pitcher of water

Last Friday night, I caught a great show on BBC Four, on the making of Simon & Garfunkel's album, Bridge Over Troubled Water. Every song from that album has resonated throughout my life (the Boxer, especially) and I'm going to try to find you songs to illustrate posts. This one might not make any sense, but somehow to me, the line 'sail on silver girl' seems apt for black and white photography. After all, weren't the original negatives made somehow with silver in the process?







I did this shoot as a favour for someone who I have lost touch with (I forgot her name!) - she was a graduate fashion student who I met, streetshooting - and my models were both friends I'd also met on the street, for my blog. I am so grateful to my blog on so many levels but especially, for the friendships that have formed, like Estelle, whose birthday is the day next to mine, and whose blog is Serendipity 2307: both the numbers 23, and 7, are also my 'magic numbers', and while she is only 22, she is an old soul, and a true and loyal friend.



In this wonderful show on the BBC (Imagine: The Harmony Game) Paul Simon - who contributes throughout, as does Art Garfunkel and everyone else involved with recording the album - said that one of the sound engineers - I love this, his expertise is sound - labelled the recording 'pitcher of water' because that's what he heard when they said it was called 'bridge over troubled water.'

Guess you had to be there.

I took this photo while cooking, in the late afternoon light, at my parents' winter home in Florida - now my widowed mom's. The glass pitcher was from Italy, and was a wedding gift, and there was something about the light that felt so spiritual. I had this powerful memory of being very very young, almost a baby. I can't explain. And I'm glad the shot is so blurry: it feels, to me, like one of those early photographs, perhaps by an unknown photographer, at the turn of the century. The Twentieth Century, I mean.

And this was a big weekend for me: I finished my novel just before Christmas, but this weekend, I revised it enough that I feel I'm ready to show it around. Find an agent, get it published. New territory for me but then again, so was starting a blog. Creatively, I have to always keep pushing the envelope. That's why I loved that show so much: to hear Simon, and Garfunkel, talk about their friendship, their harmony, the creative process. Together, they created a masterpiece, and this song - a Pitcher of Water - exemplifies the height of musical perfection, for me.