Night Noise

GARY DWYER

Night Noise

Photographs and Text By GARY DWYER

Published by Angstrom Unit Works

Text and Photographs Copyright © 2010 Gary Dwyer. All rights reserved.

No Part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any formby any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permissionfrom the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

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ISBN 978-0-9819987-3-2

Cover Photograph: Monument Dog, 2003 © Gary Dwyer

Gary Dwyer Photographyhttp://www.calpoly.edu/~gdwyer/http://stores.lulu.com/dwyergc

Other books By Gary Dwyer are available on lulu.com, blurb.com and on amazon books

Night NOise

� is book is dedicated to anyone who has read my book called “Between the Dog and the Wolf,” and wondered what really comes a� er sunset. It is dedicated to my loyal publisher, Angstrom Unit Works, who has been assisting me since longer than I want to say, and to HAD and Qubert and that French girl I hang

around with.

4 (Night) 4 (Night)

(Noise) 5(Noise) 5

”Don’t make the mistake of knowing that you or I or anyone else knows how the world is meant to work. The world is a miracle un-folding in the pitch dark. We are lighting candles.”

Barry Lopez

There is a bar in Portland called ‘A veritable Quandary’ and although I have never been there I know what it means and it has never been my problem. Quite the contrary, to the idea of quandary, my position has always been Gusto rather than fi nesse. Gusto comes from gust - a sudden blast of wind - out of nowhere.

If darkness was my cover, I sure have been mean to it. Seeing me peeled back and staring, it never let me go. Seldom does night saunter, mostly it sits on chairs with spindly legs.It often runs.

Night can be defi ned by lack. Lacking light or heat or warmth. The ‘Heat of the Night” is a powerful phrase, but it is sel-dom true. Night is mostly cold. Dank, dangerous, dubious, diseased, discarded and derelict are not likable terms and yet they are associations based in fear because night has density and opacity.

Nasty, nimble noxious and naughty.Night is opportunity.

I don’t dare let it go by unnoticed.

6 (Night) 6 (Night)

(Noise) 7(Noise) 7(et loup) 7

FIRST, You, Yes, you were supposed to have at

least looked at the other book, you know, the one

proceeding this one . The one with

Sentimental Sunsets (Between the dog and the wolf)

In this book , you will see something entirely differ-ent.

Perhaps.

(E

ntre chien et loup) R

emem

ber ?

8 (Night) 8 (Night)

Night is seldom quiet. It is as though noise were invented there. It is the darkness that makes us see the sound. Having very little light in the black racket always puts us on our toes. My nights have a lot of noise.

Talking about noise is like making paintings about concerts and one of the things that darkness brings is an enhanced and fo-cused desire to see. When it is quiet, you can hear the smallest sound. When it is dark you can see the smallest light. And you lock-on to that spot because it is the only thing there, except for the noise in your head.

Yes, if it is too loud, you are too old, and the corollary is that some things just aren’t worth listening to. The old tapes running around in your head, always having to do with what you should have done or what you wish you did. How you could have re-sponded. Night is the land of regrets and it is when we listen to our own endless tape loop. I listen to it less if I am looking at something in the night. Seeing in the dark is mostly through a melancholy or voyeuristic window, a tunnel with a small and dis-tant focus at the far end. Scattershot illumination, made concen-trated by the surrounding blackness. Late night is always darker than evening and whatever you are looking at three thirty in the morning is best left alone. Most of us lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. Some walk around with a camera. I do some of both and it seems to keep a few of the demons at bay. The results are Night Dreams: not nightmares but imagining and wonder. They are often sloppy, indifferent and surprising. I am unsure what they mean.

Awareness of noise implies listening and it is harder to listen than it is to make noise. Listening may be the hardest thing to do. These images are as much thinking as they are about seeing. Some of them may even listen.

Nights

ARE l

onger

than d

ays.

(Noise) 9(Noise) 9

10 (Night) 10 (Night)

View from the inside of my head, late at nightAnywhere, All the time

(Noise) 11(Noise) 11

Th e night is a little like electricity. We know how to use it but we don’t know what it is.

If you expected

Quiet, this is the wrong place to look.

And it feels right as you lock up the house Turn out the lights and step out into the night And the world is busting at its seams And you’re just a prisoner of your dreams Holding on for your life `cause you work all day To blow `em away in the night

Bruce Springsteen - Night


(Noise) Night is the left hand of the day.La Sinestra - the sinister, lurking and hidden.

The edge between darkness and light is unnamed and yet where all our decisions are made. Even though there is not much contrast it is where we are able to discern friend from foe, good from evil, assuming mere silhouette is enough to guide us. We call this edge discrimination. Yes, it is the act of deciding in favor of one thing, person, or group and against another, but it is also the ability to draw fi ne distinctions. It is our ability to discern that allows us to choose a bottle of wine and also tells us the difference between a harmless drunk and a real thug. When it gets really dark we loose enough light to see the edge of things. We loose ourselves.

We are lost.

Night



Vacant apartment across the wayCentral California


Camera store with Crucifi ction treeCentral, California

16 (Night)

(Entr

e ch

ien

et lo

up)

va

st

Long ago, sitting by a campfire with friends, the architect Mike McDougal gave me a little window on his extraordinary life. His grandfather had fought in the Boxer rebellion and his family was evicted by the Chinese and they moved to Singapore only to be eventually evicted by the Japanese. They attempted to emigrate to Great Britain via the Suez Canal and for unexplaigned reasons were turned back and ended up making several crossings of the Indian Ocean in their attempt to get to Britain.

