In My Back Pocket - Photography
'It is not what you look at that matters. It's what you see.' – Henry David Thoreau
Ragamuffin Remembering
It’s Sunday, and it’s a colder kind of Sunday in early November. I’m downstairs with the computer, editing summer photos – our travels through Utah. I show my wife the following image of an early 30’s Chevrolet truck. It sits alongside the highway within a Navajo reservation. For my wife, the vehicle has personality, the kind you’d find personified in the Disney movie, ‘Cars.’ I’m liking its colour, shape and integrity. Paint peels from its fenders and body. Rust in its colour seems very close to the colour of the rocks within the landscape.
The age of the vehicle also holds my attention. As a marker of time, the vehicle would have been around in world war II, it would have been around when that war ended, it would have been witness to all that Jack Kerouac’s novel, ‘On the Road,’ would have been about. And, as I think about it, the truck would also have been around when Rich Mullins made his treks out to this Navajo reservation to minister to children and youth with his music. In music ministry, ‘Awesome God,’ is the song Rich Mullins is most recognized for writing, along with many songs recorded by Amy Grant.
This past fall, over a couple of days, I went through a DVD drama called ‘Ragamuffin’ which is an inspired chronicle of Rich Mullins’ life in which the viewer witnesses Rich’s transformation (struggles, consequences and transformation) from successful Christian musician to a life lived more and more honestly by the tenets of God set out in the Bible. 78 Eatonwood Green is a place where Rich and the Ragamuffin Band were staying in Ireland and 78 Eatonwood Green is title to another song worth the hearing, an instrumental with a dulcimer featuring within the song.
Listening to – Rich Mullins’ ‘78 Eatonwood Green’ from ‘A Liturgy, a Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band.’
Quote to Consider – ‘Photography, though not an art form in itself, has the peculiar capacity to turn all its subjects into works of art.’ – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
