Photo: Jayel Aheram

THE POINT isn’t to dwell on the fact that I had ingested large amounts of hallucinogenic substances sold to me at the restaurant where I ate my pizza and drank my beer.

But just to get a solid grasp on the situation and the headiness of the coming machine guns it would do you well to know that I was tripping major balls.

I was lonely. Over a month and a half without my wife. On a shoestring budget in the middle of Laos at 10 PM.

There was the sound of crickets.

I was also a little bored.

I sauntered out into the night, pupils yawning.

Brushing my hands over roadside grasses, listening to the half drunk ramblings of a group of backpackers heading to their room with a fresh bottle of rum I found myself creeping from shadow to shadow until I reached the bridge that joins Vang Vien with neighboring villages.

I wandered across the bridge and down a muddy lane. Through the dark, sloshing in puddles, I rambled in delirium. A path widened to my right and led directly to a river illuminated by a nearly full moon. There was the rabble of a thousand frogs.

I waded in. When the water ran past my shins and began to wick up my trousers I stopped and gawked at the naked sky, humming softly.

My first thought when I saw the two men was that I recognized their guns. The first true assault rifle and perhaps the most prolific gun since the Smith & Wesson Model 10 Revolver, the AK-47 has been a ballistics icon since 1949.

Gun metal gray, sloping banana clip, polished wooden stock and grip, it’s been brandished by military forces, terrorist groups, and militias all over the world since WWII.

Now two were pointed at me. The moonlight reflected dully on the barrels.

Maybe they saw me wade into the river. Maybe they stumbled upon me while they were doing who-knows-what with their AK’s. Either way they whistled for me to turn around and with a gesture that is unmistakable – move and die.

From the far psychedelic reaches of the rings of Saturn I whiplashed back into my body.

Earth to Joshy, Come in Joshy; Fifteen feet away are two bogeys in matching yellow shirts pointing AK-47’s at your body. Do you copy?

Despite the pulsing wad of terror in my throat and my altered state I saw immediately that they were pointing their weapons at me, they are not aiming them at me.

When you are standing in a random Laotian stream humming “strawberry fields forever” this is a key distinction.

Without deliberation I lurched two steps forward, chuckled and pantomimed tipping a big bottle of whiskey down my throat.

I am a drunk tourist, harmless and stupid, you know the type.

Pushing past the men, who looked confused and a little scared themselves I saw the barrels of their weapons like the false eyes of a resting moth.

The men did not lower their guns as I brushed past them mumbling “ok, ok, ok.” They did not lower their guns and they did not call after me as I put one numb foot in front of another in the muddy jungle darkness, wondering just how far I had gleefully wandered from my hut.

They did not lower their guns as they tailed me for a quarter mile, 10 paces to my back toting 30 round clips crowded with slugs that could take half my head off.

I glanced back once to see them behind me.

I couldn’t sleep until dawn.

Community Connection

Have you had guns drawn on you while traveling?
What’s the sketchiest travel situation you’ve ever been in?

Our meeting at McNally Jackson began with a Ten Walks moment.

Green chairs shrieked across the bookstore floor. The store was preparing to receive guests for a literary event, and we were intruding. Me with my tape recorder, Jon Cotner with his quiet apology that was heartfelt, not perfunctory, marking him as an outsider among the tactical barbarians of New York.

Ten Walks/Two Talks was launched at McNally Jackson earlier this year. I am a New York walker, and this is a book, largely, about walking in New York, seeing its limitless fragments collapse, careen, spill over, flower with amazing women like this one:

A Japanese woman wore a bowler hat. The question was she attractive? made no sense. I was attracted to her. She needed my gaze and I delivered it.

No one else writes like this about New York. I told Cotner to email my homage to his co-author and friend, Andy Fitch, in Shanghai, who authored the Ten Walks. The Two Talks were another matter. A staccato terrain of riffs about place, memory, philosophy (or put another way, the twenty-first century love poems of two friends in the form of conversation), the sudden leaps and disjointed breaks, the sentences that go nowhere, leave the reader in mid-air, cut off, lost.

“Perhaps the talks seem a bit digressive,” Jon conceded, “but that’s something we want to preserve. We culled two talks from the original series of thirty talks. Maybe you would have a more complete experience of the talks if you listened to all thirty of them.”

The thing about Jon Cotner is that he doesn’t look crazy. He looks like Frodo in the film version of The Lord of The Rings. He is also as earnest as Frodo.

Anyone who tells me to read thirty of his talks after I have struggled through just two is someone I immediately fall in love with. I am a sucker for a certain kind of innocent single-mindedness, or earnestness. If Cotner were a woman, I would ask for her phone number right then and there.

“Look,” I said, “let me give you an example of what I mean. The two of you are walking in Central Park. The dialogue goes like this:

A: Here we stand atop Belvedere Castle. How thrilling to reach the edge.

J: It is.

A: Again so many scenes in this park correspond to Hiroshige’s Hundred Famous Views of Edo. At some point I hope, if no one has, to rediscover those the Edo sites. Most got paved. Pedestrians ought to…

J: During Japan’s rise…

A: Or one became a nasty canal…

J: Really?

“OK, the reader here is not told by Andy which scenes correspond to Hiroshige’s work,” I said. “In fact, he is not told anything about how the two are related at all. There is no context and no continuity.”

“That’s part of the dialogue. So many issues come up, but before long the momentum shifts us to something else. We don’t want to create a sense of closure, but a series of openings.”

