Dark Daze photography blog

6.32 am we pull up outside the hotel in sf, 6.32 local time is 1.30 pm UK time , which translates as too god damn early or too damn late depending on whichever hellish way you want to look at it. Laying in bed tryin hard to sleep but suffering from mind tweaks. 2 hrs later my alarm was rapin me and I poured myself into a cab with john and aroe, and a cab driver who didn’t know his city , or just decided to take the blinking twitching freakin English tourists on a ride. We drove to grime tattoo parlour, eventually…. John met Norm and aroe met grime. You can see the photos somewhere here…..

watching grime was a real pleasure, its rare that you find someone so good at something that you just want to see them at work, he moved so fast over the skin, using single needles and dip picking his colours. Pots of inks sat on the table, bold primary colours, he would dip the needle into one, picking up some colour and and then into another pot and pretty much mix them on the skin of aroes arm. It was nothing like traditional tattooing, or not that I have ever seen, at the speed that he did it too, no hestitation or change of line, with just touches of colour in places to show form, muscle tone and features. We took a trip up to haight ashbury, sank a weird beer, shopped, ate, drove back in the whip and there they still there. Aroe and grime. Both looking pretty spaced, as 6hrs had gone by….. at the point when aroe’s hand had swelled so much that he couldn’t get his watch off, it became clear that this was some epic work happening. I don’t want to describe the grime experience too much, but when we emerged 7 1/2 hrs later and stood in the rain that was chuckin it down on us, I knew something more about genius, the guys so fuckin dope that its hard to put into words. He shook hands, popped his umbrella and walked off into the neon lit, soaking night, with a quick look back as the 4 of us sat waiting for rench to swing back in the whip. It was special, but I need to go home and sleep, 2 hrs in 48 is not enough for me…..but we didn’t, cos the boys were paint sick…..

PAINT SICK-The next two hrs was spent looking for paint at norms house, (which has some hellish sweet canvas’ on the wall) snakes and a fat cat, a grime dragon on the wall, 6 or 7 writers drikin beers and watchin TV and a room full of paint. I hate waiting for paint with writers, its like reading Burroughs describe Junk Sick. They twitch without paint, they think about paint, they talk about paint, they do everything except have paint. Someone will know someone with paint. That someone wont pick up the phone, or wont open the lock up cos it’s a sunday…. Then someone else will talk about this writer they know with paint, loads of it, not just any paint but the good shit, all the colours, not American Accent, or Belton, maybe even Montana Gold, the Holy Grail, but hey they are out of town today, or sick or dead today, but tomorrow, they can get it tomorrow for sure. Writers and paint fuckin paint…… I hate tins and the search. But Norm is straight up, he was just ……Bang I have paint, Take It, pay me a fair price its yours, heres my address heres the paint, so what all done take it motherfuckers, take the freakin paint, done….. …. (but without saying that and just actually being easy and immediate and friendly cos Norm is just a cool man) So we got to Norms house and after maybe an hour of it not being mentioned and watchin TV, the question comes out, So can we get the paint…..

But that’s when stage two of the sickness kicks in, tins take on a different edge in a new country, I don’t know if its colours mixing in the eyes, maybe jet lag messes with the imagination, or that special part of the brain that writers plan pieces, but now confronted with the tins they freeze or Rush’An Grab. Rush’An Grab is the urge to stockpile, to grab more tins than even the most banging Rime piece would need, arms of tins and bulging eyes…..it’s the same part of the brain that allows the most black legged, same sore, festered, dead vein, one hole, needle prickin junkie get up and haul there sorry self off the pavement and run after the Ford Mondeo that has just pulled up round the corner, the Mondeo with the dealer, the Mondeo with the fix, I know nothing about heroin and don’t speak to or hang out with smack heads, but in Brighton the junky run is a phenomenon…..the same part of the brain as Rush’An Grab

….. or they freeze, and forget even the primary colours, every piece they have ever done must just switch to monochrome in their minds (I’m guessing but what else can it be). Paint colours must collide, or melt into one dirty muddy uninspiring brown…..that makes choosing even a simple outline colour impossible…..so then you learn to wait, and wait So we waited, as Norm and the crew watched UFC, odisie aroe rench and alert pick colours, after some time…………except alert doesn’t pick, he looks and looks and looks and looks and looks……..and looks…… and fucking looks….. and I’m tired, its late, I am whiny in my head and have sand in my vagina……and he still doesn’t pick, he looks and I don’t say anything not just cos he’s big, or I’m a wuss, but because I know….I know what his brain was doing in that same moment……it was doing the exact same thing that I do in calumet or the vault or jessops when staring at the stockpile of film. I know what I need, I know what my shoot is, or the picture I need to make, but still I go thru every idea I have ever had for a picture. I could use Polaroid, no damn get Kodak but Portra something punchy, saturated colours, 160vc, but shit… damn…. fuckhell I could shoot b/w ultra grainy 3200 but with strong crisp black and whites, ‘cept for that I need ISO 50… no flash, but with hi-lites, so I need strobes but with ambient light….ah damn, maybe I should just not do the shoot at all….. so I know what alert was doing, obsessing, if you don’t obsess then you don’t get good, you don’t stand in the rain and finish yr piece, you don’t use a hot water bottle in the rucksack that all yr tins are kept in to stop them from freezing in the cold when you paint in the middle of a Nottingham February, you don’t get a pole and knock 4 ft icicles off of the overhang on the wall that your painting when you drag your sorry obsessed ass out to paint in snow drifts in Iceland. You don’t take 10 days off of work that you cant afford, to travel thousands of miles and drop a piece in some city you don’t know……unless you obsess…. Writers and paint sickness and obsessions and waiting and choosing and choices and that’s todays themes…. And if I can find a wi-fi spot somewhere this may even be accompanied with pictures to reward those that make it to the end of this line, shweet….

Posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 12:50 am in California One.