I thought it would be fun to look at all the photos I took in 2021 and share one of my favorite pictures from each month. I took 3,606 photos this year and I haven't posted any of these images before—they are freshies!
January 8th. Dee and I took a leisurely stroll around the back forty in Baltimore. My mom was born on this day, so everything in our path had feelings.
February 11th. The first big snowstorm of the year at the Susquehannock Pavilion in Druid Hill Park, Baltimore.
March 5th. Dee and I took a day trip to DC. She visited her parents while I walked around the city and took a bunch of snapshots. This is an image of Amanda Gorman. Artwork by Gayle Kabaker.
April 8th. Dee at her desk in Baltimore. Every morning while she is journeying through the hills of Druid Park, Dee sends me a text that features one of her happy illustrations. It's a lovely way to start the day.
May 9th. This verdant critter was loving life in the cutest little alley next to our apartment in Woodberry. Baltimore is full of narrow alleys, which I totally dig and prefer to sidewalks.
June 2nd. One of my favorite things in the world is to walk around town taking a mess of photos. This is the Baltimore branch of the NAACP.
August 1st. The landlord is developing the lot next to us, building some apartments and whatnot. It's been fascinating to have a bird's-eye view of the process. This is spray foam insulation on the foundation. It's light as a feather but you can walk on it. Very trippy.
September 19th. I love living in different cities. I've shacked up in some pretty big joints. Los Angeles and NYC for example. Every city has a unique vibe. This is Trip's Place & Gatsby's Night Club in Baltimore. This feels like Baltimore to me.
October 31st. This is the view out of our bathroom window. The neighbor's house was on fire. Yikes. No one was hurt, thank goodness.
November 5th. I'm a big fan of photos without people in the frame. This photo was taken at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.
December 18th. I recently took photos for an event at the Urban Reads Bookstore in Baltimore. This was one of my favorite photos from that shoot.
🎉 Happy New Year! 🥳
Be well, and let's love on each other real good in 2022.
Peace.
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My Record Collection (1952-1992) | Baltimore, MD | 2021
From the flip side of Dave Van Ronk's album, Just Dave Van Ronk, 1964
Vinyl is heavy, man.
My record collection weighs approximately 369 pounds. This estimate is based on the average weight of a piece of vinyl, plus the album cover, being 9 ounces. Then you multiply that number by 600 records and add another 30 pounds for the milk crates that keep everybody upright. I've carted this assemblage from Los Angeles to New York, then to Virginia, and now Baltimore.
I decided to turn my record collection into a piece of visual art to lighten my load. With each passing year I let go of more stuff. Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting. I remember laughter, I remember heartache and I remember love. My record collection spans the years from 1952 through 1992—a time before I was born to a time nearly 30 years ago. I've carried my past across the country. I respect the journey of my ancestors and myself. But today I am lighter. And here's the truth—I didn't know I had a record by Dave Van Ronk until I started this project. Like Dave, I have no interest in telling a lie when I open up my heart. I open up my heart by meditating, which is weightless, and meditation opens my awareness. My awareness has no age.
My earliest recollection of vinyl was back in the early 70s, which is one of the reasons why 41% of my collection is from that era. The record that got the most rotation back-in-the-day was this little pumpkin:
1971 | Harry Nilsson | Nilsson Schmilsson (photo by Dean Torrance)
Everything about the album resonated with me until I was deep into my 20s, my 30s, maybe forever. So many fun times with family and friends, laughing, dancing, getting stoned. Harry's hand casually tucked in his pocket, the other hand cradling his pipe. The gentleness of it all. The cozy ass kitchen with the refrigerator calendar. If we weren't letting the good times roll in the living room, we were in the kitchen, cooking Italian, playing games, conjugating until the wee hours. Harry was a God, my role model. And so was Uncle Tom, my Mom's brother, the cool cat who introduced me to Harry Nilsson. We all just wanted to be free, to be lighter, to drink it all up.
Another reason I have a ton of records from the 70s is because of my friend, Kent. Back in the early 80s, Kent had a Monday night gig spinning records at the Whistle Stop, which was a small club in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego.
Flyer by Kent Landis, 1985
Kent and I loved to have fun together. One day he invited me to join him on Mondays to play our favorite records, drink beers, smoke weed, boogie down and eat hot dogs. It was heaven. Kent loved music from the 70s, so this naturally rubbed off on me. Even though I moved back to Los Angeles after graduating from UCSD in 1986, I always imagined we would play music again. So Kent was on my mind whenever I was at a thrift shop looking for fresh wax. I would say to myself, "Kent would dig this." We never got that opportunity to spin again, but if we did, this is the first record I would play for him:
1975 | Gloria Gaynor | Never Can Say Goodbye (photo by Bernie Block)
I always thought my records were kinda groovy. Although the collection was cumbersome, the nostalgia of it all was definitely worthwhile. Collecting records was a thing. I mean, just the cover art alone was worth the effort and mondo trippy, not to mention the crazy music. The act of holding an album in your hands, studying it, reading the liner notes, pulling out the record, cleaning the vinyl, hearing the pops and cracks as the record spun round-and-round. The whole thing was romantic and visceral. And thanks to Kent, making sure your collection had both the classics and the schmaltz. Be diverse, have fun. So that's what I did.
