Let Me In

Recently, I’ve been spending some time on the internet. (joke to myself)

I’ve been poking around on a new site. It’s called the hermitary and it’s designed as a resource for hermits and those seeking solitude. It seems counterintuitive to have a site like this on the internet and it seems as though there is an even greater disconnect when I browse around the forum. There, one sees questions and discussions posted from hermits around the world.

Thus far, I’ve sent two requests to become a member of the forum and the moderator is not letting me in. I imagine that he or she is in a cave with no wi-fi or this is a fight club scenario where I have to just eat his reticence for days upon months until one day, he or she steps out of the door, looks around, and says, “ok, you’re in.”

Maybe my chosen forum moniker seems too insincere to the gatekeeper. Maybe it did not evoke enough zen sentiments. What is wrong with ‘Simple_Sandwich’? I think that username conveys everything a hermit would want to be and would want to desire. Why am I taking this rejection so badly? If you are the forum master, and you are reading this, thank you for teaching me this valuable lesson.

Inspiration can come from random places. It can come from a random overheard conversation (“Gimme my crack money or I’m gonna tell grandpa on you.”) or from a friend in Turkey. Big ups to Andres for sending me a link to Hiroshi Watanabe.

He’s a Japanese photographer that made an incredibly intimate portrait of north korea. These pictures scratch at some of the feelings I want to convey in a book I’ve been working on. It’s awesome to see it done in a photography format.

The book to the right by the same photographer comes highly recommended by Andres.

"Actually, the angel ought to have had his dwelling in me. But he knew only angelic truth and understood nothing about man." from Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung.

"Hiroshi Watanabe's newest book I see Angels Every Day takes place in the San Lazaro Psychiartic Hospital and the surrounding town of Quito, Ecuador in 2001. Unlike the angel in Jung's dream, Watanabe's manifestations of his visions in photographs reveal an understanding of mankind's truth. As Suzuki Masufumi's states in his prelude to this book, Watanabe is willing to "situate himself within the double-mirror of the gazes" to look outward and embrace being gazed upon-to understand. The book includes 80 plates expanding the work previously seen in the self-published, Faces Vol. 1. San Lazaro Psychiatric Hospital. These photographs, along with still lifes and additional portraits, are divinely printed in monochrome.- Melanie McWhorter

"This Watanabe's collection of photographs is not only to look at but also it is a book that you are looked at by the book. I would definitely give him my moral support." -- Eikoh Hosoe

I like the idea of feeling as though a book I am reading is looking/examining me as well.