Think back to Thoreau's description of frost, with its unforgettable lines. Wouldn't it add something to see photographs interspersed in his writings? What would Thoreau have thought of cameras? Would his puritanism object to even owning one, or is that just my own historical dislike of his yankee coterie? Would he have held a grudge against them, as Edward Abbey did?
Rereading some Abbey lately, I wondered if his grudge against cameras came from his need to get paid for filling the interstices of coffee table books with prose. It was hard to one-up photographers like David Muench. No doubt it was the photographs that sold the coffee table book.
I wonder if there were envious resentments between Gilbert and Sullivan, or Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Cole Porter and Cole Porter? Writing operas and Broadway shows starts with the story, and then the words. Finally the musician must adorn it. Certainly there is a bit of back and forth. But ultimately it was hit tunes that sold the show.
But what about travel blogs? Are the pixs mere placeholders betwixt the paragraphs, or is it vica versa? Some of my favorite moments of writing a travel blog occurred when I started composing an essay on a hike or mountain bike ride, and then encountered images that affected me enough to redirect the essay still evolving in my head. Then there was a giddy moment of mental confusion, as when looking at an M.C. Escher print.
Once I tried to win someone over to opera. She complained that the stories were just simple, stupid 'boy meets girl' stuff. I tried to get her to appreciate how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts: a situational context, no matter how lame the story is, allows the listener to identify with human emotions that are expressed most powerfully through music. The other arts, including writing, seem rather lame to me.
Maybe she thought she was there to see a play. There are even people who think that opera has great instrumental music underlying the singing, so why don't they just shut the singers up! Mark Twain wrote something like that once, while watching some Wagner. I expected better of him.
I often hear this prejudice in favor of purely instrumental music by male neanderthals. Perhaps they identify with tools and clubs, but are embarrassed by human emotions expressed through the voice. At heart, they are still a little boy like "Bam-Bam" in the old Flintstones TV show.
