In the Crowd

In the Crowd (2006)

When I'm in the crowd, I don't see anything
My mind goes a blank in the humid sunshine
When I'm in the crowd I don't see anything...
The Jam, "In the Crowd"

I haven't made many images for more than six months. The reason was because my aging computer was cranky and didn't have the juice or muscle to manipulate large image files. Still, I'd struggle through freezes and crashes and suddenly evaporated works-in-progress in increasingly frustrating attempts to produce new art. Well, after Zen patience and support and encouragement from my wife, I finally put together a new custom machine. I've been "rebuilding my studio" for about a week and finally began to work through many re-installations and re-calibrations this weekend to thrash around enough to roll out some new stuff. I'm very relieved to be able to once again work with my machine instead of against it. So, with a fresh kid-in-the-candy-store vibe, I think I'll try to post buck-naked new work here all week. I probably won't have too much to say about these newborns. I think I'll just let them lie there and soak up the light of the delivery room.

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Did today's image come from the experience of remember seeing King Vidor's silent classic The Crowd many years ago at a film festival?

Or did it drift up from the memory of the first time I heard The Jam's "In the Crowd" while volunteering as an late-night college radio deejay while in graduate school?