The openings in Two Talks compel readers to let themselves in with their own keys. The authors will not hand out any navigational fixed points.

“Wittgenstein once tried lecturing from notes, and said his mouth was filled with corpses, and he would never do it again.”

I laughed, but Cotner was being not funny. It’s just that he seemed too genteel to traffic in such morbidity.

“Do you think these talks, as some people say, have an encyclopedic quality?” he asked me.

“Not at all.” I couldn’t be sure if that worried him or not. “You guys never stay with any one thing long enough.”

Cotner agreed. “Things move quickly, as someone put it, between Chinese poetry and dodging traffic.”

“Well put.”

“I am reminded of Emerson’s quote: ‘The art of life is skating on the surfaces.’ That was one of our editorial principles. We wanted to create this verbal surface along which people could glide.”

Along the bookstore surface, the shrieking had stopped, replaced by the fidgety whispers of people settling in. Cocooned in his intensity, Cotner did not seem to notice. I felt I was sitting with this agreeable, vulnerable zealot bent on bringing a whole new aesthetic into the world of writing.

“Can I suggest one thing, that we look at the walks as an investigation of city streets and parks, and the talks primarily as an investigation of friendship and fleeting thoughts?”

I don’t know at what point the adversarial attitude I entered McNally’s with dissolved. It was not as if I succumbed to an intellectual meltdown or anything like that. But I was able to see that dwelling on the problematic parts of the book was keeping me from appreciating its originality. These guys were breaking down the tired walls of linear storytelling. They were radically trying to weave together an inner and outer topography, with all its raw edges exposed.

I don’t recall sharing much of this with Cotner. Maybe just a little. I didn’t want him to think I was suddenly a softie. As I told him, parts of the Two Talks do work (just not enough of them.) Here is a part that does:

A: I had my first oral sex experience in a high school parking lot, yet was not um the recipient. Um, this tea, Jon, has started to develop a mace flavor? A bold spicy flavor? Will you often find that near the bottom of the cup?

J: It…

A: I’ve sensed a wooden quality, and spicy quality, circulating not only through my tongue and mouth but all down my chest. Thanks for that.

J: Yeah, this tea seems meant, is is: the tea can make you feel kind of wild.

Dustin, McNally’s lanky events coordinator, was about to introduce the evening’s author. The two of us decided we were too exhausted to stick around.

“I appreciate your honesty,” Cotner said. “Your criticism was helpful.”

I didn’t know what to say. I am much older than Cotner, but I imagine I’d have responded less graciously.

Out on Prince Street in Soho, Cotner asked if we could walk together. A blast of people were talking to their cell phones. Cotner began discussing Montaigne, his concept of the essay as an “experiment,” or an “attempt.”

I noticed myself smiling as he was talking. Not at the incongruity of Montaigne being resurrected on a Manhattan shopping artery immune to philosophy, but at the simple pleasure of walking with a young writer determined to explore what his American culture programmed him to discard.

Community Connection

Editor’s note: please reference David Miller’s Notes on Ten Walks/Two Talks for more literary criticism / study of the text.

Chi Kung Health Balls. Photo by Chandan Singh

**Nb. If you missed Part 1, start here.

Thursday, June 18, 10:45 AM: Clubhouse Ballroom, Stanford University

I RECOGNIZE HIM FROM THE THUMBNAIL photo he runs every month alongside his Letter from the Editor. In it, his hands are featured as prominently as his well-lit cranium. He gestures as if juggling a pair of Bocce balls, joking with an off-camera associate about — I imagine — the extraordinary heft of his, or someone else’s, cojones.

He is dressed now as he is there: black suit, dark tie, starched white collar, cufflinks. He is the best-dressed man in the room. By a long shot. (Mind you, this is California in June. This is a room to which I nearly wore my caulk-and-chain-grease-enhanced cargo shorts, but ultimately, thankfully, thought it more prudent to go with the more conservative option, the old Levis.) On the screen beside the dais: the Esquire logo, projected large.

@browndamon: Esquire big cheese David Granger is about to keynote Future of Freelancing #ffrl #goat #hackshackers #journalism #esquire

@thestrippodcast: Never realized how straight out of Madmen David Granger of esquire appears to be visually. #ffrl

Esquire, Feb. 2010

He’s charming right out of the gate, ingratiatingly abashed and self-deprecating. He speaks in fits and starts, like a man whose mind runs too fast for the muscles in his jaw. He jokes. He makes light. He has a facility with PowerPoint. He drops names with ease, names I appreciate — Lyle Lovett, Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Christina Hendricks.

He trusts he’ll be misquoted on Twitter. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. And chances are, however it goes, it’ll sell more magazines.

He promises to show this roomful of writers in this time of uncertainty why, in his words, “the magazine is the greatest medium ever invented.”

We don’t doubt he will. We hope he does. He fucking better, we think. For why else travel all the way to the edge of the continent, shell out our last few hundred dollars and spend precious long hours indoors on a gorgeous summer day, if not for salvation, or at the very least a way forward?

@thestrippodcast: As much as I enjoy the pos attitude of #ffrl, I worry that this is like democrats at an Alvin Greene rally, convincing themselves he can win.

And so he does — show us. Granger, that is. Sure, there are the gimmicks — the short story printed as marginalia, the hand-scrawled cover copy (in which we discover what George Clooney means to the future of the planet, etc.), the Augmented Reality experiments, Benicio del Toro heaving a $1200, 5-foot-long, Masonite Esquire logo into the L.A. River.

