It was Henri Bergson who wrote that the eye only sees what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
I think that the eye is only blessed by true beauty when the heart is ready to receive (and honor) whatever comes up, either if it’s beautiful or not.
There’s a powerful analogy between photography and love. The more I love, the better I see, the better I catch up the marvel moment, the brighter reality shows up on paper and screen.
I felt the horses galloping over my head, and the intense smell of dung and grass all over the racecourse. The sun was hitting vertical on the tracks and the noise of the hoofs from ground level waved electric through my body like an approaching stampede. I was totally in awe, riding my high, feeling so alive, so receptive, eager to absorb the moment and never let it go.
I’m not one of those people who go in raptures often. I’m quite latent, quite unaroused, secretly and silently passionate.
How much I owe to the woman who opened me up to this kind of bewilderment, striking truth into the eyes I now resist to shut.
It impresses me to no end the capacity of her presence to change my filters, to domesticate time and light in behalf of a clearer perception, to change the trajectory of my artistic purpose, to put my fears on hold, to make me proud of myself (as capable of love her in return, as deserving of her company), to encourage me to risk beyond comfort zone, turning all things threatening into potentially warmhearted, welcoming, hospitable ones, by melting my suits of armor and giving me my curiosity and my adventurous drive back.
I went into the shower, pleasantly tired of living fully. Just like a kid or a lover.
Txema Rodríguez
photographer
Bareback ride
Faux pas
If you want a short-cut to enlightenment, there is no quicker route than looking at a mirror, listening to your secret judgments or finding purpose or use in any unwise step.
Don’t panic, bear with composure, sit up, sit tight, delay the common belief, let go of the stroke of vanity and assumption. Wait and see.
A normal, average life
She was a child prodigy in the 80′s. She could play five of the most difficult instruments and won a bunch of contests, dragged from one to the next by an histrionic mother, desperate for attention.
At sixteen she realized her queerness. At twenty two she killed victim zero.
Since then, she has been perfecting her normal, average life, suppressing one human annoyance at a time. She needs no redemption, no absolution, no amnesty or discharge.
On the verge of forties, she still settles for second best, secretly thinking she deserves better.
Her father swears that she is the best daughter anyone could have. Her mother spends evenings looking at photographs and news scraps of the time both were celebrities.
Her angelic visage and her virtuosity playing the organ, the piano, the violin, the cello can fool anyone.
She has no fears, no feelings of guilt or remorse. An exquisitely peaceful face. Even her natural, impersonal process choosing you as the next prey may be charming.
Her true nature remains invisible to the rest of the world.
She is a skilled mind reader.
Conscience can be a great handicap. Think about it.
Ask yourself how would you live your life if you had such an advantage over the majority.
Agent of death
It was a case of posthumous revelation.
The man was standing by her side, holding the camera with his beautiful hands, waiting for an omen, waiting for the air to move the undergrowth and the leaves, waiting for a slight change in the light, waiting to hear his own voice whispering now, totally unaware of her proximity.
She touched his coat, and his hair, wondering how warmly and slowly those hands could travel across the delicate creases of her silken dress.
He ducked to the uneven and mossy ground, trying to put all the pieces of the gravestone together.
Confused, perplexed, she read her own name, slowly, voicelessly moving her pale and deaf lips.
The man took five photographs. Four of them were trashed. He only kept the one that rendered her whole life a mystery.
Psychology of mass murder
Keep the gun in the bag. Sit down there and wait. Take a mental account of humilliations.
Remember the time she laughed at your face. Remember the time the russian doll faked it and then said while putting her bra on: you have plenty of time to make it grow thick and hard.
Think of all that people looking at you from the privileged stance. Think of the taste of being dumped. Feed your resentment as you would feed a wild animal in a cage. Let your anger set off slowly.
Plan everything about the killings. Imagine yourself taking out the gun and killing as many people as possible in the least time. Stockpile ammunition. Let the sense of failure creep up and blow your mind. Make yourself a man through destruction.
Photographers and reporters will make you the whole focus of attention. You will always be remembered. Your face will be shown to the whole world with a soundtrack of sirens blaring.
They will give the killing massive coverage. The blood spilled and the body count will be the leading story of the season. Come on. Stand up. Load your gun. Choose your first target. Start shooting. Think of all those nerds deconstructing your background in lectures.
He was a lonely boy. His father was abusive. His mother was alcoholic. No one cared a dime.
Make this your turn. They will shoot anyway.