Project Photo Palooza

If you were to ask me what today was composed of, I would tell you it began with a strong desire to smell my mother's perfume and ended with a newfound determination to eat my veggies. But if you really wanted to know what was in that day and what part of that day defined me, I might also tell you it began with my outmoded black and white Ikea alarm clock and ended with the pattern of my new black lace stockings. 

The emergence of 2012 has brought me to wonder: what is in one year? Well, within a year there is love, there is pain, there is renewed self-definition, there are leaps, there are collisions and there is laughter. Much laughter. But there are also many other things. There is the string of pearls I bought at a thrift store and wear weekly, there is the shiny new yellow paint on the nearby highway and the way it fades within a month, the indented F6 key on my Mac laptop, the fur neckline of my favorite green peacoat. There are the birds I send into flight each morning with the bang of my car door, the stark white sheets on my bed and the stapler that stands on my work desk with me for nine hours each day.

Is it possible that one year, one slice of one lifetime, can be weighted, assessed, evaluated, if you will, by the little things surrounding us, those seemingly insignificant manifestations of the ordinary in our lives that seem to give light to the mundane itself and find in it an unforeseen beauty?

Well this, friends, is the new project I present. At A Year Through a Lens, we will capture through the lens, an image of each day of a life in one year. Feel free to check us out. Happy blogging!

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo source unknown}

My Underground Crusades

When actions fail me (which, last night, fail me they did) words do not. And this is what brought a restless dreamer beyond the warmth of her covers to come before the ambivalent fog of a winter dawn, to wrestle, pen in hand, with her greatest contender: herself.

Here and here alone, within the white and black austerity of my words, can she unburden herself of that which burns in her heart and trifles with her conscience. Last night, a series of under-riding tensions surfaced at the crux of some immaterial, trifling something I cannot quite define but suspect many can understand.

And so I come, as Brian Doyle puts it, "thrashing toward the light with a sharp pen." Because maybe that is all I have right now and maybe it is the only means of sloshing through those times in life when the only way I can handle rage and horror and fear is to write it down and thus "fend it off, fight it, force it to retreat, understand it, hurt it."

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photos via vi.sualize.us}

San Diego

This summer I spent some time in San Diego for my sister's wedding, as well as some follow-up research work on my thesis. It was wonderful to return to my home away from home. 

Day threehundredsixtyfive: new years day {nyu/yîr/dey}

I anticipate the countdown of celebrants who become united in a moment as they shout the epic countdown. I watch the world count the seconds that, unbeknownst (and most likely of little significance) to them, also signals the birth of one girl among the throng of people. As I will be turning twenty three when the clock strikes midnight and the balloons fall from the ceiling, the last moments of my twenty second year will not (in the words of my man Eliot) go out with a whimper, but a bang.

Such festivities pose the question of how one measures a year. 360 times your head touches the pillow; 556,600 thoughts crossing your mind; 7,884,000 breaths; 56,200 sighs; 650,000 steps; 23,000 times your favorite songs comes on the radio.

What will you make possible this year? What boundaries will you transcend? What triumphs will you conquer? What talents will you master? What will you rise above? And how will you find what you're looking for?

© 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved.

Maps & Things

Apologies for the absence, folks. I traveled to Chicago on a road trip across the states this month, where I learned things like greeting people as 'folks.' My sister and I endeavored to travel across half of the states in the U.S. old school, with just a map. The result was many u-turns and some wonders off the beaten path. 

Soundtrack to My Life

I can still remember it all. This gawky little freckle-faced five year old sang into her plastic fisher price microphone for ten hours on that long stretch of a highway, on a road trip my parents are still recovering from, I'm sure. I'll never forget the way I could feel the music inside of me, relieving any weight gravity could induce. And the only name I could give it was magic.

And now. Here I am, a frazzled college student with five papers to write, four hours' worth of reading and a thesis to start, listening to Hans Zimmer's The Holiday score, reminding myself that this doesn't contribute to any school work I have to do, and yet, continuing to wonder how I could possibly put into words the way I have to bite my lip every time the violins come in.

The scores of Elmer Bernstein, Elliot Goldenthal, Rachel Portman, John Powell, Hans Zimmer, Peer Raben, Henny Vrienten, Patrick Doyle, Michael Kamen, Howard Shore, Gabriel Yared, Ennio Morricone, Stephen Warbeck, George Fenton, Michael Nyman, Nicola Piovani, and my recent favorite, Hans Zimmer, have contributed enormously to the modern day film medium. In combining the sweet charm of the strings with the triumphant jolt of the brass, they set the mood and tone of a scene. In doing so, this form of art allows a film to present the viewer with certain insight, and connection with the characters. A comedy is often mistaken as serious, unless clued in by a comical and light-hearted melody. One is able to connect certain scenes with certain characters through a motif, interwoven throughout the story in certain pivotal scenes. And, of course, everyone knows how dryly ridiculous a horror film is without the eery music lurking in the background, making you jump at every corner. When successful, music portrays to the audience what the director intended the audience to feel. The hero's battle speech is monotonous, the much-waited-for kiss at the end is ordinary, and the one hundred gunfire shots at the bank robbery is merely unnecessary and childish without the drama that music lends it.

I often wonder what the soundtrack to my life would sound like. Sometimes I can construct a vague melody or string variation as I am taking an evening walk with a good friend, or gaze across the valley from a mountain peak in awe. I can hear a swinging beat and feel the pulse of the bass as I walk down the street in my four inch heels and sunglasses. Other times, I feel a rhythmic jolt of trilled notes, suspended for measures as I hold my breath to find out whether I got excepted into the London Study Abroad Program, or wait to discover what my professor thought of my well thought out thesis paper. Even in its seeming silence, my life has always had its own beat and rhythm. It makes certain moments sweeter, some instances more terrifying, and other moments more exhilarating. The soundtrack to my life becomes a melody only I have sung. Indeed, we all have our melodies which define who we are and what we can become. And perhaps there need not be a word to put to that, but simply, action. As we take the stage and play our parts, it is us, essentially, who decides which song will be played and what that song will be called.

@ 2009 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo vi.sualize.us}