But it’s all born of editorial desperation, he explains, of boredom with the traditional parameters of “magazining,” of ceaselessly asking the question: “Shouldn’t it be more?”

The goal, he says, is to make the magazine — this one, at least, now more than 75 years old — not only more intriguing but “more essential.” And the most essential element of all? The writing. Good writing, he insists — the best — sexed up as required (given the market and the genre) with great illustration and cutting-edge graphic design and who knows what multimedia bells and whistles lately and later to be devised.

@bertarcher: #ffrl Esquire’s Granger: (Magazines at their best) take words, images and design and mash them together to make magic.

He gives a quick run-through of some of his favorite Esquire pieces of this still-new century. There’s Tom Junod’s unflinching portrait of The Falling Man (and ourselves) from 9/11. “Maybe he didn’t jump at all,” reads Granger with deep reverence, “because no one can jump into the arms of God. Oh, no. You have to fall.”

There’s Chris Chivers reporting from inside the crater at Ground Zero, then from the foothills of the Caucasus, then from the uplands of Afghanistan. Without the slightest nod of apology to the likes of, say, Thucydides or Michael Herr, without blinking, Granger dubs Chivers “the best war writer in the history of war and writing.”

And this, I realize (late in the game, as ever), is how the glossy magazine has survived as long as it has, by its ability to sell itself as essential, as the definitive arbiter of culture: Man at His Best, The Best and Brightest, The Best War Writing of All Time. Or, as counterpoint: The Worst. The Worst Beers in the World, The Worst Members of Congress, The Worst Movies, The Worst Masturbation Idea.

This is how it will continue to survive through the slow destruction of the planet.

But then there’s Tom Chiarella’s fabulously twisted investigation into what people will do for how much money: A Thousand Dollars for Your Dog. How does that fit the rubric?

These writers are “adventurers into the fringes of human behavior,” says Granger. And we can see it now: Granger is on our side. He’s doing what he can — everything he can and with great delight — to create defensible space for the written word. Hoorah!

And then he gives us Chris Jones on the long voyage of a soldier’s body from Iraq to Fort Knox. Nice one. And Chris Jones on Roger Ebert.

Ebert, as you probably know, has lost most of his lower jaw to cancer. In the portrait Granger puts on the screen, Ebert’s once-familiar face is crumpled like a melon fallen off the truck. The most famous movie critic of all time has lost the ability to talk. Fuck. But he’s a writer, Granger reminds us. He’s always been a writer (though we lost track of it for a while, thanks to his success on television). And now his writing — his online journal in particular — is his oasis, his redemption. And by extension ours.

“Now everything he says must be written,” Granger reads (from Chris Jones), “either first on his laptop and funneled through speakers or, as he usually prefers, on some kind of paper. His new life is lived through Times New Roman and chicken scratch.”

I feel the incipient welling of tears. It’s something that happens to me, especially before noon, when there’s a certain kind of news story on the radio and things are still a little raw. Maybe it’s all the coffee, or the lack of protein. Or maybe it’s the sidelong light. It rarely happens when I read something — no matter how good the writing is. But then I don’t usually read much in the morning, except my own half-formed sentences, over and over again, and the daily backlog of emails and googlealerts and random blogposts.

Ethan Hill for Esquire

I find myself wondering the extent to which real sadness can be transmitted by internet. I’m sure it’s possible. But it hasn’t got me yet. Not like public radio.

Anyway, here it comes, right here in the packed Clubhouse Ballroom with birdsong and the gush of the fountain through the open windows. It’s a fissure opening along a weak seam in a dam. There’s seepage. It could easily blossom into a full-on sob (it happens once or twice a decade), not just about Roger Ebert but re: the whole hopeless condition of the human race, our tragic, touching talent for denial in the face of meaninglessness and devastation.

But I get on top of it. And it passes.

Granger says he wasn’t expecting much from the Ebert profile. It was good, of course, but it wasn’t likely to sell too many magazines. Not like a decent joke and a well-photographed actress. But there it was: in 11 days the piece brought 800,000 readers to esquire.com. “There’s a power in writing,” concludes Granger, “not found in any other medium.”

@nijhuism: Chris Jones’ writing alone convinced me! RT @kellymcgonigal: #ffrl Granger keynote has convinced me to subscribe to Esquire.

And so it goes. Granger’s staked out an island and populated it with a handful of terrific writers. And there’s not a person in the room who wouldn’t like to be on it with them. It’s not impossible, he says. Even last year, in the worst year for print media in all our brief lifetimes, new writers broke in. So what’s it take?

1) Balls

Plain and simple.

2) Balls

You have to experiment, push the bounds of what’s been done, risk failing, risk being ridiculed. He quotes the unstoppable Mike Sager: “You’ll never get better if you’re not willing to be terrible.”

3) Sweat

Dimiter Kenarov, not a new writer by any means but new to Esquire, brought to the magazine not only good clips, and pre-arranged high-level access for reporting on the impossibility of withdrawal from Iraq, but also financing from the Pulitzer Center. How could Granger say no? (@cmonstah: Granger inadvertently described future of freelancing: writer has to cover their own expenses, mags simply pay writer’s fee.)

4) Sweat

“I like reporting,” he says. “In a world where people increasingly substitute opinion for facts, reporting triumphs. I ask the impossible of my writers: I want them to report the world so thoroughly they understand it like a fiction writer would. The key is the details.”

5) Blood

“I like writers who write,” he says. “Writing is not inevitable. It’s not inexorable. To presume any of us has something to say, that we can command an audience, is an audacious act, and a great responsibility. And the things that matter are the hardest things to do.”

