“Waiting”

My train rides with Elliot always lead to Union Station.  The Expo line stops at 7th Street and we transfer to the red line and ride the rest of the way to Union Station.  Sometimes we’ll get out and walk down 7th and then turn left, up towards Grand Central market so I can shoot Broadway or Spring or somewhere else along the way but usually it’s a transfer.  

Subways in LA aren’t like subways in New York or other eastern towns.  The LA metro feels like it still has it’s training wheels on, like one day it’ll become a real subway system.  For now it’s still learning, taking small steps towards being completely unreliable, totally unsafe and utterly jam-packed with commuters.  In fact it just dawned on me… LA metro is a glitzy movie version of a northeastern subway.  The same is true of Union Station.  It’s the Hollywood set of central stations.  It’s like you’ve wandered onto a location shoot–filming in progress–and nothing feels quite real and you don’t know where the set stops and reality begins. 

The people who are to’ing and fro’ing become unwitting actors in this fake movie magic world.  They seem real, but as you wander around it’s hard to imagine where they might be going.  True, I arrived at the station on a subway train, but for some reason it feels so strange to think that anyone would have a reason to be at Union station at all.  Aside from the subway stops all of the trains are above ground, away from the station itself.  You never seen anyone borad a train.  You never see a train depart.  You never see people crowding or lovers kissing goodbye or children crying while a mother departs.  None of it ever really happened for all I know.  It’s all hidden away from me as I wander, so it becomes the Truman show.  All of these people waiting to depart in the main hall, running frantically up this ramp or the other, buying snacks with their children and walking through the halls–a massive ruse playing out only for me.  When I leave they all go back to their starting positions and wait for me to come back through again.  

After a while I start to make up stories about the people I see. I think we all do it but aren’t always conscious of it, this bizarre act of making up stories about strangers.  When I’m wandering around Union Station, though, my mind shifts into overdrive and I’m actively interweaving narrative after narrative after narrative for every single interesting looking individual who crosses my path.  That guy’s girlfriend is coming back from college… they haven’t seen each other since the start of school, hence the flowers and chocolates and the spring in the step.  That girl’s on her way to adopt a puppy–that’s why she’s carrying an animal carrier but has no animal. I think she had a leash, yes that’s a leash.  That couple is fighting because he lost all their money at the dog fights and got fucked up when they came to collect which is why his arm is bandaged and there’s blood on his polo.  That woman’s crying on the steps clutching her phone, because she’s waiting for her lover to come back from San Francisco and he just called to say he missed the train.  That older gentleman over there is lost.  No, I actually think he’s lost.   

I am the Sherlock Holmes of fictitious bullshit.   

It gets so bad sometimes that I forget to take pictures.  I need to remember to see as well as drift–to combine the vision and the narrative and to take the picture.  Clear my mind and see.  I think I saw the light first.  Then I saw the woman.  The light was perfect, but I struggled with a story for her.  She looked so ordinary and plain.  She was looking at her phone and seemed so completely disinterested in the incredible light flooding the small area she occupied.  She had been chosen by some divine force to be the center of this incredible celestial event and she couldn’t have cared less.  So I decided that was her narrative.  She was waiting, while a world of beauty was forming around her.  So much beauty that people began to take notice.  They covered their mouths when they spoke.  They shielded their eyes it was so bright.  They could feel the warmth radiating out from around her, but she just sat there, waiting.  

The click of my camera and it was gone.   Shot on my Mamiya 6MF on Kodak Tri-X film, pushed to 800 at the Icon.