I Beat It in Deadhorse

Deadhorse looked like a Polaroid before the picture develops. Fog matted down the town like wet hair on a forehead, causing the sheetmetal buildings to stick darkly to the tundra. Up, a bright circling vulture called the sun sieved its droppings through gray clouds into the mud.

It was night because the sun was vaguely north. When it was in the west, that was called afternoon. When it got east, it was morning. This is all theoretical; nobody ever sees the sun in Deadhorse. In winter, even the foglight disappears. The authorities say when it's time to work and people call that day.

Caribou milled on the thick tundra without the town, glad for the ocean gales which force the mosquitoes into hiding. They chewed tussock under the black southbound river which made Deadhorse. When I drove by, they stared.

By the ocean, rows of workers' trucks slept under their blankets of mud. Peeking out from some of their covers, company slogans chanted. "Nobody gets hurt," they promised in cursive. Within the insulation of squat metal complexes, their operators listened to the howling of the arctic and dreamt of Texas and Oklahoma.

Machines thrummed.

I drove through town, seeing only what the magician fog let me see. A company truck drove by, its driver staring. I stopped and my car drank from a spigot beside the black river's spring. I watched caribou break the urban edge.

The pump cut out. It was silent but for the churn of wind and metal.

Utopias used to be about governments owning everything. Then that became the province of dystopia. More recently, corporations took the governments' place: every building a company building, every man a company man in a company car on a company street.

"Welcome to Deadhorse," a sign read outside the post office, which was run in an agreement between an oil company and the government. The sign depicted a stinking corpse covered by flies.

I felt out of place.

Caribou walked down the road into town. When they'd past, I beat it.

A Story About Mosquitoes

In the land of the midnight sun, the children of the night fought for shelter.

I could hear their voices, thin and insistent, harmonizing in the devil's interval; singing their chorus of bloodlust. Over and again they rapped at my window, begging safe passage. I turned my damp head away, exhausted.

It was the witching hour. The sun rolled, bloated and red as a rotting orange, over the northern reaches of the continental divide. I'd crossed that crease countless times already, but the line continued to switch back over my path. The maws beyond cared little of my past; they had no memory of even their own journeys. They knew only thirst.

I sweated in my shelter, a blue Explorer with my trappings corded up around me like bodies in a Russian war. My eyebrows were heavy and wet and even when I breathed, the air refused to shift. All but one small window was closed tight. That passage had its blank pane covered by a square of netting, duct taped and wadded into place.

A breeze nudged the car, coming from the other side as my open window. By shoving my nose into the netting, I could just taste the conifers. An inch from my face, the shrill mobs queued for their ounce of flesh. From the corner of my eye, I could see the cannibals among them drinking the guts of the colleagues, wrecked and open upon my hood. Most, however, waited for larger game.

A heatwave had rolled up into the interior this past week, hunkering down on the woods like a Great Dane on his rug. Now, the hound of heat lapped greedily at the mountain snow, demolishing it in tongues of warmth.

Just outside my windows, however, was reprieve. Just outside the shell of the Explorer, the cool air from the summit tumbled off a cliff, skipped across a snowmelt stream, and smashed into the side of my car. The vehicle rocked in concert with the air. I lay my face back down upon my pillow. The casing clung like a swimmer's shirt.

The heat was too much.

I gulped water to loosen my thirst. Without the window, similar complaints of thirst hummed to me.

Reaching up to the front of the car, I fumbled for my keeps on the driver's seat; pushing them home into the ignition, I twisted. The International Passport Collection of Yiddish Folksongs sprang to life on the CD player and vents blasted stale air. I rolled the windows down and the wind was like ice cream.

The first wave died with my slightest gesture. A thousand of their bravest warriors, I'd slain. I smelled pennies, but everyone has blood on their hands when the waters boil with life. A patina of blood from the mob's last victim stained my windows crimson as I smashed my arm to. The heavy beams of the forever dawn skipped golden across the frozen rubies of the battlefield.

The second wave counted coup, winging my ears. When they were close enough to share secrets, they whispered to me of their bravery. I fought for a time, killing their heroes, but the breeze was cooling and I tired of war. Soon, I lay back and let my foes dance their victories. "Come and feed," I said, closing my eyes.

The children of the night sang a song that filled my dreams; the song of hunger and heat, the song that calls an end to light. They tried to teach it to me.