6) Oh, and Surprise

If it sounds like a magazine story, if he can imagine it in the pages of The New York Times Sunday Magazine, fuck it: he’s not interested.

In passing, as illustration of just how much chaff there is — not just in the world at large but also from within — he mentions staff writer AJ Jacobs’ ongoing 770-ish pages of ideas. Of which a teeny tiny fraction will eventually make the pages of the magazine.

@erikvance: #ffrl – David Granger is a regular guy. A regular guy who will neeeeeever take my pitch. – Or the pitches of 99% of us.

To wrap things up, Granger returns to the notion of bells and whistles and the internet: it’s just a means to get the word out, he assures us. “The internet sucks and it’s been a blessing.”

12:26 PM

In the wake of all this, plus a Q&A that does nothing to dispell the numbing tension between all the glittering possibilities and the absolutely fucking impossible, it hits me (again, a little late in the game, and hungry) that Twitter might be used as a means to connect in the physical world with people I might like to meet.

For example, I think to myself, I could send a direct message to Michelle Nijhuis, @nijhuism, the prolific and ever hard-hitting investigative journalist, contributing editor for the High Country News now live-tweeting from this very same room, something to the effect of:

hey, really admire your work at HCN. buy you a free sandwich in the courtyard? meet by the lemonade tank?

Instead, I slide my computer back into its sleeve and head out as I was born — alone, that is, but slightly better clothed — to investigate the spread.

Next up, Part 2B:

In which our man revels in the non-native aroma of eucalyptus, pees on the hallowed dust of Stanford University, witnesses ceviche served like a scoop of whipped butter, makes note of a variety of fellowships and alternative funding sources for investigative journalism (links provided), dodges the California Highway Patrol, learns that his father has sliced off the tip of his right index finger in the drive mechanism of an irrigation pump, and also that bonobos experience self-doubt, is reminded (one more time) just how much uncompensated hard-labor is required to craft a successful magazine pitch, and, finally, begins to allocate warmth to the notion that the time has come — crazy though it may seem — to start an entirely new print magazine.

Stay tuned!

Photo: L*U*Z*A

1.

I’VE NEVER SEEN him in town. I’ve never seen him anywhere except walking to or from the fields. Either that or working in his yard. He never stops working. He always has something in his hands or over his shoulder: a bushel of kale, a wheelbarrow loaded with carrots, a hose, a water pump, a shovel, a roll of bailing wire, a machete, a stack of fenceboards.

Even New Years, standing with his sons drinking beer by the fire, it was like he was just waiting to fix something, to tie up the dogs if they kept chasing firecrackers, to twist one more loop of wire around a broken table leg.

2.

Since we’ve moved here¹ eight months ago the fields have been divided up for future neighborhoods. Two roads have been cut. A windbreak of 100 foot-tall poplars was chainsawed. (When they first started falling, everyone came out of their houses to watch, then later it just became part of the noise and activity in the barrio). Somebody from Buenos Aires started building the first apartment complex. Six of Abuelo’s grandkids and two of his kids moved out of the house, and so he portioned off that side, gave it its own entrance, and started renting it out to a woman who sweeps her concrete stoop wearing sweatpants and has taken in a stray dog with three pups that keep escaping through the bottom of the fence and crying for food at our door.

3.

Today I saw him walking back from town. I saw him from a long ways off. I recognize his walk. He’s super thin, super small, but seems very strong and walks with this super straight back. He had on hemmed bluejeans. He wasn’t wearing his mud boots. He had on a light coat that I’d never seen before. He had his hand in his coat as if warming it. As we got closer though I thought I saw a bit of white bandage around the hand that was in his coat. I thought: “He’s just come back from the hospital. That’s the only time he goes into town. Damn, what happened to his hand?”

But as if I needed to cover up what I was thinking, I just said “Que tal?” and then quickly added, “Pretty cold isn’t it?”

“Pretty cold,” he said. “Bastante frio.”

But it wasn’t that cold really. It had actually warmed up and seemed like it was going to start raining again.

I never really know what to say to Abuelo Colque.

But I use “usted” when I talk to him.

_________________________

¹ El Bolsón,  Patagonia, Argentina

Community Connection

For more narrative travel writing, check out Notes from the Road.

Image:  inti

IN THE CENTER of the plaza is a statue of General J. A Roca,¹ his face tagged with pink and green paint. Two pot-leaves are stenciled on his jacket, and the word “GENOCIDIA” is written in all caps across his horse (whose balls and eyes and nostrils are also pink). Spraypainted on the base of the statue, the side facing the wind, are the words “PUEBLO MAPUCHE.”

In what tense do we remember?

White headscarves, symbols of the Madres of Plaza del Mayo² are stenciled in a circle around the plaza. There are different messages by each scarf. One translates “we’ll never forget you.”

In what tense are we remembered?

Near the statue, a man has a Saint Bernard on a chain. Attached to the dog’s collar is a little whiskey barrel. They close in on two Asian-looking tourists. He says something and the dog hops up on a bench, then the tourists squeeze in by the dog. The man steps back and takes their picture. Nearby, along the top of a low stone wall, my daughter is walking, balancing (“both manos!” she always says when she wants to do this) and Lau is holding her hands.

How do you define “connection to place?”

