"He's not coming."
/
When I'm out trying to photograph interesting things, I normally do not pay attention to people around me. People distract me. Each individual provides a puzzle for me to solve. The look on a persons' face, the way they walk and carry themselves and the "energy" they project. A crowded room puts me in a daze, like a mouse in a maze with too much cheese. While I'm busy trying to solve the marital problems of the couple across the street (problems I've completely invented in my head based on their body language towards one-another) - a fireworks factory could explode behind me and I would get not one good fireworks burst on my sd card.. :)
Any small amount of creativity that exists within me is so deeply buried within my psyche that I have to almost step out of the world to take in my surroundings with the sense of a person on hallucinogens. (minus the 'shrooms, Sorry HR.)
When I do find that trance, I can typically hear and see things around me with a disconnected-but-heightened sense that I hope can help me come up with something unique. It is this reason that I typically do not do photo outings with other people. It is difficult or impossible for me to juggle this zombie state with the necessary cognitive presence to give a friend or colleague the attention and respect they deserve. (I'm working to get better at that, though!)
This particular area on Mobile Bay, tends to keep me on my two feet and aware of the people around me. This park and I have a history, of sorts, that makes me a little more people-aware than usual.
This evening as a trotted clumsily down the pier, my headphones blared with "Somebody that I used to know" from Gotye/Kimbra and this early 20's girl turned and looked at me from the end of the pier. As I approached, she at first looked at me expectedly and then with ultimate disappointment and turned away. (I get that alot. ) :)
I kept my headphones in, grabbed a couple shots from the end of the pier and started back down the pier.. as I walked, the song on my iPod and recent network sitcom TV were instantly shaken in the mixer of my mind to form the mental martini of her story.
"How I Met Your Mother" is a sitcom my wife and I watch together and usually enjoy. For the unfamiliar, it is a flashback sitcom, where Bob Saget tells the story to his teenage children of how he and their mother became acquainted, along with season after season of his mid-to-late 20's antics as a single, decent looking guy in Manhattan. It is "Friends" without Ross and Rachel.
Neil Patrick Harris plays a close friend to the narrator's younger self. A highly paid, somehow hilariously pathological womanizer playboy whose character is somehow further made hilarious seeing that Neil is openly gay off-screen. He's a great actor and one of our favorite characters in the sitcom. In a recent episode, they highlighted the details of his "Playbook" -- a leather bound, multi chapter outline of named scams and schemes that he uses to pick up women at bars. One such play, referred to as "He's not coming" plays out as he spends hours atop the empire state building observation deck waiting, observing -- looking for women that are by themselves, seemingly waiting to meet someone. Neil's character would approach them with the line "….He's not coming….". Depending on the reaction, he would walk away or stay to provide consolation to the newly grief-stricken and vulnerable woman with his own plans to land a one-night-stand.
To the sad-faced found woman at the Daphne bayside pier, Thanks for providing subject matter for this shot, I hope whoever you were waiting on - eventually arrived.
After all, life's moments are more enjoyable when shared with good company. Unless, of course those moments are zombie-mode photo outings; those are pretty awesome in solitude. oo, I think I hear my tea pot whistling. Maybe my mushroom tea is finally ready.