 24-31, 1977

developing a transient life-style to compare/compete with the Beats. the New Waves/Wavers/Ravers. There needs to be literature/art to go along with the movement. I am being frustrated in my attempts to go to school. I feel that is where I should set up a base. Among other young artists. And yet I find myself in old New York. It is still a dictomy (sic) I can't understand. Am I following former ideals or creating new ones? Not that things aren't happening here. I'm still waiting. But why be in a position of waiting? So many things aren't together.

[Image verso: Max's Kansas City flier, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks]

tupewriter musings on postcards--unsent 1976-77

Posing for the Art World.

A redefinition of the thought
of how one is supposed to per-
form, when one is in the lime-
light(or hope to get into it
when one is not)

Its not right to pose, but
then its better than not
having anything to stand on
at all, after all its all so
all enveloping to get
carried away with the whole
thig.
thing. thing. thing.

[Image verso: Statue of Liberty National Monument]

typewritten musings on postcards--unsent 1976-77

Virtually beating
my head against the
wall printing.

Stopping for a glass of
tea around teatime, my
message for the day from
my teabag is "The fellow
who says she's too old to
learn new things probably
always was."

One must beat ones head I
guess if one wishes to
learn new things, attack
new vistas. Mt. Rushmore
here I come.

[image verso: Mount Tom, near Northamption, Mass.]

Going back to Texas from San Francisco, as I did many times, testing my new-found gay persona by hanging with a college pal, Candis Wheat, at my old high School, Sam Houston in Arlington, and at my mom's house, now nephew George and Monica's.

Packs of Luckies on the floor of Clay Street apt

Bill Jacobson took this and a ton of other shots when we lived together in SF in 1975-76. We were both new to the city, though Bill was from the East Coast. he'd been to Brown--he knew what an f-stop was. I was intrigued by what it meant to not be the author of my pictures, at least not to be the one that snaps. This carries through to the self-portraits with Instamatic using the white chord as shutter-trip--I never really could predict when the pressure would be enough to capture the image.

He Gives Himself an Ulcer

Where to go when you are new in town?
Haven't seen the sights?
Where you from young man? Texas! My, that explains your drawl. Welcome to San Francisco. You know, this can be a funny town, it can warp you faster than---What, you don't do any drink or drugs? Oh sure, hun. You're young yet.
What you need is a man to lead you 'round.

He Fills His Head with Culture

Having moved at nineteen to San Francisco in 1975, moving day into the apartment I was to share with Bill Jacobson, my 35mm camera was lifted out of the car. I was resigned to doing my first few quarters of work in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute with a Kodak Instamatic.
I went about my new city asking people at tourist spots to snap my picture. In response to other student's rapid discussions of f-stops and grey-scale, of which I knew nothing, I had the film developed down Chestnut at Broadway camera store, and printed to 3 1/2" x 3 1/2"--perfect for little snapshot booklets that I would hand out to the photo discussion cliques.