The wind keeps gusting hard, the lake forming large surf. It seems about to snow. I ask the girls if they’re ready. On the way out I think about how Nazis³ used to live here and probably still do. If I had the chance to meet one, would I say anything? Would I paint PUEBLO JUDIO across his face? Just then a car speeds through a stone archway where we’re about to walk.  The driver honks at us.  I flick them off.  Beside the archway, at the exit, I see a cannon. Someone has jammed a plastic bottle into the barrel.

There are all kinds of war.

We walk holding hands across town to the movie theaters. We see Toy Story 3. After the movie it’s raining hard outside. We find a merry go round that’s inside a small wooden building. There’s a lot of music and noise, and when Lau says “back at the plaza you were muy ______,” I don’t fully hear / understand the last word but interpret it as distracted. In 20 minutes the bus is leaving for El Bolsón.  Tomorrow we’ll have to go up in the mountains somewhere. Over the sound of the merry go round, I hear Lau say: “She needs her papi. She need you to introduce her to the world, sabes?”

_______________________

¹Argentine army general and president, most famous for his “conquest of the desert” in the late 1800s, an extensive military campaign to “subdue” indigenous people from the pampas to Patagonia.

²Women whose children were “disappeared” by Argentine Military Operatives during the “Dirty War” of the 1970s and 80s.

³Including SS Officer Erich Priebke who was once the rector of the German School of Bariloche.

Community Connection

Have you ever tagged and/or ‘defaced’ a place?
Do you feel like dogs (and other animals) being used as props for pictures is a form of exploitation?

For more on Argetnina, please visit our Argentina focus page.

Image: Shayan

I THOUGHT THEY were praying. What else would they be doing in rural West Bengal, hands pressed palm to palm in the moonlight? This was India, after all.

But the row of men slung across the road left us no room to pass. I was too busy hoarding the night smells of ponds to be apprehensive at first. I don’t drive a car, or often ride in one, so inhabiting a vehicle puts me in an odd state of remoteness from the world.

Vinay, 26, brings solar energy to rural villages, and I bring my squares of writing paper. What did these gentlemen bring, hands fallen to their sides now, bodies pressing against glass and metal?

In their loose white trousers, the face of the night was darker than it had been a minute ago. Their spokesman’s voice was tense, not angry exactly, but held by an angry shadow that held me.

Vinay’s car was suddenly a bubble between villages. And I was a hive of tingly atoms known as fear.

Vinay did not raise his voice when he spoke to the head in the window, but he did not lower his shoulders either. The man was a poor villager, and Vinay was a friend of poor villagers.

“I try to follow the path of Gandhi,” he told me.

Really?” That is not something you hear many young Indians say these days.

“Really.” He shrugged, as if to say that if that made him a rare specimen it was fine with him.

Watching Vinay trying to keep ahimsa afloat in the darkness, I saw a man walking an invisible tightrope whose altitude pulled itself around him unseen. He just knew he had to keep walking.

“Give me the money in my bag,” he called to his driver sitting in the back.

Vinay handed the money over, and the circle of thieves fell away.

“Weird,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“It was a request.”

My fear fell away, as if, like the robbers, it had been dreamed.

Images can be equally as good at creating a narrative as words. Then again some things – music, for example, which exists in its special emotional and temporal sphere – can be quite difficult to put into words.

Most written music interviews these days come with some kind of image, but not many tell a story. Mostly simple portraits that reveal what the artist looks like or what kind of clothes they wear. but no real insights into their personality.

Photo: A Negative Narrative home page

But a new website called A Negative Narrative – http://anegativenarrative.com/ – has come up with a way to change that. Rather than interact with their favorite artists via only words, they ask them to respond to questions via images.

“We interview bands and musical artists,” runs the website blurb, “but instead of the tired and dreary formula of re-telling you about their mumbled, misunderstood words in a half-arsed write-up, we let them submit their answers through the beautiful, poetic and artistically-vague medium of photography (thereby retaining their own subjectivity and creative control)”.

Click on the excellent up-coming artist Catherine AD , for example, and you get a series of witty, provocative and endearing images that she’s posted in response to questions like “Define Britishness”, “What Is In Your Pockets?”, “What Do You Find Sexy?”, and “What Scares The Shit Out Of You?”

The interviews also include a self-portrait as the cover image, a short blurb on the artist, links to the band’s relevant social networking sites and a free MP3 track to download. What’s not to like? In the future they are also hoping to attract some bigger names and allow visitors to submit their own questions.

Stay tuned by following A Negative Narrative on Twitter or Flickr.

Image by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Captain and Clark

Not only do Captain and Clark shoot great footage, the casual and informative narrative kicks booty. Captain and Clark are travel video ninjas to be watched!

ToLokyo

Freelancing in Tokyo, wandering neighborhoods vlogging and helping create online travel video community on YouTube are all in a days work for Philip Cotsford aka ToLokyo.

Kim Mance

Kim Mance of Go Galavanting.com & TBEX creates professional, adventurous and inspiring travel videos, making her a travel video ninja of the highest order.

Cailin O’Neil

Cailin O’Neil is cranking out vids and collaborating with the likes of Candice Walsh. Sounds like a ninja to me!

Sierra Anderson

From starting her own travel internship to documenting the commercial fishing world, Sierra is a true ninja.

Ryan Commons

Beautiful, deliberate mountain top videos set Ryan apart from the fold. Follow his alpine explorations and enjoy the climb.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Do you know a Travel Video Ninja? Might you be Ninja? Email josh(at)matadornetwork.com to suggests travelers that you think MatadorTV will like.

