For its own sake...

A recent note to my current workshop students

This is a slightly reworked version of a piece I sent to one of my current workshop groups, in response to some questions they posed at the end of a recent session. I have a couple more workshop offerings open for registration now at my webstore. If you’re a photographer anywhere on Earth, please consider joining us. I email my workshop students every week with resources and recommendations or longer thoughts, just like this. -RR

I remember walking out the squeaky rotting doors of Harold’s Apartments on Main Street in downtown Missoula, Montana, squinting into the light pouring out of the mouth of Hellgate Canyon. I was determined to settle into one of several local cafes and write for the next two hours. As I made my way past Mammyth Bakery, Jay’s Upstairs, and the Montana Savings & Loan on the corner––the same bank that had given me a checking account without an ID or an address days before (oh, we know Harold’s, you’re fine)––I felt the light pulling me away from my usual spots and found myself involuntarily turning south on North Higgins Avenue. Up ahead, in front of the old Wilma Theater, Red Becks, the insane town street preacher was wrapped in an assortment of mangy fur pelts, shouting and throwing invisible hellfire at cars as they approached the red light. I waved to Red as he waved his arms and screamed HHHHHEEEEEEEAAAAYYYYYYYLLLLLL into traffic, a small and heavily tattered bible in his left hand. A trio of bare-midriffed college girls ran up to Red as I passed, and I looked over my shoulder just in time to see one of them launch herself into his arms, with a bear hug that would have made Jesus blush. Red just beamed.

I faced back into that gravitational light and made my way over the bridge, looking down at the Clark Fork River below, moving just as slowly as I was as it flowed easily along the park carousel and into the canyon beyond, looping past Mount Jumbo to the North (the one with the giant white letter L on its face), and Mount Sentinel to the South (with a giant letter M), behind the university campus. That was when I was overtaken with the urge to take part in the obligatory Missoula tradition of “hiking the M.” Mount Sentinel being pretty small as “mountains” go, to hike from its base, behind the campus, to the indent just above the mighty letter M was something one might do on a long lunch hour, but I hadn’t yet tried it myself in my short week of living at the Harold’s.

All the way up the mountain I was astonished at the perfect skies and the aliveness of the sulphuric air, but at each switchback the atmosphere seemed thinner, the trail got more steep, and everyone else on in my path seemed more fit than I was. Fresh faced blond people were all around, trudging past me on the ascent, or skipping over jagged rocks on the descent. A few of them said hi. I was freshly transplanted from the East Village of Manhattan, and still not used to strangers saying hello without wanting something from me, so I silently gritted my teeth and climbed ever more slowly towards the gleaming white emblem near the peak of the great brother mound of earth which supported me. I wondered why no one asked me why my life had broken down, leading me to this place so far from everything I had ever known.

When I finally reached the M, strangely, there was no one else there. I was suddenly alone. I reached into my bag for my water bottle and sat down at the top edge of the M’s twin peaks, surveying the majestic sky, and the bowl-shaped town below. I tried to spot my apartment building. I traced the line from Higgins Avenue, from the university campus up to about where Main Street should be, found the distinctive outline of the Mo Club (”liquor in the front, poker in the rear”), but nothing at all distinguished the Harold’s from the other old Western hotels and saloons. I looked back up at the enormous sky, expecting the same impenetrable blue as before, but a front of dark gray clouds was moving quickly and angrily over the valley, straight towards Mt Sentinel from the direction of Idaho. In Western Montana you can have four or five drastic changes of weather in a day, or even a few hours, and not being used to that yet I was taken by surprise as the temperature dropped about 15 degrees in a matter of seconds and next thing I knew I was being pummelled by an honest-to-God hail storm. The sight and sound of the marble-sized balls of ice landing on me, bouncing like popcorn all around my seat broke my soul open into uncontrollable laughter, the kind that comes from below the belly and explodes forth without inhibition or self-consciousness. There was nowhere to shelter and I didn’t care. I just sat there laughing and laughing my fool head off.

Five minutes later...it was all over. I soon started back down the trail to campus, knowing I was in the right place and guided by the right forces, but as I put the revived sun at my back and pointed back towards the river, churning faster now with the added fuel of the flash storm, I did not know what was actually about to happen to me.

As you read the above paragraphs I just wrote, you might be wondering what any of this has to do with photography, the street, or anything else related to my work. Let’s start here: while the basic event of the above story is true, and many of its details were actual experiences of mine from my first days living in Montana, 30 years ago, they did not all happen on the same day, and some are composites of moments I remember from my whole not-quite-a-year year there. In some cases I changed details to sound better or completely made things up. I don’t remember whether the Clark Fork was running slow or fast, and I think the bank on the corner had some other name. I didn’t decide to hike the M spontaneously, but actually planned it ahead of time, and brought a ham sandwich, which I ate as the clouds approached. The hail storm was very real, as was my maniacal laughter, and that’s the point of what I’m saying. The fact and fiction here are all part of the creative lightning that comes from letting go and going into the automatic movements of the mind. Photography, practiced as we have been discussing, reacting to the sight of things with first thought, and selecting the pictures to share based on what they seem to ask us, rather than what they explain, comes from a similar place. We are tapping into the infinite in some way by leaving behind our attachment to the fussy fact-based trajectory so many cling to for safety.

I’m not trying to say that the above paragraphs are great writing, or even the best I am capable of, but to the extent that it was interesting to you at all it came from the fact that I have a practice. My definition of practice was crystallized by the work of Natalie Goldberg, the author of Writing Down the Bones, who said “a practice is something you do every day, under all circumstances, for its own sake.” When I read those words I had been a working musician for many years and yet “practice” was something that functioned in my life as a mission to reach goals: to have strength and stamina on my instrument, to have a greater musical fluency and facility, and to in the course of things become more “employable.” Much of the time it was a stressful burden that I had to repeatedly talk myself into.

For years I have done “morning pages.” As described in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, morning pages are three handwritten pages of anything at all, but the idea is to make them the first thing you do after waking, before the mundanities of the day flood in, and the only requirement is to write without stopping and to do it every day. It isn’t important to go back and reread the pages and one shouldn’t cross out, revise, or have any concern about spelling, punctuation, or whether what you agree with anything you’re writing or not. It’s just an act. It’s a practice. You don’t do it to be a writer, or record your thoughts, or become enlightened or healed or better than anyone else. It’s something I do every day for its own sake. It grounds me, it clears the cobwebs, but anything it teaches me I have to face anew each day. I’m back at that same empty page. It needs filling again.

I carry this grounding into my photography, knowing that while I want to be a great photographer, and make important work every time I point my camera at anything, the part I get to keep, the real work of the artist, is the practice. I cannot even count all the benefits I’ve experienced from photographic practice for its own sake. It’s overwhelming, really. If I look at a single day of it I can’t see those benefits so well. I only see that I walked for hours and didn’t make a masterpiece, or whatever judgment my controlling mind wants to use to indict me. But the steadiness of my practice keeps my feet on the ground and directs my attention to the miracle of there being no finish line, and nothing in my way. I have everything I need, and the masterpiece and the failure come from the exact same physical action. My outwardly directed attention, when lacking the clutching effort of my egoic mind, gives me that little bit of a chance that I might add one little piece to the puzzle of my life. One day, one step, at a time. For its own sake.

Let go of everything. Practice is a defiant act of freedom. While others are throwing a clenched fist at mortality, we can extend an open hand towards our own vulnerability, and enjoy the childlike wonder that makes the simple taking of a picture an excuse to become fully awake.