be a dear and click on the image to enlarge!ah. when i see this image i wring my hands. i wring my hands because this picture was taken the last time i saw ann and that's too long ago and there is no reason. even when we didn't see each other often, we still sent birthday cards. but even that has trickled off and i just wring my hands at the way life sometimes drifts people apart.
i met ann fourteen years ago on a catering job in philadelphia. we'd been bused down there like cattle and stood in line with water pitchers in a sweltering tent, waiting to pour drinks for rich people. ann turned what would be a miserable situation into a standup routine, keeping all of us laughing and smiling. she continued to salvage many tough work situations, leaving bananas and sweet notes on my desk at the us open when she knew i was pulling all-nighters, sharing support hose secrets with me--always reminding me to take care of myself rather than get too swallowed up in the heartless corporate work machine that tried to chew us up and spit out zombies.
ann went on to become a very successful voice over artist, pictured here, through the glass window of her in-home recording booth.
people bristle over the apparent saccharinity of this scene. i wring my hands over that too, as this moment was a fleeting one, a wave hello to her boyfriend, who had just walked in the door and passed behind me.
yet even that misconception is okay. perhaps the saccharinity works. what a strange world we live in, ann, the voice of the martha stewart show and the oxygen network. that soothing or authoritative voice that transitions you from show to commercial, commercial to show, coming out of a 10 square foot soundproofed box within an apartment on the upper west side of manhattan.
they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes, perhaps the wrong ones come through. photographers are generally terrible at editing their own images because they become too emotionally attached to each one. this is very true about me. i stubbornly chose this one for the series. think what you will.
4 comments:
I love it, I think you captured her perfectly. :)
And, if it's not her birthday in the next couple of weeks, just send her a card saying hi, have a fabulous day, thinking of you, etc. I do that sometimes ... mostly because I love to get mail and think I'll get one back, haha!
Hi Ann, I went to SUNY Oswego from 1985-1987 and graduated in 1987. My dorm room was right down the hall from yours at Oneida Hall room 204. My name is Doozer Smith. I hope you remember me?
My real name is Stephen Smith but you should remember me as Doozer.
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