The Voice of Sade

Sade Adu

I used to have customers I'd never met, but when they picked up the phone and said hello, I immediately knew who it was. Given that this word had already lost some of its fidelity by being forced through an electronic interface, its amazing the unique character their voice gave those two syllables that allowed me to identify the individual.

I know little of the technical nature of sound. It is obvious that there are many aspects, including things like pitch, timbre, tone, harmony and loudness. Add to this the ability of the human mouth to further form the words and phrases that issue from the vocal chords, and we have a substance of great complexity. 

The most amazing musical instrument seems to be the human voice. Expressive as a violin or sax or guitar may be, the human song has more capacity, more character, and speaks to us more, after all it is our voice. 

We take this ability too much for granted. Opera stars of course are given their due as having perfect voices, but I've heard people talk about Dylan or Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits as people who "don't have very good voices", and yet they are great singers. The essential sound of a particular human vocal seems to have a complex but unique quality with the ability to stir up strong emotional reactions within us. How else to account for the amazing devotion given to singers like Caruso, Piaf, Halliday, Evora or Cohen. And the power of some voices outside of song, like orators, actors, healers, poets and story tellers.

A great singer seems to have a unique voice, and then know how to use it in song. Few musical groups that rely on vocals get very far without a superb singer. Someone like Eric Clapton may be the exception, not a particularly unique voice, but he can sing, although he's really there for his guitar playing. I guess anyone can learn reasonably effective singing, but if you don't have a unique voice to start, you don't go far.

Every voice has it's special character, mood, emotion, spell. Sade strikes me as this uniqueness at its most powerful. I almost feel addicted to the sound of it. 

She sings with a husky, languid, smoothness and sensuousness. There's a sense of deep yearning. The level and range is not strong. She avoids emotional displays in her singing. Her music is solidly pop/jazz, in no way innovative, and I've heard one person call it elevator music. It's a genre I usually avoid, but hearing her never fails to move me.

Eighteen years after her first album she is still hugely popular world wide (and now a 53 year old mother). She has sold 25 million albums in the US alone. Her latest tour was seen by 800,000.

The woman is absolutely gorgeous. And she displays a poise and grace, a serenity, that seems to have all her fans convinced she's a person of class and integrity, her subdued, natural sensuality all the more appealing for this. In one video it seems the audience applauds just watching her walk across a stage.

In particular I find her rendering of The Slave Song to have tones and harmonies that almost literally resonate inside me.

It has to be the unique character of her vocal sound that the fuss is all about. Like no other singer I've heard, she makes me believe the human voice can invoke magic.

It's the Composition, Stupid !

Spring on the Don River

I have been reading about composition in photography for years, just recently I got how important it is. 

I think I've always had some intuitive feel for composition, but generally have made photos by seeking out something interesting and then pointed the camera at it.

Learning to use composition in my photos is the most important realization I've had in photography, and yet I resisted it for so long. Maybe it was laziness, or I didn't understand it, or I didn't want to be analytical, but over the years I could have made so many photos so much better.

We often have things in our photos that have emotional content, for example a stormy sky or an old barn. That's good, but I've learned that a photo almost always needs more than emotional or sensual content. A photo is a graphic design just like a painting. In other words a photo is an arrangement of visual components like form, line, angle, pattern, repetition, tone, balance, contrast, foreground/background etc. For a photo to really have power it has to have a composition that adds to the content. And you can make a great photo that has no special content, but has its elements arranged in a composition that is interesting. That's what the best street photography is all about.

The painter has freedom to arrange elements on the canvas. The photographer, having to deal with the physical world beyond the camera, has severe limitations. Although I can sometimes move elements prior to the shot, something I do without hesitation, it is often impossible. So I must use all means available to arrange what shows up on the camera's view screen. The challenges are legion; for example a slight change of viewing angle to introduce a line may cause something else to disappear from the frame.

One of the best teaching stories I've heard recently was by a renowned photography instructor, Ben Long, who found a pile of old car doors that for some reason were sitting in a meadow. He wanted to show not just the doors, but their incongruous location. After trying to get a good shot he said he gave up because, although the doors had interest in themselves, there was no way he could make an interesting composition that included the meadow. His acknowledged failure taught me so much.

The other day I found a stone head stuck in a tree leaning over the Don River, the head taken, I suspect, from a nearby graveyard by vandals. I initially thought that because of the location all I could do was a rather straight-on shot but then I pushed myself to find someway to make a composition The photo above shows how I finally included the sparkle on the water as a balance for the head. Still not a great photo, but at least its more dynamic and interesting than the head alone.

So now I refuse to be intimidated by reality. I try to use all the photographic modifiers I possess to structure the world into a composition. And if that doesn't show in my photos, please kick my lazy ass!

What We Lose by Smiling

"The Architect Hans Heinz Luttgen and his Wife Dora", 1926, August Sander, Tate Gallery

AUGUST SANDER was a German photographer, active mostly between the two World Wars. His personal goal, unusual for the time, was to create a collection of 600 portraits of ordinary people in their environment, to be called "People of the Twentieth Century". Stopped short of completion by the chaos generated by Hitler, these photographs nevertheless stand as a wonderful portrayal of people captured simply but evocatively in the midst of their everyday lives.

One certainly notices how almost no one is smiling. Does this mean they are unhappy?

We tend to think in our culture that smiling is success. All those ads by banks, of customers smiling and looking into their laptops and presumably seeing how their investment portfolio is growing. For some reason they always have a coffee mug beside them. The smiling face is ubiquitous in our culture, at least in the media. 

Do the people in Sanders photographs look grim? Or meditative and thoughtful? How would the photos look if they were smiling?

Old portraits, whether photographic or in oil, almost never had smiling people. So when did "Say Cheese!", first raise its smiling head.? When did we start to equate not smiling with being unhappy or grim? When did the mystery in another's eyes become hidden behind a generic, forced expression?

The film Baraka has many wonderful shots of people gazing into the camera, unsmiling. Stare into the faces of Sander's subjects, and the initial sense of a grim look dissolves. There's something soulful, moving, about looking into the eyes of another human with no reference to any emotion or communication. Just experiencing each other's existence in a moment of present being.

"Master Mason", August Sander, Tate Gallery

Terrigal Sandstone

Currently on display at Arcadia Gallery, about 25 photos I took one afternoon near Terrigal Beach, north of Sydney. I'm really pleased with all these photos, nature did an amazing job of weathering the sandstone into some amazing shapes and colours, and I just ran around for an hour at low tide snapping it, all in one location. The only difficult part was later, dealing with the sunburn I got while I was having so much fun.

Newfoundland

Just finished reading The Shipping News. Great book.

It was recommended to me by a cousin I met recently in awesome Tasmania, that being an island off the main continent of Australia. Seems my cousin is fascinated by Newfoundland, that being an island off the coast of my continent.

Never thought that much about Newfoundland, although I did notice that all the Newfies I met in Toronto seemed to be lively types with a good sense of humour.

So I've been thinking about the island, and discussing it with a Toronto room mate of mine from a long standing Newfoundland family of Irish origin.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism ads are quite something, and my friend raves about the beauty of the land. But he calls the society "dysfunctional and fucked-up"  and says he'll only go back for funerals. He talks about alcoholism, rampant sexual abuse and back stabbing. Blames the isolation, poverty and extreme conditions (oh, and the Catholic Church).

So which is it, the smiling people making wooden boats in the ads, or the haggard faces in David Blackwood's prints? 

Not sure I care right at the moment, think I'll read some novels by Newfie writer Wayne Johnston and The Outport People by Claire Mowat, while I save some money to head out there myself.  I sense something awesome right on my doorstep.

A Month in Australia 3 - Yollie and the Joeys

Beck and the oldest Wallabie

Susie Q and me. I'm in love!

1/29 The day is mostly rain. Despite this, and perhaps because we did nothing the day before, Jan takes me out to visit South Head, ont of the three promontories that mark the entrance to Sydney Harbour. The other two are called, strangely enough, Middle Head and North Head. We cross uner the harbour through the tunnel, past the CBD, Central Business District, and into what’s known as the East Suburbs.Our route takes us past various bays such as Rushcutters Bay, Double Bay and Rose Bay. At Rose Bay I see something I like and Jan stops so I can photograph a long line of Moreton Bay Fig Trees, sitting with huge trunks black with rain.

We visit the peninsula of South Head and identify the headlands of Middle Head and North Head, covered with trees and houses,  that mark the entrance to the huge harbour. A large tanker sails out. On the way back we stop on the seaward side and I find a huge rock cliff in the rain with high waves coming from the ocean and breaking on the rocks in white fury, then pulling back in jade green and white mass. I keep my camera in a plastic bag and get some shots even with the pouring rain.

1/30 Jan drops me off at the central railway station and I’m on the train to Melbourne, a twelve hour ride. This gives me a look at a good amount of Australian countryside. I see my first Kangaroo, standing nonchalantly at the edge of some scrub, unaware it’s a first kangaroo.

                The land is quite hilly coming out of Sydney, but flattening out toward the Melbourne end. It consists of vast expanses of pale brown lifeless grassbroken by solitary trees. I see little cultivation but sheep sheep sheep everywhere, grazing or sitting in the shade of a tree.There are cows and horses too. The ranchers single story houses look basic.

Austarlia seems to have not tried to modernize itself in quite the same mindless, ruthless way as North America. There are still lots of Victorian facades around and the tramcars in Melbourne seem to come in four versions, from huge streamlined new to a modle that looks to be from the 30’s or 40’s.

2/1  The next day I walk along the wide Yarra that flows through the town. The water is full of boats, sculling teams, and black swans.There are some wonderful large modern sculptures in all the park and public squares I go through. I visit the cottage of CJ LaTrobe, an ancestor who was the first Leautenant Governor of the state of Victoria. I wander around the huge Royal Botanical Gardens. I’m hot because it was cold and windy in the morning, so I took a rain jacket over my short sleeved shirt, but now I’m afraid to take the waterproof jacket off because of the brutal U- charged Aussie sun.

2/9 We visit Hobart at the south end of the island

2/10 Beauty Point, Tasmania

I go for a 5 hour hike along the coast by myself and visit a place called Copper Cove.

After dinner we are visited by Yolanda (Yollie). She comes in with two plastic cages, and a large bump in the middle of her bosom. One cage contains a baby wombatcocooned in several flannel pouches. I similar arrangement in the other cage contains two baby wallabies. The bump in her bosom contains a “pinkie”, a baby wallabie so young as to not have hair yet, and just two days out of its mothers pouch. They are all marsupials found in the pouch of their respecitve dead mothers after the mother was killed by a car.  

                I hold the wombat, then the pinkie. All the animals are unsure of themselves in the bright light and unconfined space. The wombat twists and turns against me and moves up my body. It has serious claws. Yollie says she knows its stressed because the pink soles of its feet have turned red, it goes back in a pouch. The oldest wallabie seems more relaxed than the rest and keeps its head out and give my finger a sniff. I hold the pinkie, it is almost fetal, with dry and loose skin. It continually twists and turns in the flannel with its long hind legs, with a huge middle toe,  vigourouly poking in all directions. Yollie later lets me name her Susie Q. I try unsuccessfully to give it a bottle, Yollie takes over, having to feed pinkies every 2 and a half hours, 24 hours around the clock she’s good at it. Beck,, my cousin’s daughter, feeds one of the older ones and Jo feeds the wombat.Then Yollie double wraps them all in tight flannel, the pinkie immediately stills against her bosom.

A Month in Australia 2 --- Bush Walk

My Cousin's eco-home in Tassie.

1/24 Sydney  My Sister Jan drove me 76 km up the coast to a beach town called Terrigal. The country north of Sydney was beautiful, often very hilly with green bush covering the slopes and vistas of the Hawkesbury River. We had lunch on the beautiful beach, full of families on vacation, then we climbed out on rocks at one end. It looked like low tide, and a large plateau of sandstone lay exposed to the sun, with only a few deep pools still full of water. I had a marvelous time photographing the soft rock, which water had sculpted into fascinating shapes, often given interesting variation by veins of harder rock or rows of small white limpets hiding in the shade.

1/25 Nephew David and I visited the Sydney Bridge, first underneath the North end at Bradfield Park, then along the harbour in both directions to get a view, then back and up and over the bridge. An amazing structure, at 3770 ft long and 440 ft high at the apex. Afterward we walk into the Rocks, the “old town” with narrow streets full of old buildings now shops cafes and very elegant. I take the double decker computer train back to Artarmon, noticing how the stops look like English train stations. Australia seems like a young, extroverted country, with lots of innovation going on. I learn one of the train station in the downtown has been kept in its Victorian décor, even to the extent of the advertisements.

I find Australians very friendly, architecture and design seems very bold and inventive, and I see some high tech solutions unknown in Toronto. At the same time there is a sense of the past being cherished, both pioneer origins and British origins, that seems more evident than any in Canada I've seen at least. Australians seem to love good food (I mean really good food), festivals, sports, outside activities, the arts (especially music and sculpture), and social events.

1/26 Train to Melbourne, 12 hour ride

1/27 day in Melbourne, meet Cousin Lou at Airport, flight to Launceston, Tasmania

1/28 At Lou and Jo's place in Beauty Point, a day in Launceston, meet Cousin Robyn, headache

1/29 Shopping for sleeping bag in Launceston, Tasmania

1/30 Bush Walk      Cousin Lou and I drive several hours up onto the central highlands. Lou has equipped us with a lot of fine gear, and I realize that you can have five thousands dollars easy on your back as you hike.

We reach The Lake St Clair national park center as it rains. and book a boat. This twin outboard, 15 seater takes us up the lake (one of the deepest in Aus) to the other end and a dock where we find a hut. Many of the surrounding peaks have received names from an early explorer who was an enthusiast of Ancient Greece, so there is Mount Olympus, Narcissus Point, etc.

From there we hike inland for four and a half hours. The trail is nicely laid out and includes boardwalks over swamp areas and suspension bridges over larger streams, but still involves constant stepping around rocks, puddles and snarls of tree roots. The rain comes and goes. We pass through several meadows of button grass ringed by gum (Eucalypt) trees that remind me of some of the terrain in The Hunter. An old injury on my left shoulder causes me considerable discomfort because of the pack load. We pass into an area of forest called a Myrtle forest, with huge old trees, mostly not gum, thickets of striking Pandani (Giant Grass Tree, a palm-like rainforest plant endemic to Tasmania (like countless other things)) and lots of green moss on everything. A few Pademelons (small Kangaroo-like Wallabies) peer at us from the bushes. We arrive at the hikers hut and Lou decides not to pitch a tent because of the wet so we claim the lower teir of one of the sleeping shelfs and cook our dinner and try to dry some gear. I am exhausted. There are perhaps ten other hikers in the hut.

The next morning we leave most of our gear in the hut and head up the Pine Valley trail around nine, its cold and I thankfully wear the gloves that seemed overkill as we packed two days before. We get a lovely view down Lake St Clair at one point with some blue sky patches, then some rain starts again The track up is steep, at one point we are climbing up an old rocky stream bed. I find having a hiking pole very handy to maintain balance. As we get higher the Gum trees reappear with some alpine flowers. We finally come out close to the top, with huge lichen covered boulders in an endless field and short gum trees shrouded in a fog. This is The Labyrinth and as we move around to the back the weather clears up and we can see mountain peaks with dramatic pillars of basalt, and two tarns below. Then as we stop for lunch it begins to snow, followed not long after by sun again. A pair of Wedge Tail Eagles fly high overhead and a Skink basks on a rock. By the time we get back to the hut, it is six and we repeat the routine of the day before and end the day.

The next morning we head back to the boat pickup point, the load is lighter and Lou has taken some of my camera gear, so my shoulder suffers less. Then into the boat and down the lake for a cappucino at the Park Center and the drive home. Lou points out an Echidna by the side of the road and we get out and investigate, it looks like a cross between an anteater and a hedgehog or small porcupine, but is actually from a unique order of mammals, Monotremes, that it shares with only the Platypus. We finally approach it, it digs its front into the bottom of a bush, and we touch it briefly. On the way back Lou pulls over across from an area burnt-out by fires a month before and I spend an hour stumbling around in the black debris taking photos.

I feel fine the next day and am amazed at the amount of rough terrain I have covered with a pack, it seems far beyond what I thought I could do, and the only explanation seems to be that I was enjoying myself and surrounded by beauty. The three days are a thrill and I feel very grateful to my Sister and Cousins.