In 1990, my record collection became truly vintage. That's when my father's wife, Gloria Kersey, gifted me the record collection that belonged to her husband, Chuck, who passed away in 1984. And speaking of the 80s, my father took me to see the Steelers play the Rams at the Superbowl in Pasadena in 1980. We had great seats on the 50 yard line courtesy of our hosts, the Biltmore Hotel. I was 16 years old, the weather was perfect and everyone was drinking beer, including me. Before the opening kickoff, a friendly fella from the hotel bought a bunch of hot dogs for everyone to munch on. I was stoked and hungry. I had no idea who the guy was but he was instantly a major dude. That man was Chuck Kersey. It wasn't until I flipped through his record collection in 1990 that I realized Chuck was a full-on jazz head. His collection made my collection go from cabernet to cognac.
One sweet piece of vinyl from the Kersey repertoire is this:
1956 | Chet Baker | Chet Baker Sings (photo by William Claxton)
I collected most of my records while I was living in Los Angeles in the late 80s and early 90s. When I moved to NYC in 1995, I pretty much turned to CDs and then mp3s. But those post college years in LA were a great time for vinyl enthusiasts and thankfully I had some decent jobs to support my jones. During this period of deep accumulation, I became a huge fan of reggae, and consequently, a regular at the Kingston 12 in Santa Monica on Thursday nights. It was a ritual for me. I would roll up in my yellow VW Rabbit, smoke some ganja, and then dance for a couple of hours with the other Rastas. Jah! In honor of these irie times, I would have to say that my favorite album cover is this piece of candy right here:
1974 | Jimmy Cliff | Struggling Man (illustration by David Dragon)
Creating an archive of my vinyl was a calling. I was in a p-funk and I needed to heal my chi, so I created a self-help project that required absolute focus, dedication and love. Operation Free My Mind.
Each album cover was scanned four times: top-left, top-right, bottom-left and bottom-right. I merged these four sections in Photoshop and cropped the result into a perfect square. I color corrected the final images to best resemble the original artwork, but I didn’t retouch anything because I wanted to see the wear and imperfections of each cover. I created unique titles for every digitized file according to the year, the artist and the title of the album. My last step was to create a collage of all the records, in chronological order, left-to-right, top-to-bottom, which I did in Photoshop. I worked on this project every day for five weeks and I worked eight hours a day, or 280 hours in total.
My intention was to make the record collection feel as though you were actually in my living room thumbing through the dusty stacks. Wine, weed and snacks—totally optional.
Jimmy Cliff was singing about those good old days. I guess I am too. Archiving my record collection was a blunt way for me to confront the past in order to find peace in the present. Did it work?
The best days of my life are right here, right now.
My mind is free.
P.S. The songs on this blog were recorded by me from my actual record collection which is why you might hear some pops and cracks.
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From the album Environments - New Concepts in Stereo Sound, Disc 1, 1970
Sometimes I lose my way. I can tell when I am lost in the woods because my thoughts are outwardly critical and not of the spirit.
I've been working on a personal, archival project for the last few weeks. I hope to present my efforts next month, but it may take longer. On the surface, the project is about music and memories. At the core, the work is about repetition and meditation.
I have been collecting and listening to music all my life. This musical journey started with vinyl and today it continues digitally. My latest digital acquisition is a collaboration by Jon Hopkins, East Forest and Ram Dass entitled "Sit Around the Fire" which I'd like to share with you.
So yeah, music, memories, repetition and meditation. I've determined that the archival project will require at least 5,000 repetitious actions. With each action, a musician, a lyric, an image or a phrase will evoke a memory which ignites a feeling. One such song for me is the opening track on the Cocteau Twins album Treasure. Not long ago, I couldn't listen to the song, which is titled "Ivo." It hurt too much. I first heard the music in 1986, my last year of college at UCSD. I was instantly in love with the moody, ethereal voice of Elizabeth Fraser. I was a cocky 22 year old full of dreamy, badass attitude. Cigarettes, leather and being stoned. But hearing the song decades later filled me with breathtaking claustrophobia and heartache. As David Byrne would say, “My God! What have I done?” Then I remembered the healing power of meditation.
We are not our thoughts. Quiet the mind, open the heart.
For the last 35 weeks, Dee and I have been playing one vintage album every Saturday night to jump-start our dance parties. We alternate who picks the record each week. After we spin and groove to the vinyl, I make a digital scan of the album and then I give the record back to Dee so she can create illustrations inspired by the cover art. Since we both love rituals, we dug the idea of continuing our Saturday tradition for the next 12 years because that's how long it would take since we have about 600 records. I kinda did the math. But then I thought it would be cool to see all the albums together in one far out, massive collage, which got me thinking. So basically, I’ve decided to accelerate the scanning, the remembering and all the meditative repetitions—for the sake of art! Rest assured, we'll continue to ease into our Saturday nights. No hurries, no worries.
And by the way, last week we listened to the Cocteau Twins album, Treasure. We danced like wild banshee children. I had feelings, for sure, but they were embers of the spirit, y'all. No crushing thoughts of existential dread. Just good vibes.
As Ram Dass said, "Let the judgements and opinions of the mind be judgements and opinions of the mind. And you exist behind that. Ah so. Ah so."
In other words—get down, boogie oogie oogie—music by A Taste of Honey, 1978.
We have it on vinyl.
1978 | A Taste of Honey | Boogie Oogie Oogie, Disco Single
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