Mike made a long pause, looked into the fire and then tilted his head up to the dark sky and said, “One time, in the middle of the Ocean, the ship’s engines broke down and they stopped moving. Fortunately there were calm seas as they were stopped there for a week. At night, there were so many stars in the sky it seemed crowded. You have never seen night until you have seen it from the middle of an ocean.” A tear gathered in the corner of his eye as he said, “Then you really begin to understand the meaning of deep, black and vast.”

(Noise) 17

Cruise ship at anchorSouthern Croatia


Moonrise over the SierraLone Pine, California

“Cold hearted orb that rules the night

Removes the colours from our sight

Red is gray and yellow, white

But we decide which is right

And which is an illusion...

va s t


North Star (Stella Polaris) and friends - autumn midnight

Central California

...Pinprick holes in a colourless sky

Let insipid fi gures of light pass by

The mighty light of ten thousand suns

Challenges infi nity and is soon gone

Night time, to some a brief interlude

To others the fear of solitude.”

Moody Blues


Oil refi nery, 3AMSan Ardo, California

va s t


(E

ntre chien et loup)

Midnight on the San Andreas Fault LineElkhorn Scarp, California

va s t


Fork Lightning (not seen in this region for 25 years)Shell Beach, California

va s t


Moon rise over Cerro San LuisSan Luis Obispo, California

va s t


Th e house from the studioSquire Canyon, California

va s t


Autumn MoonRome

va s t



Adrift in the moonlightno running lights.

North of Albania

va

st

28 (Night) 28 (Night) 28 (Entre chien)

Th e view from the terraceIspoure, France

(Entr

e ch

ien

et lo

up)

Int

ima

te

B

UT

C

LO

UD

Y

Familiar, perhaps even a habit, but there is always another story nagging in the background. It is our knowledge of these places that allows us to become cavalier and distracted, sel-dom thinking about where we are.

Blindness and susceptibility all are part of the well worn path but we continue to stumble down it anyway, concentrating on whatever story is playing in our head. There is a good chance that darkness is only the tangled terrain of intimate remem-brances. Night is always about the past but it is wrapped in mist and smoke.


(E

ntre chien et loup)

Stairs on the Gianicolo hill

Trastevere, Rome


Hotel room

St. Paul, Minnesota

cloudy


(E

ntre chien et loup)

Artist’s studioCentral California

cloudy


Silhouette on Dana Street Etienne de Silhouette, a French fi nance minister who in 1759 was forced by France’s severe credit crisis during the Seven Years War to impose severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy.[1] Because de Silhouette enjoyed making cut paper portraits, his name became synonymous with these portraits and with anything done or made cheaply. Prior to the advent of photography, silhouette profi les cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a per-son’s appearance. -Wikipedia

San Luis Obispo, Californiacloudy


Raging Looking out at the road rushing under my wheelsLooking back at the years gone by like so many summer fi elds

In sixty-fi ve I was seventeen and running up one-o-oneI don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on

Running on, running on empty...Jackson Browne

Squire Canyon, California

cloudy

34 (Night) 34 (Night) cloudy

County Fair

King City, California

(Noise) 35(Noise) 35cloudy

Th is bar has changed its name so many times no one remembers what it is called now. What you notice when you walk in is that this place is looking back at you.

California


Laissez les bons temps rouler,(but ...Th ere’s a man with a gun over there, Telling me I got to beware...)Buff alo Springfi eld

Almost the very last Mardi Gras Parade

San Luis Obispo, California

(Entr

e ch

ien

et lo

up)

cloudy


Madamina, il catalogo è questoDelle belle che amò il padron mio;

un catalogo egli è che ho fatt’io;Osservate, leggete con me.

In Italia seicento e quaranta;In Almagna duecento e trentuna;

Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna;Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre.

Don Giovanni - Mozart

California

cloudy


It was all she could do to stand up. Aft er that it was pure grace.Prague


I was writing a story and my computer changed the format.Things like this only happen at night.

hepure andNharp they might break, oresthe It was like what light wishes it could be. deepening ripped and ragged long fisearing mean punchesI think they were men. themost . He was facing toward the beachmanraisedma-ngulped the dense angry storm waves breaking on the beach in this scene-None not a at all trying to do I had to stand there and wait. I don’t know why. I just did. None of it made any sense.man l a a clown would make, in front of him s at his sides. The fall didn’t really seem to have hurt him very much. tilting the raft forward one of the sit it moved.It was the front one, the one closest to the front. Itmanhis ,his His silent iquickly new brokestruckman-himejected by the sea.over the waves whentoward the beach d that lse to slow down. My eyes were seeing in slow-motion me standing on the beach. was He had nHe had become an impossible lesson from a physics class. He was a human vector at the edge of theSomehow,a sawed-off shotgun or The of the refrigerator edand it still rockedback and forth Othesplintered on the front, dangled the shredded upper half of a man.recognized the turn. My head throbbed as I bent over, heaving. A question kept me from passing out. W on the raft, trage? I looked to the sea as the wind rose higher. Out there beyond the breakers, to that black place. It was still there. It was even blacker. The raft was gone.º

cloudy

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Night Noise