My next assignment came with the mail. Handwritten, with a beautiful calligraphy in an old piece of paper was the following quote from Florence Scovel Shinn’s book “The Game of Life and how to Play it”: The white light of Divine Love flows through me and around me, inspiring and protecting me. The light of Divine Love now dissolves and dissipates every negative condition in my mind, body and affairs. Every cell of my body is filled with the light of Divine Love”. I instantly knew where to go and what to do. i didn’t even have to pack a suitcase…
When a photographic investigator has a chance to integrate to the Clear Light of Objective Reality she never misses it. The urge to be free is great to a photographic investigator who has spent her life investigating the illusions /lives of her subjects, as well as her own. And although she has read many times the Tibetan Book of the Dead hoping that she will remember what to do when the time comes, she also likes the American Book of the Dead, by E.J. Gold and his guidance in the bardos. She must remember, she must remember…: “Now I am experiencing the Clear Light of objective reality. Nothing is happening, nothing ever has happened or ever will happen. My present sense of self, the voyager, is in reality the void itself, having no qualities or characteristics. I remember myself as the voyager, whose deepest nature is the Clear Light itself; I am one; there is no other. I am the voidness of the void, the eternal unborn, the uncreated, neither real nor unreal. All that I have been conscious of is my own play of consciousness, a dance of light, the swirling patterns of light in infinite extension, endless endlessness, the Absolute beyond change, existence, reality. I, the voyager, am inseparable from the Clear Light; I cannot be born, die, exist or change. I know now that this is my true nature.” (― E.J. Gold, The American Book of the Dead)
Born investigators do not look for subjects. Born visionaries don’t ask for visions. William Blake could see into the spiritual world, but how would a photographic investigator possibly grasp what he saw? Waking up this smallest day, this longest night, it was William Blake’s “assistance” that I seeked. But alas! It was a bleak poem that I found, “To the winter” it’s called. I guess it’s appropriate for today, the longest night of the world…
I was obsessed with that new TV series, A Discovery of Witches and suddenly, wherever I looked in Venice, I saw vampires, witches and demons… I also realised that there were bewitched places that could be seen only with the corner of the eye. Was it “Somebody else’s problem” (as Douglas Adams would say) or was it mine?
I don't know if it was an entrance or an exit. Maybe neither. There was light, so inevitably there were shadows. I remembered an arabic song called "Fly shadow, fly". Could I be investigating -without knowing it- the ability of a shadow to fly? Well, if it could, it should do it followed by this melody.
A photographic investigator knows that her subjects, hypnotised by the shadows they create, they don't see the All Watching Eye in the projection wall. Doe's she try to alert them?
Angelbirds have the ability to take human form and enjoy a morning or afternoon coffee in a coffee shop, their personality being best described as "lonely in a crowd". Having an angelbird as a totem usually means that spiritual advancement for the person in question is achieved by keeping distances from people, not in complete solitude, though. Relationships can provide valuable catalysts, in a sense that they accentuate the importance -and inevitability- of distance. Angelbirds are beautiful and graceful, they are described as the "ballerinas" of the bird kingdom and I was so happy that I had to investigate one. In it's human form, obviously. Which is not so easy... While I was investigating, the mystical sound of "Raven medicine" by Byron Metcalf was playing on my iPod... Mystical.
The life of a photographic investigator can be "found" in or "described" by Electric Light Orchestra's songs. It's magic. So, today, I guess it's "Heaven only knows" from the album "Balance of Power": Now the sun will shine And I'm gonna work it out this time And before the light All I gotta take is one more night Heaven only knows, I'm really on the level Heaven only knows, I'm trying to find a way Heaven only knows, I'm walking down a straight and lonely road today
Another obscure Venice personality, connected to the Mister circle of spies and other mysterious people... Her code name was "Mis Legs" not only for the obvious reasons but because this was the last thing her enemies saw after they were defeated... I investigated her through many angles and the fact that you are seeing the fruits of my photographic investigation proves that I wasn't her enemy. To be continued...
Something that stayed with me since I first read George Mc Donald's beautiful story, "The Day Boy and the Night Girl"(The Romance of Photogen and Nycteris). I quote: "She followed the firefly, which, like herself, was seeking the way out. If it did not know the way, it was yet light; and, because all light is one, any light may serve to guide to more light. If she was mistaken in thinking it the spirit of her lamp, it was of the same spirit as her lamp and had wings". An excellent weekend reading that I strongly recommend especially now that light works it's way to gaining more ground every day...
Investigating a woman in extremely noir circumstances... Brought to mind "Dark Passage", starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacaull... for obvious reasons to a film noir lover...
She was Mister Minimal's cousin. According to an oracle, she would become very rich one day, but she didn't know that. I did, of course. I was investigating her, a subject who was very lucky, but thought of herself as unlucky. The result was overwhelmingly... minimal. She was known as Mis (not Miss) Minimal and it was her who taught Mister Minimal all about being minimal... The only thing about her that wasn't minimal was her future fortune... but that was in a different timeline.
Gran Canyon was my next stop. I stayed in the Nevada Inn. A special place because it's orientation was such that everything and everybody was bathed in shades of Gran Canyon orange, the colour of Nevada -as I was told by the two girls that I ended up investigating. Old habits die hard.
The job totally depended on it… He pretended to be a performer and the only way to investigate him was to pretend I was a celebrity photographer. It always works. But to do so, I needed sunlight coming through a window before sunset that particular evening. So it all depended on the weather in London that day, because that's where my photographic investigation was taking place. When I saw the clouds parting I knew no force in the 'verse could stop this investigation. The weather in London was agreeing with my intentions... and for that to happen, they just couldn't have been my intentions… I just thought they were. That reassured me even more.
Sometimes a Photographic Investigator finds herself in between assignments and they wander around observing. Everything is really amazing when you are silently observing it. Unfortunately, old habits die hard, so I ended up investigating two people… Luckily, it happened in Burano, so I did it in colour. So, one thing was out of the ordinary.
Bathed in the illusory light of the afternoon and helpless under a sky beautifully painted by chem trails, watching fellow photographic investigators investigating something that I could see but I knew it does not exist, I felt the need to capture this moment -although I knew this was impossible- as I reminded myself: "All phenomena are selfless, empty, free from conceptual elaboration. In their dynamic they resemble an illusion, mirage, dream or reflected image. A celestial city, an echo, a reflection of the moon in water, a bubble, an optical illusion, or an intangible emanation".
