tag:colinfinlay.com,2005:/blogs/hyena?p=3Hyena2018-01-27T09:00:06-08:00Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadfalsetag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421662018-01-24T18:45:13-08:002018-01-25T10:09:15-08:00THE FLUTTER<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/dd074aff1b7febdc034c60169443dff9afddf6aa/original/3q5x5910.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">I’m back on the blvd. now, with the people that wear their pain. The man coming up over my left shoulder is screaming as he walks. I’m screaming inside. I walked the blvd. for over three years and hardly spoke to anyone, just built the collage. Now some nod with a flutter of recognition. I engage them back, exchanging the liquid prose of pain. Raw. I am one. Alive. </span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421682018-01-24T18:13:35-08:002018-01-25T10:05:47-08:00BLISS BABY<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/50f5f3cf78c7e9b9dee6f6a8aa7e77f60e810a33/original/3q5x6316.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p>It’s a funny thing, but I notice dogs look at me more than people do. Big brown pedigreed ones in the front seats of their air-conditioned Range Rovers. Street dogs, gardener’s dogs, little old lady dogs. </p>
<p>A beautiful man, thin as a minnow, wades across into traffic. The skin stretched over this fish of a man is deep ebony. It glistens in the blvd., its mid-summer heat. Shimmering incandescent, like nobody else’s. Hung from a string around his neck is a silver whistle. He pushes it into his mouth and stops traffic for himself. He was effective and he was graceful. In his left hand is a deep-sea fishing pole with no reel. His right pulled a torn black canvas suitcase. His glasses were silver, the lens’ chrome. He was Stevie Wonder on the cover of Mirrors to my soul except all he could play was his whistle, but he blew it damn well. Too many beautiful people never get a chance in this world and he was one of them. Goodbye to you and good luck. May the fishing hole in your next life be full. </p>
<p>Rich blvd. waders in Prada, all right. Lets hear it for the rich folk. Hip, hip, hooray! Except they jaywalk because they’re too lazy to walk 40 yards to the crosswalk. Funny, but not, people don’t honk at the Prada ladies. They only honk at the destitute and the man of silver with the whistle.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421672018-01-24T18:09:13-08:002018-01-25T10:03:03-08:00SANDY BLUE<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/50ab8128b28987ddd8e478ae341640de9620364c/original/3q5x9883.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />The crush of night is upon me, the time when adrenaline expressed as anxiety or panic runs through me. When it’s at its best. Restless I dress, and drift back down to the blvd. From a distance, in silhouette, intermittently lit in incandescence is the shadow of the man. He is dancing, spinning, drifting to the music that has returned to his soul. It is beautiful to see him, back at it, swimming the streets with his muse, his mistress. His last one had passed six maybe eight months ago now, and the music, the smile the life had just gone. At that point, he was certainly the only man I have ever known to own a Yorkie, and his name was Moochie. And this wizened man of African descent, he was not the man you’d expect to see at the other end of a leash behind a dog of such diminutive stature, but there he was. Upon closer inspection, the dogs hair was parted right down the spine, from the back of the head to the base, where it joined the tail. It also looked as if he’d applied some type of gel or formula to the hair to get it to lie down flat. He even had a little special comb for it that he would pull from a small pouch gathered around his waist. She was his life; she gave him the music, their music. I’d only seen him twice in the months after her death. He looked as if he’d suffered a stroke and only half his body worked. We spoke of him getting another dog, but he felt he couldn’t go through all that pain again. I encouraged him to get another one, a young one this time. He said he couldn’t and wouldn’t do that to her memory. To all the happiness that she had given him, to her honor. And as the months passed, I put him further back into my mind. Until that night, last night when I saw him dancing once again upon the stars of this very blvd. He’d found his new mistress, a super long beige dachshund chihuahua combo. When it arrived, its name tag simply read Sandy, but the name didn’t feel quite right. As he spent time with her, allowing her to accept him, not the other way around, it happened. “She was the one.” Ken said, “who had to take me in and in so doing, she cured me of my blues, so I call her Sandy Blue.” His hands now flowed across the neck of his ukulele, and their music, it spoke of their life once again.</p>
