Not long ago, I imagined a photobook in which there are only words describing photographs. For example, a page might read, This is a photograph of Memphis, Tennessee, but with no actual photo of Memphis, rather just those seven words, leaving your imagination to do what it will, and to gather what it does, or doesnt, know about such a place and assign an image or images to the words in front of you.
Thanks for sharing❤️ I’m excited to see what comes next.
I envisioned Jeff Buckley and my mother listening to your song. She was a Kentucky girl in her youth. In 2018 we drove to Tallahassee from Chicago. We stopped in Memphis for a day and stayed at the Peabody. It was a stop to pay homage to Buckley. We saw his house, ate at his favorite restaurant, sat at the zoo by his memorial plaque. Then on the way home we stopped in Kentucky to see her old house and HS. I think of that journey when I hear your song.
I envisioned my mom in the 90s dressed as Cleopatra for Halloween wearing a short skirt in her kitchen. I remember the first time I saw this picture I could barely believe it was her. Crazy how our parents separate lives live on in pictures. It's like meeting them for the first time in a way.
What a privilege to have access to your creative process, this substack will be an excellent complement to your music. I just subscribed to the paid plan. It's all very exciting. 🙌🏼
I'm a new subscriber so I'm late to this, and I don't need a reply because I know you're busy, but I can't tell you how much this song means to me. I'm 51 and my parents are long gone, and my aunts and uncles are frail these days. But when I was growing up, long before manual labor took its toll on their bodies, man, did they bring it! I think of Soul Train line dances forming every time 96 Tears came on, an aunt and uncle who would do the splits on the dance floor well into their 50s (!), kitchens cleared to create a dance floor for parties held every night between Christmas and New Years. Even my dad, who didn't dance, booked bands for a bar on the side, and my much older sister remembers him going out to all-night poker parties and coming home and throwing all the money he won up in the air. That was NOT the dad I knew, coming 11 years after her.
At the time, all of this drove me crazy - I was serious and studious and wished they'd put down their beer bottles and plot ways out of poverty. But now, I wish I could go back to some family wedding in a Pennsylvania fire hall in, say, 1978, dance alongside them and feel the joy of what it must be like to spend your whole life surrounded by the family and friends you love most - before we all spread out across the country, before the heartache of grown children's choices, before all the aches and pains and worse.
That's the photograph that This Is a Photograph puts in my head, and it never gets old.
I love this idea of letting the listener inform and construct their own image from memory. Thinking of my father in the front lawn the year I was born, I see a man that I simultaneously know nothing and everything about. Not having children myself, I cannot know his fear, his excitement around his new role as a father. In this image, we are so separated -- we do not yet know each other. But I know him now. I know him to be brave in constructing a future different from his parents' experiences. In this way, he is a Texan frontiersman. And the song evokes the same emotional response as when I look at those pictures, when I imagine this man I cannot fully know.
Hi, Kevin! I'm a Brazilian fan, so excuse for my English. The first time that I heard this song, I was very impressed.
I have a bad memory then I can't remember details of my childhood, so your song brings me to that time - or the imagination of that time. My very young father, he on his 34 years old (my age now), the same for my mother.
After I listen, I sent a message to my brother, that is younger than me, talking about this. And now, reading your texts, I felt more connected with the idea of your album of photos of the imagination. Thanks for this!
Love this idea Kevin
Thanks for sharing❤️ I’m excited to see what comes next.
I envisioned Jeff Buckley and my mother listening to your song. She was a Kentucky girl in her youth. In 2018 we drove to Tallahassee from Chicago. We stopped in Memphis for a day and stayed at the Peabody. It was a stop to pay homage to Buckley. We saw his house, ate at his favorite restaurant, sat at the zoo by his memorial plaque. Then on the way home we stopped in Kentucky to see her old house and HS. I think of that journey when I hear your song.
I envisioned my mom in the 90s dressed as Cleopatra for Halloween wearing a short skirt in her kitchen. I remember the first time I saw this picture I could barely believe it was her. Crazy how our parents separate lives live on in pictures. It's like meeting them for the first time in a way.
What a privilege to have access to your creative process, this substack will be an excellent complement to your music. I just subscribed to the paid plan. It's all very exciting. 🙌🏼
I'm a new subscriber so I'm late to this, and I don't need a reply because I know you're busy, but I can't tell you how much this song means to me. I'm 51 and my parents are long gone, and my aunts and uncles are frail these days. But when I was growing up, long before manual labor took its toll on their bodies, man, did they bring it! I think of Soul Train line dances forming every time 96 Tears came on, an aunt and uncle who would do the splits on the dance floor well into their 50s (!), kitchens cleared to create a dance floor for parties held every night between Christmas and New Years. Even my dad, who didn't dance, booked bands for a bar on the side, and my much older sister remembers him going out to all-night poker parties and coming home and throwing all the money he won up in the air. That was NOT the dad I knew, coming 11 years after her.
At the time, all of this drove me crazy - I was serious and studious and wished they'd put down their beer bottles and plot ways out of poverty. But now, I wish I could go back to some family wedding in a Pennsylvania fire hall in, say, 1978, dance alongside them and feel the joy of what it must be like to spend your whole life surrounded by the family and friends you love most - before we all spread out across the country, before the heartache of grown children's choices, before all the aches and pains and worse.
That's the photograph that This Is a Photograph puts in my head, and it never gets old.
I love this idea of letting the listener inform and construct their own image from memory. Thinking of my father in the front lawn the year I was born, I see a man that I simultaneously know nothing and everything about. Not having children myself, I cannot know his fear, his excitement around his new role as a father. In this image, we are so separated -- we do not yet know each other. But I know him now. I know him to be brave in constructing a future different from his parents' experiences. In this way, he is a Texan frontiersman. And the song evokes the same emotional response as when I look at those pictures, when I imagine this man I cannot fully know.
Hi, Kevin! I'm a Brazilian fan, so excuse for my English. The first time that I heard this song, I was very impressed.
I have a bad memory then I can't remember details of my childhood, so your song brings me to that time - or the imagination of that time. My very young father, he on his 34 years old (my age now), the same for my mother.
After I listen, I sent a message to my brother, that is younger than me, talking about this. And now, reading your texts, I felt more connected with the idea of your album of photos of the imagination. Thanks for this!