All photos courtesy of Wendy Connett

New York-based travel photographer Wendy Connett’s work has appeared in various travel publications such as Travel & Leisure, The Guardian, The Times, Rough Guides, Fodor’s, Time Out, and Frommers in over 25 countries.

She primarily photographs people, landmarks, celebrations and lifestyles for guidebooks and stock agencies. Her stock photography is represented by Getty Images, Robert Harding, Alamy and Agefotostock.

Matador editor and photographer Lola Akinmade caught up with Wendy fresh off her recent trip to Mexico to discuss her stock photography and current assignments.

How long have you been a professional photographer?

I was signed by my first agency in 2003.

What – or who – got your initial interest going in terms of photography?

My background is print journalism and photography became a natural extension. I have more than 20 years journalism experience and spent 17 of that as a finance editor/journalist.

I spent all my free time traveling and photographing the destinations. I was able to spend a few months a year overseas and also lived and worked in London for a year. London is one of the best travel hubs in the world.

For me, there is no greater joy than exploring a city for the first time with camera in hand. I have been a freelance journalist/photographer for more than a year.

A colleague who worked at a stock photography agency in a former life suggested I pursue sales via this route. That was in 2002. I took a long hard look at agencies, the types of photographs they had, what they required and my own photographs and spent the next year shooting with a very different eye before submitting photos.

What were your first photographic experiments or experiences?

At the age of 10, I attended a school that offered a photography class and had a darkroom.

How would you describe the work you do now… Obviously there’s a strong travel editorial element, but are you involved in the world of commercial photography?

I aim to capture a well-rounded view of a location: the iconic, landmarks, street scenes, food, markets, festivals, people and every day life.

I also specialize in night photography of cities. My images sell for commercial use through stock agencies but assignments so far have been editorial.

You sell a lot of stock photography. How has your experience been?

Stock is a numbers game. You need to distribute through several outlets without spreading yourself too thin.

It takes patience and years to build consistent sales. Fortunately my business continues to grow despite the recession and plummeting prices of images.

What 3 tips would you share for amateur photographers who are interested in pursuing your style of travel photography?

1) You don’t need to spend a ton of money on travel to start out.

Start shooting in your own back yard. No matter where you live, how small or off the beaten path, there is always travel related subject matter. It could be a scenic view, quirky attraction or festival.

You will also have the advantage of shooting at different times of year, capturing the perfect light and local knowledge on the best or unique views etc.

2) Study photographs published in all mediums to get a sense of what photo editors may be looking for.

What your friends and family think is postcard worthy isn’t necessarily something that will sell. Take a look at what some of the top travel stock agencies have of subject matter you shoot.

Are you able to photograph it better or in a unique way?

It’s easy to take a photograph of the Taj Mahal on a sunny clear day. It’s difficult to capture a unique view.

3) Make sure you have a professional Web presence with a strong, well edited portfolio. Edit your photographs ruthlessly. Less is more.

You’ve photographed for some guidebooks like Time Out. Do you like this type of dedicated photography? What are the benefits/challenges?

My entire professional life has been about deadlines and I enjoy the adrenaline involved in meeting them. Being a versatile photographer and working on a tight deadline is key to shooting a guidebook. In one day you could be photographing a museum, nightclub and portraits.

Each requires a different set of photography skills. Photographing architecture, for example, is very different than photographing people.

The Time Out commission took me to all five boroughs and to places I had never been despite being a native New Yorker. I really enjoyed that aspect and saw my own city with a fresh eye.

Which other photographers – old or contemporary – inspire you most?

There are many. A few of the old include Robert Frank and Walker Evans.

In terms of travel stock photographers Glen Allison comes to mind. In his 60s he is currently on his second non stop round the world trip for the next 10 years.

I also admire the work of photojournalist Ami Vitale.

When you are approaching subjects to shoot, how do you set about it? Do you chat and explain what you’re doing? Or shoot first, ask questions later?

I engage with people first and am always surprised at how many come up and ask to be photographed when you least expect it.

What’s the craziest or most inspiring encounter you’ve had in general?

Among the most inspiring has been photographing overnight vigils in cemeteries during the Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos in Oaxaca and Patzcuaro, Mexico. Day of the Dead is a mixture of pre-Hispanic beliefs and Catholicism.

It is believed that the souls of the dead return to earth one night a year to be reunited with loved ones. Death is not viewed as the end and it is not a mournful experience. People were happy and proud to share the experience and talk of their loved ones.

One of the craziest was being stampeded by cattle in New Mexico. I was photographing a herd on ranch land near an old abandoned adobe building. The light was perfect and the cattle were grazing. Nearby a large raven or crow began squawking, flew over my head in a circle as if it were signaling the herd and the cattle stampeded me.

They stampeded a few times but fortunately ran around me and I lived to tell the tale without a scratch. I’ll never underestimate cattle or crows again.

What kit do you use / carry with you / can’t do without (camera make, lenses, flashguns etc.)?

I carry a Canon 5D Mark II as my primary body and a 5D as a back up. My main lenses are Canon’s 28-70mm f 2.8, 70-200mm f2.8 zoom and IS 24-105mm f.4.

The latter is my workhorse. I carry a tripod for night photography and low light situations.

I rarely use a flash and prefer natural light.

Finally, what else are you working on right now and what are your ambitions for the future in terms of your photography work or anything else?

Pursuing multi media and video. I’ve already started down that road. Media as a whole is in major transition mode and offers many new possibilities.

I recently returned from Mexico and earlier this year India and need to catch up on editing while plotting my next trip.