<p> </p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421642018-01-24T18:04:34-08:002018-01-25T10:26:01-08:00BUYING TIME<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/7430492133e1ee245cb65f7d2c1fdc48714fdc42/large/img-0272-edit.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p>It’s about 10 PM at the Hollywood Royale Rest Home, the one on the corner of Beachwood and Franklin Ave. It sits right across from the La Mirage Motel where recovered addicts are born, but I don’t think many people know this. It backs right up, maybe twenty feet away from the 101 Freeway, but no one seems to give a fuck. There’s a lot of good oblivion being lived right on those two corners. In the Royale though, all the rooms are dark except for one. Somebody up on that second floor is trying to squeeze another sit-com into their final days. Down the road is a French producer, actor, writer, an impotent impresario, a Jill of all trades. Her window is always open on hot summer nights like this. And as I walk, I pull from my inner bowels a deep belch and deliver it at her window as I stroll. The curtains are always drawn, but I know she’s in there, rolling her painted eyes. Watching her candles burn, waiting for the blue spark that will be her life. The one she’s always imagined. She bites at her time, waiting for her phone or email to ring. Just once, before she heads that hundred yards down to the Royale. Where she can join the other lives. The tremblers, trying to warm themselves from a dying fire deep within. Shaking their soul to life, as the last of them fades. Never having used their spark. Never having set their forest on fire.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421622018-01-24T18:01:37-08:002018-01-25T10:24:46-08:00I AM THE BLVD.<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/675059667ddfc71a60e6560eb5f1448c96a7969a/large/3q5x9968.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p>So this is where I live, just off the blvd. I live here because it affirms I’m alive. My days of running, those spent chasing stories around the world are over. My past has now caught up with me and for the first time since the age of five I’m starting to feel whole again. I’d traveled, with compassion, empathy and found the worlds suffering, the voiceless before me and my camera and the voice I never had, became theirs as I translated the pain I felt outwards into the world. I was photographing myself and yes, I am the blvd.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421592018-01-24T17:56:04-08:002018-01-25T10:28:37-08:00TIGER BLOOD<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/dee09cd2bf8cd251084d0ea393f2425eba2d6ef9/large/charliewatts.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">The little old man with the neck goiter was an exceptional human being. Now I’ve put some miles in around this world, probably two million and his was the second largest goiter I have ever seen. It was the size and shape of a small football. Actually it was more of a back of the neck type goiter. The top of it pushed out above his collar leaving the rest of the lump to the imagination. The biggest one I have seen was in Haiti and it was a true neck goiter and he was friends with a guy who had a pair of testicles growing from his forehead and dropping down covering his left eye, but that is another story. So, the old man with the neck goiter passes slowly by. His fruits or maybe it’s his vegetables fall through the wire mesh at the bottom of his trolley, dragging on the ground. After ten feet he catches on, and awkwardly bends, the only way his body will allow and stuffs them back up into position. When he walks, he looks like a pie, with the wedges between eight and ten taken out. Like he was in a side impact collision and just sorta stayed that way. He’s out there on the blvd. though, probably giving it hell each and every day.</span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421582018-01-24T17:52:35-08:002018-01-25T10:34:39-08:00THE WRIGGLER<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/bbc3d8e59c2b2c47e8ac589d9864f50770875e9b/large/haveyouseenthisdog.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /><span class="font_regular">A woman, mid thirties, slender, dishwater blonde, somehow decides to tie her little black and white Basenji up next to the returned, loquacious leper of a man Herman. A braless shiny, who should not be braless, looks down at him as she passes by, continuing her conversation. “Twenty million ought to be enough. I don’t see what the problem is.” There is no exit for him or me, for we are common people. Everyman. Her and her conversation trail off into markets end and the shiny dog breaks the silent discourse. He’s like the shiny boy and doesn’t know any better. He jumps into his lap, wriggling his entire body. The man smiles the moment joy is transferred from the animal’s body. They give this energy back and forth to one another, the smiler and the wriggler. He opens up his backpack and pulls half a granola bar from somewhere inside. The woman’s day will be shattered when she returns from market realizing common people have touched her dog. May kids and dogs someday rule the world.</span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421552018-01-24T17:50:00-08:002018-01-25T10:47:13-08:00SKINLESS PEACH<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/bb4a381adc8bbfc47e8a54bf9a26091a1b43ba51/original/3q5x0003.