Words Again

Every time words have seemed to fail me, some other way of conveying the brightness has come along—a change of tack, a new path meandering up half-hidden through the overgrown grasses, suggesting a way of going that I hadn't before considered.

After Mills and my letterpress I was lost for a long time, but picked up my pen again and wrote my way into a place I recognized. During a period in my early thirties when words seemed to have become useless, spent only in argument and complaint, I volunteered to be dresser at Theatreworks, the world behind stage brand new to me, and was immersed for a vital, restorative month in the fantastically rich language of a group of black women in Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery (just at the time of the Rodney King riots, which couldn't be articulated in easy language either). After my father died, he who had given me my words, I had no way of speaking what I felt. The world and my ways of describing it had become strange. I bought myself a Pentax camera with telephoto and wide-angle lens, and started taking photos, instead.

I loved that photography was said to be writing with light. I loved that it could capture moments, stop time in its tracks. Eventually the words came back, and I was grateful—but I felt blessed to have the wordless medium to convey what I saw and felt too. Rambling with my camera is meditative and connects me with the world and its beauty and grace.

image: Christie B. Cochrell, Blue