Sunday, March 18, 2007

Silencio


On my window the tropical rain – this time including hail – leaves graphic quality; those rain drops on my window leave the quality of silencio. I was reading Italo Calvino’s ‘The Adventure of a Photographer’ when the rain started and this thought occurred to me. Calvino writes: “The minute you start saying something, ‘Ah, how beautiful! We must photograph it!’ you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore, in order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second to madness.” Stupidity or madness? (This story and other writings by/about Calvino are available here.)

No comments: