After I took the photo, the man stuck around to give me his contact information. After a couple minutes, his wife started calling impatiently from outside. “I waited 40 years for her,” he said. “She can wait 5 minutes for me.”
(San Francisco, CA)
“I’m trying to stay in the present and not worry so much about the future.”
“What specifically about the future do you worry about?”
“You know, things, like… am I going to be alone?”(San Francisco, CA)
“What do you miss most about Norway?”
“The mountains and fjords.”(San Francisco, CA)
“One of my plays is getting produced!”
“What’s it about?”
“So there’s this guy, and he really loves this one girl— she’s the girl of his dreams. But she’s going off to college. So he applies to every nearby college, just so he can be close to her. But the only college that accepts him is a clown college. But here’s the thing— he’s terrified of clowns.”
I photographed the little guy on the left because he was carrying a violin. During the post photo interview, his little brother kept chiming in with his own answers. It was clear that he wanted to be part of the process. After a few questions, the older one called to his brother: “Come be in my picture, Riley.”
“I cured myself of schizophrenia.”
“How’d you do that?”
“I stopped listening to the voices.”
“When you yell at someone, who hears it more: you or them? You’re only hurting yourself by getting angry. I want to live to be 100. I haven’t raised my voice in 40 years.”
“There are so many bodies that I want to paint.”
“What’s your greatest struggle right now?”
“Fear of my writing. Sharing my writing, in particular.”
“Will you email me something you wrote tonight?”“Less Fear” By Sade Johnson
America take rest
I was born No poet
Born laces to television archaic computer lemming games
Walmart target home depot banksBig man take rest
I was born No lover
Born sage-less wise cracker
Abandoned lot mower for petrified native broken horn blowersSavage take rest
I was born No tin man tight vested slave author
Born on No Puritanical pilgrimage not Lord wrought No Kings vestigeYouth take rest
I was born a silver-tongued tight fisted counter daughter
Fire starting ageist hippy
Empty gun waving barbiturate sipping
Anti- nunI take rest
I was born No fool
SHOWDOWN
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My last wife was 47 years older than me.”
“47 years???”
“Yep. We met when she was 80 and I was 33. She came to the nursing home where I worked, and everyday she would spend six hours with her dying husband. I said to myself: ‘If she ever loves me like that, I’ll be OK.’ We married a couple years later, and stayed together until she died at the age of 96. If I had any money, I’d make a movie about it.”
Turning Pink