Mary Rachel Fanning | blog

Yeeeaaah…so…

mary rachel — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 04:05:57 +0000

Returning from a conceptual walkabout. Soon.

mary rachel — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 05:19:05 +0000

Nothing quite like iPads and southern sunsets

mary rachel — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 05:05:02 +0000

Family Skype

mary rachel — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 12:44:42 +0000

It’s Summer y’all!

mary rachel — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:02:26 +0000

…and time to embrace mixed color casts

Lake Martin Happy Hour

mary rachel — Fri, 20 May 2011 03:11:15 +0000

3 weeks later. 4d meditations on a tornado.

mary rachel — Wed, 18 May 2011 04:59:00 +0000

The semester is finished and it gave me a wicked flu/cold for a going away present. As the plane started to descend and circle the airport in Birmingham this afternoon, the “gift” kept on giving. I felt like my ears and sinuses were going to explode. There was a 2-year-old sitting in front of me who also had a runny, chapped nose and was covering her ears, screaming at the top of her lungs. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing to distract myself. I’m not a Buddhist, but this is supposed to help, right? As the pain got more intense I opened my eyes and looked out the window to gauge how long it would take us to land before I followed the 2-year-old’s lead.

My jaw dropped. There it was. This thing I had only seen on network news as the visual backdrop for arguments over global warming. An alarmingly long and wide path of a tornado. It is one thing to see it on a tv or computer screen, but to witness it in 3-dimension while moving through space (4-dimension?) was…I have no words. The plane went completely silent. Even the 2-year-old sitting in front of me.

The sun starts to set while my mom and I pass Dadeville on Highway 49. She tells me we’re about to drive through where a tornado crossed over the road. This close to your house? Really? The camera is on my lap. I roll down the window.

Destroyed homes have been shoved to the side of the road for FEMA removal. Devastating and fascinating at the same time. This image burned into my brain also takes place in 4-dimension along the highway.

3 weeks later is an interesting space. Much of the debris has been cleared or at least there is a plan for what remains. Trinkets of people’s lives are strewn across open patches of land with strange, naked trees. A car. A fence. I can start to see the scars in the land, made by monster tornadoes, some of them by man.

Hmm..I’d like to dig into this a little more the next few days and perhaps over the summer. But what if I get out of the car and the images aren’t as interesting as they are bearing witness in 4d? What if I come back later and it’s too late? What if this fascinating pause turns into recovery too quickly? Which of course is the best thing that could happen for the survivors and my home state, and yet I’m visually conflicted over it. Or maybe a better approach is to just go do it and accept these questions I feel so guilty over. The entire thing could be a total bust anyway. Wouldn’t be the first time. Using a camera as my pencil has made me freaked out by the exploitation of others’ grief and hardship. I personally know people who have lost their homes, which makes these creative impulses even more bizarre.

Yet there are many layers to a disaster in this scarred land of mine. “Hope” is one of them.

To Bama. xoxo, CHI.

mary rachel — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:46:24 +0000

Loading up some relief for those who need it (especially women). Thanks, Chicago posse!

Daybreak in Alabama

mary rachel — Wed, 04 May 2011 19:25:54 +0000

by Langston Hughes

When I get to be a composer
I’m gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I’m gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.

Back to carrying a little camera in my purse again.

mary rachel — Mon, 02 May 2011 23:28:15 +0000

Canon G12. Best “LadySmith” ever.