snippets

Snippets

by Bob on April 11, 2008

Besides the fact that people are funny, which used to be the title of a TV show when I was a kid, life itself is funny yet revealing in so many ways.

Snippets. In all these years of walking all around cities, especially my hometown of New York City, as I pass people I hear tiny fragments ("snippets") of their conversations as we pass each other in the street. When my mind weaves all these snippets together at the end of the day, it's an amazing snapshot of a city's life and people and what is going on in society.

If I wove all those snippets together, they would make an interesting, yet stream-of-consciousness reading.

For in pasting these random conversational snippets we are doing what Picasso did with art -- betraying the conventional and looking at life in whole new way.

Just today walking up Washington Street in downtown Boston, these snippets were heard:

"Tonight's Yankees night. We're [the Boston Red Sox baseball team] playing the Yankees. The Yankees stink. Oh, you're from New York. Are you a Yankees fan ?"

"No, I'm a Mets fan"

"Oh then you're okay. Otherwise you'd be in trouble here in Boston"

* * *

"He's just so damn mean to me but he's such a good lover. I can't resist but I need to stop seeing him."

* * *

"I love material things. They make me happy. People don't. They're too personal."

* * *

"Ah, we got paid today. Let's buy a lot of lottery tickets !"

* * *

So we see that these are real reflections, although a snapshot, of what's important in life and what people are considering and opining about.

In many ways, candid photography is like this. They are visual snippets of life. A cross-section of emotional and interpersonal aloofness and candor.

We must keep it real after all. Listen to those snippets in the street and on the bus !