This American Kite

So, I'm stealing internet from city hall here in Concrete, Washington and downloading the newest This American Life episode (which, along with Radio Lab, is an even better companion than nodoze for long hours of driving). Anyway, when I was there, I noticed that they now take donations on their website. This is all well and good, but a glance at the donations page reveals something remarkable:

A $75 donation gets you a This American Life kite. A This American kite. Now, I don't have $75, and even if I did, that'd be a bit steep for kite-acquisition, but this has to be the coolest kite ever made. That's all I'm saying.

Anyway, download complete, I'm headed back to the Cascades.

Sensawunda

I did an interview with a photography group from England a while back and came across it while organizing my gmail earlier. Since it's not available for anyone outside the group that I know of, I figured it wouldn't hurt to repost it here:

Steve Cox: Tell me when photography became a passion.

Wylie (Me): Well, I don't know that it really is a "passion." I tend to think of myself as someone who works in a lot of mediums in an attempt to tell stories I want people to see or hear. Photography happens to be one which I've been a little more successful at getting people to look at. I'd like to think it's also one where I'm more or less proficient in conveying the stories. But it's not the photography itself that really interests me; that's just the means to the end. But, I honestly didn't really get into photography until about four years ago, when I worked on my first indie film. I started out as a screenwriter, but then ended up producing and learning a lot about cinematography. That's really where my photography started out- first, with scouting locations, then later, with shooting production stills on set, and finally, I started shooting for fun in ways that had nothing to do with filmmaking. About a year and a half ago, I started doing photography full-time.

Steve: Do you lust after something: an image, a piece of equipment, a fleeting moment?

Wylie: All these "lust" and "passion" questions. I'm really more of a laid back guy than all that. There are stories and images I try to convey, but some hit and some miss and try to not get too worked up about it all. Equipment I don't much worry about. I'm constantly broke, so I make do with what I can afford and what I can make myself. While there's plenty of cameras and lenses I'd love to have, I know I can do what I need to with what I have.

In terms of an image or moment... The idea I try to capture in all of my images is a sense of the epic; the idea that there is a majesty to the world which we all experience from time to time; adventure or struggle which may become more apparent when frozen in an image. Were I better at what I do, every shot I took would convey that. As it is, I think I can usually pull off maybe one shot which hints at it in any given shoot.

Steve: Is there a "one that got away?": an image you wish you'd caught but for some reason couldn't or didn't?

Wylie: I wish I had an anecdote for this question, but I don't think I really operate in that way. I rarely come into a shoot expecting anything at all. There may be a story I want to tell or a feeling I want to convey going into the shoot, but when I actually pick up the camera I really just work with what's in front of me- even if it ends up being something totally different.

I think of it kind of like writing. When you're writing a story, you can't just put any old words into the characters' mouths. The characters have to say what they want to say, even if it leads you as the writer in a completely different direction from what you'd expected to write. With photography, you shoot what the weather, light, and subjects are conveying. Of course, I'm almost always a location person; I've never even shot in a studio. It's surely a wholly different experience when you create reality from whole cloth.

Of course, there's plenty of times where I just wasn't satisfied with my results when the lighting or location simply wasn't working out for me, or when I only had a few minutes to shoot someone or was trespassing somewhere and had to guerrilla-style my lighting. When those don't give the best results, I guess those are the shots that get away.

Steve: Who or what influences you?

Wylie: For photography, primarily cinematography. I'm sadly undereducated in the the great photographers; relying instead on knowledge of great films and directors. When I'm using my camera, I feel like I'm simply capturing stills from a moving image. If my result doesn't have some sense of implied movement- either of the subjects or the camera itself- I tend to become indifferent towards it.

But, my primary influence would be the noirs of the 40s and 50s with their simple, often single-source lighting, along with compositions of the great wideangle masters: Kubrick, Welles, Gilliam, Jeunet, etc.

In terms of actual photography, I really become interested in any image which shows me something new. A new moment, a new angle, a new place. That could be one of the reasons I love photojournalism so much- it tells a story, and is usually showing me something I didn't know before. While I rarely do any photojournalism or street photography myself (I've always thought of those as something of a higher plane that someone like me shouldn't sully), my approach to a shot tends to be guided more from those philosophies and methods than anything else- "What is the story?", "What is the important detail and how do I convey that?", and "What mood does this location or this subject strike in me?"

Steve: Rock n' roll, drum n' bass, blues or silence?

Wylie: Oh, all kinds of music. My parents are blues musicians, so of course I started with that. But, I listen to rock, hip hop, bluegrass, indie stuff, you name it- as long as it's good. When I'm processing photos, I'm usually careful to select something in the background which will help me get into the mood of the shot- either an album which creates that feeling or a movie running across the room which does.

I think I look for the same thing in my music as I do in my photos- a sense of wonder.