Community Connection

Please read our other recent interviews with Travel Photographers.

Commodification Shitstorm. Image: obknoxious

Commodification

com·mod·i·fy (kə-mŏd’ə-fī’)
tr.v. com·mod·i·fied , com·mod·i·fy·ing , com·mod·i·fies

To turn into or treat as a commodity; make commercial: “Such music . . . commodifies the worst sorts of . . . stereotypes” (Michiko Kakutani).

[ commodi(ty) + -fy .]
com·mod’i·fi’a·ble adj. , com·mod’i·fi·ca’tion (-fĭ-kā’shən) n.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Codification

cod·i·fy (kŏd’ĭ-fī’, kō’də-)
tr.v. cod·i·fied , cod·i·fy·ing , cod·i·fies

1. To reduce to a code: codify laws.

2. To arrange or systematize.

cod’i·fi·ca’tion (-fĭ-kā’shən) n. , cod’i·fi’er n.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

CODIFIED LANGUAGE is always interchangeable.This is why I feel I can invent the following example (just interchanging a few words) and still sort of claim it as the sentence I read recently at [name withheld] magazine:

I sent this sentence and some of the following notes to the editorial team at Matador, asking if anything about commodified language was brought up at TBEX (it wasn’t).

From there it sort of evolved into this piece.

One point brought up was the potential for misunderstanding and/or conflation of different kinds of travel writing, each with its own intended purpose and audience.

In other words, I should delineate who this article is for.

With this in mind, here’s a second sentence, also slightly changed. This was part of a travel narrative submitted recently:

Now that these two examples are out there, here are the theses of this article:

1. Travel writing – regardless of form, intention, or intended audience – is often codified in a way that can have negative consequences.
2. This codification is predicated on describing place, culture, and experience in terms of commodity.
3. This creates a cyclical effect: Because codification enables a “common frame of reference” for people, it can cause them to describe place / culture experience not as they perceived it, but as they believe their experience is “supposed to sound.”
4. This kind of “commodified thinking” is the real “issue” as it can ultimately change / influence one’s perceptions of and relationship with place.

Notes on the sentences above:

1. Codification begins when a narrator suggests something without actually declaring anything or referring to anything that exists in concrete reality (concrete reality being the real world in time/space). For example, in the first sentence, “art lovers” is only a suggestion, not an actual group that exists (as opposed to, say, “the sophomores at Savannah College of Art and Design.”)

2. Therefore the key to recognizing codification is carefully examining the narrator. Oftentimes the narrator in codified writing uses a kind of “detached” / “objective” voice. In straight up marketing / ad-copy, this detached voice is usually combined with a kind of “casual 2nd person” point of view, such as “Enjoy miles of perfect white sand. Stroll the beaches at sunset.”

The opposite of this detached narration would be what we call at Matador first-person transparent narration, which simply declares what the narrator sees, feels, hears, perceives in concrete reality, and, in turn, the thoughts, ideas, emotions, that this occasions.

3. Codification functions by reducing what might otherwise exist in concrete reality into abstractions. For example, in the first sentence, the narrator could’ve started by mentioning someone he knew who loves art. Instead, he mentions “art-lovers,” an abstraction. In the second sentence, the narrator could’ve mentioned real places that actually exist. Instead he turns them into the abstraction “one natural wonder after the next.”

4. These abstractions often lead to fallacious or illogical constructions. For example, in the first sentence, how can an abstraction (“art lovers”) actually “know” anything?

5. Codified language invariably contains cliches (see #1, “suggesting something without saying anything.”) In the first sentence, the narrator writes “there’s nothing that tops.” In the second, the narrator uses slightly subtler cliches–but still language that has been codified as “how travel writing is supposed to sound” – “dizzying amount of”, “pounding waterfalls”, and “stare open-mouthed.”

6. Codified stories are often set up as comparisons and/or value judgments. These are almost always fallacious as they exploit readers’ emotional triggers (“what do you mean x is better than y?!) but have no actual context / place in concrete reality. In the first sentence, the narrator is essentially saying that an exhibit is the “best.” But according to whom? To him? If so, then this sentence could only work by declaring that transparently instead of couching it as a kind of quasi-fact.

This usage of value judgments (particularly superlatives), is commonly exploited by travel publishers (of which Matador is included) who “rank” place / people / culture in a non-ironic way. I feel like superlatives both as general practice and as specific marketing (such as claiming to produce “the best travel stories / writing”) tends to exacerbate / propagate the codification of travel writing.

7. Codified descriptions “exist” outside of time. One of the most subtle but powerful elements of codified language is the way it operates outside of temporal context so that events, ideas, or description just seem to “float” – as in the first sentence, on “a warm summer day.” Even in the second sentence where the narrator does mention it’s his “last day in Hawaii,” there’s still this effect of him just being “driven around” and that what he perceived didn’t really occur in “real time.”

This removal of temporal context is a way of obfuscating (either intentionally or unintentionally) the narrator’s relationship to place.

8. The “I-get-what-you’re-saying-factor:” Of course I “get” what the narrator is trying to say in both of these sentences. That’s the whole point of codified language–instead of actually reporting unique perceptions of unique places or experiences, writers are essentially relying on (as well as propagating) a common frame of reference that works something like “when I say a ‘art-lovers’ or ‘a dizzying amount of waterfalls’ or a ‘warm summer day’, people are going to automatically “get” what I’m saying.”

The problem however, is that even though these things may be “known” generally, the specifics such as place name, natural history, local culture, are all obfuscated.

