I was back with the Guru of North Salina Street today, a man with Italian roots, middle name Francesco. I tried to express how frustrated I was with the oil spill, the slow response of BP, of our own government, the glup I saw on a UTube video scooped up by a fisherman in a dingy off the Louisiana shore, and he immediately asked, " Are you upset enough to stop driving." I was, again, brought up short. Said Guru doesn't drive. He doesn't even heat his building in the winter. He can stay warm in February by eating and dressing warmly enough, stuff he learned from a book on Eskimos.
He's living lightly in his art studio and I'm living large by comparison, very large.
Today, he taught me a little Italian phrase that one of his relatives in the old country said to him. Of course, if it's not good for your lungs, it's probably not good for you. But then there's that Johnny Carson quote I read in the last issue of the SUN, which read
“I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.”
Other topics, inspired by what was on the walls, the table surfaces, scrawled on sheets of paper taped to panels of wood propped everywhere in his second story studio, eventually bubbled to the surface: The joy of holding a baby, the importance of play, turning language on its head, and then eventually, Love, which we could, neither of us, adequately define, but which we agreed didn't reside in the possession of all these things.
My dad, Mr. GFS himself, told me about your page while I was on the phone with him earlier and I just wanted to let you know how much I loved your photography, and thanks for showing a little taste of someone as interesting as him through those pictures and blurbs.
ReplyDelete-Andie