Click HERE to listen. He has seen the world from empty places: in Chicago and in Toronto, in Paris, Omůt and in a small, ramshackle town called Šeš. In each of those cities, he has seen eyes like his own: furtive glances (in brown, blue, and hazel, like his own) crowded with ghosts. Those eyes, he thinks, make him shy of mirrors and push him into empty places, where few may wander. He sits in courtyards and on park benches, in grassy, open fields, where only insects, wind, and birds may disturb him. The wind has no eyes and the unblinking gaze of an insect is safe. Bugs don’t believe in ghosts and so they don’t carry them around in their heads, showing them to anyone who looks. He sees ghosts, too many of them, but ghosts—unlike living men—avoid solitude, and so he isolates himself, avoiding gazes, avoiding mirrors. Bricks, he has learned, are sufficient company—walls are blank slates upon which he may inscribe his own remembered images, or project them, like movies at a drive-in. Now, in the promise of thunder and the promise of rain, he sits in avoidance of ghosts. There is traffic in the distance and urban sounds, loud with a species of unrest carried only in human eyes. He thinks to himself of the cities he’s visited and the silences each of them offers. He will travel again—soon—to another silent place. A desert, perhaps, or a forest, where things are alive and light with the absence of ghosts…. * I took this photo yesterday, as I wandered around with Corey. Though I’ve had my camera for a long time now, I’ve only just discovered some of its functions. As I fiddled with toggles and menus, I found settings for Sepia and Black and White, settings for two qualities of fluorescent light, and an odd, blue-tinge, fit for tungsten lamps. I’d decided to play. I was curious as to how Chicago (so young a city) might look if captured in sepia tones. I took dozens of shots in this way and this is one of them. As I went through the photos I’d taken, I listened to music. This is the most common of my personal customs. It isn’t surprising, then, that music and image conspired to craft a story: the fragment of one at least. I have no clue as to who the character might be. He isn’t related to the person in this photograph, and yet, they are connected…perhaps because one is isolated in a physical sense, and the other is solitary in accordance to his own desires. Neither of them (the character nor his inspiration) has much to do with the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica, but the moody, haunting guitar and human voice seem to bridge one thing to another. I should note that the music accompanying this post: “The Cylon Prisoner” accompanies one of the most jarring, confrontational, and moving scenes I’ve ever experienced in a television show. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that its musical accompaniment could inspire a fragmentary tale about someone avoiding other humans in an attempt to avoid ghosts. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great end-of-the-weekend and the beginning of a great week.