9. The relationship between codification and commodification: Codification is an extension of looking at place, people, culture, or experience within the limited context of its “value” as a commodity or resource. This is obvious in the first sentence. In the second, the commodification lies in the way the “natural wonder(s)” are reduced to things to be observed and in this way “consumed.”

10. Potential negative consequences of commodification and codification: People in the travel industry leverage the same codified language / suggestions of “natural wonders” and/or “memorable experiences.” The traveler / consumer then buys the “promise” of “natural wonders” and/or “memorable experiences.”

In turn, the traveler / consumer may then evaluate place / culture / experience based on the level to which it “delivered on the promise” of providing the scenery / comfort / experiences.

If the traveler / consumer writes about the experience in a codified way, then he/she essentially “completes the cycle” of commodification, serving as a kind of advertisement or marketing (even if the “review” is negative or it isn’t in the form of a review at all) for the commodified experience.

Community Connection

For more analysis of transparency and commodified language, check Material Transparency, Notes on a Writer’s Personal Brand.

Photo: Celso Flores

ARGENTINA is strong, too strong: whispered guilt from the hotel desk clerk as I step out into the whipping rain of tropical storm Alex.

One hour before the match alleys clang with the chugga-chugga-chugga of steel curtains drawing down over market stalls. Green jerseys everywhere, cuidad Cancun seems to be digging in for an athletic assault against the very concrete structures of Mexico.

The white and pale blue of Argentina’s jerseys is the armor of an invading army whose pre-game formations shake the foundations of the city to be sacked.

Alex whips palm fronds down a drizzly single lane. A crowd fills the patio in plastic chairs. Flat screen TV’s are pressed against the glass and the man at the taco stand is begging for carpal tunnel, feverishly hacking at pig meat to supply carnitas to futball fans who, as the game threatens to begin, can hardly contain themselves and so eat voraciously.

I can contain myself. I am good at containing myself, but I want to leak out into this crowd. I want the jeers and energy and tacos and booze to penetrate the leathery membrane of my ego.

I flag down the waiter who sneers at me like I smell like dog shit.

I don’t smell like dog shit but I need a beer if I am going to to to catch up with the crowd and not just gaze at the World Cup antics from the double paned window of sobriety.

I order one beer and the waiter brings me three beers and three tacos, best deal ever, period.

The ball is paced between the opposing teams and with a belligerent battle cry from the bar the game is afoot. Shots are fired on goal and women shriek. The ball sails between the two teams and we clap and curse and stand and sit.

The Mexican goalie tackles the oncoming ball but the Argentinean striker pops it from his grasp and in another second it is sailing towards the goal. The bar raises its hands, a woman releases a barn burning bellow as a clearly off-sides striker places the ball in the net with his head.

I don’t speak Spanish but the saliva being propelled from snarled lips could only portend the foulest of language.

The second and third goals come with diminished returns of agony from the bar.

It’s not like we thought we would actually win.

When the score was even at zero there was a magic in hoping that odds can be toppled and David can conquer Goliath.

3-0, Argentina

Nobody much is yelling anymore. Beer bottles tip upwards and limes are squeezed.

In the 71st minute of the match, on my 3rd beer, Javier Hernadez receives a pass in the penalty box and squarely places the ball into the net, saving Mexico the team and Mexico the country from a total shut out.

Goooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!

The crowd doesn’t erupt, doesn’t cheer.

It detonates.

It sends a cloud of ash into the stratosphere that will circle the Earth for 3 years.

Hugs, shrieks, strained tendons cradling vocal cords that refuse to quit.

Tables tip over.

Women are groped.

Babies cry.

We are on our feet.

Demands for tequila come as soon as it is possible to be hear above the roar. The waitstaff move about the scene distributing shots.

Anything seems possible as chants of ‘Si se puede!’ from our bar are taken up by one neighboring bar, then another, until it seems that all of ciudade Cancun has found its rally call.

Well, anything but an actual victory.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

What are your favorite World Cup memories so far? Who is your team to take home the trophy?

High Dynamic Resolution (HDR) is the Marmite (or Vegemite, depending on where you live), of photography. There’s no real sitting on the fence with this stuff, you either love it – or, like me, would rather skewer your own eyes out with a monopod than look at a gallery of the stuff.

Photo: www.stuckincustoms.com

You know the type of photography I mean – those oversaturated blasts of hyper-reality that make you feel like someone spiked your vodka Martini and shoved you inside a kaleidoscope.

To break it down, High Dynamic Range allows a greater “dynamic range” of luminances (brightnesses) between the lightest and darkest sections of an image than is normal. This is usually achieved by capturing multiple photographs of the same image at different settings then merging them into one photo – a HDR photo.

Of course, as a photographer I appreciate the technical prowess and skill that goes into a HDR photograph – or at least used to go into it, before plug ins like Photomatix and in-camera HDR tools became freely available. Photographers like Trey Ratcliff, to give him credit, have been plugging away at this stuff for years, and know their onions from a technical point of view.

But like all art techniques that were once the realm of specialists and have grown popular and overused, HDR these days just feels like cheap novelty – the photographic equivalent of Auto Tune in rap, with roughly the same level of “cool” – to me – as a Mickey Mouse holographic wristwatch.

I know, many of you love and will defend HDR, and that’s good. Where would the world be without opinions? I’ll even be kind enough to leave you with this 85-image HDR gallery. Me? I’ll be in the kitchen, eating my Marmite sandwich.

What do you think of HDR? Tell us in the comments section below…