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">And he began..."I never did lose my way. Never. Even though it was dark. Even though it happened a long time ago. I always kept at least three bucks in my pocket. It’s what I had available you know? Just enough to get by.” The shiny boy with his little white socks pulled high, every button buttoned stood before the man and his greatness listening. He was of a species, a subset of man that he had never encountered and he was intrigued. He listened to the man as he spoke his truth. “I’m not bitter or anything. It’s just the way it happened. It was sweet, like blueberry wine.” He hacks up five dry coughs and continues. “You don’t know nuthin’ about love. You don’t know what happens to you. Someone once said love is like a bird flying by. We’re all stuck on the ground man, and all the women, there all up there in the sky man, open wings. It’s hard to breathe in this world. It’s so ugly. My name is Herman and I don’t look like that man on the billboard. I don’t give a shit. I’m not helpless.” His parents called him over but the boy was transfixed. The shinnies kept calling for the child who refused to listen. They finally have to drag him away by the hand. “That chicken smells good.” He continued. “I’m gonna go and get me some.” He gets up and wonders off into the crowd of shinnies who give him a wide birth like he’s Moses. They don’t know his real name is Herman. They don’t know how beautiful he is. They don’t know his prose. He’s just a sticky summer peach without its skin. He’s gone. Only the shiny boy and I are left with his words, the only ones to have known him for the day.</span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50421542018-01-24T17:46:35-08:002018-01-25T10:48:28-08:00PIGEON'S WING<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/2d7e791e52a7960fa13664ba03f55a9bd6e18892/original/3q5x9998.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /><span class="font_regular">It’s about what people get reduced to in the midst of the dream. The broken, those fragile moments; the collective consciousness of agony, of hunger, that brings them all down to the blvd. They bring the carcass that is their life; they bring it down to sacrifice. Drawing the blood, siphoning it out, laying it onto the alter. Waiting for the priest, the agent, the demi-god. The one. The one who will tell them it’s not a blvd. of broken glass. The one who will ferret them, pigeon them under the wing, the one that glimmers of hope. To sell the lie, to wrestle it down, so that it can be so easily slept with. In times such as these, there is no shelter from the storm. There is only the storm, the horse, her latitude. The Raft of the Medusa, Gericault, it spoke of such storms, adrift, abandoned, cannibalism and ultimately survival. But who really makes it off the blvd., any of us?</span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50420712018-01-24T17:43:26-08:002018-01-25T10:53:13-08:00CONFESSIONS + ETCHINGS<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/887ed525b26ca39ed97be27bdb9c2cd5a66dd260/original/img-0281-edit.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">The “Greativeness of Sharon” is etched into what was once a partially dry sidewalk. By the looks of it, a gentleman committed a pen to his effort. Dirt, tiny pellets of rubber and dried bits of street weeds, the thinnest of slivers, fills in the great mans work so it looks like a stencil. Below it, sits a bottle of Toaka vodka, 200ml. It’s 80 proof, standard rotgut. He must have returned here to swallow back a few of her memories. She has her own star now. It’s on the corner of El Centro Ave and Sunset. It’s not the blvd., but it’s close enough. I turn, and see a great double limper coming at me from a distance. She is beautiful in that she displays herself and all of her flaws. My confession is that I am the flawed one and she is perfect. Nothing hidden. Her pain, it lays directly upon her. She is obvious. Behind the backs of her knees are two parallel scars three inches apart. The scars, they run down into her shoes and up into her short dress. They are one third of an inch wide, raised from the surface and are of a bright pink to purple. I wonder what my scars would look like if you could see them. Not as beautiful and they could never make me walk again. We’re all limper’s; I’m just better at hiding it. I am like her, before she got the scars laid on her. What was broken in her was made better. I can barely stand in braces and boots. She is walking victory in her fuchsia top and pale grey eyes. I must learn to limp as she. To let the pain go that is surrendered to the back of my heart.</span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50420692018-01-24T17:37:27-08:002018-01-25T10:57:17-08:00RIBBONS + BOWS<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/3a9bdff40f1573b731ab3544ad3a62b0877ae5d0/large/3q5x5920.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">A little girl, maybe three, I’m not good with kid’s ages never having had one. Well, never having raised one walks by the money shaker. She pulls at her mother’s hand, taking the best of a long look. Ribbons and bows, they flow from her as the gentleness of her youth passes the soft, round man. He is the one who sits at the bottom of the Gower exit shaking his fast food cup of choice, but the money shaking thing is just a cover up, what he really does is sell crack. Certain guys pull down the off ramp and he closes up shop and runs around the corner leaning into their open window. Easy. I’ve bought too much of it not to know the score. He knows I know. </span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50420662018-01-24T17:34:29-08:002018-01-25T11:01:42-08:00JUMBO'S<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/24857445b212fe73ba7d3064d2f7cc0116e07153/original/3q5x9928.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p>I hit the streets early today going against the natural rhythm. Only people with jobs, places to go, are out early while most of us are still in our beds, but I get lucky and I catch one. I’ve walked by this place, four maybe five hundred times, nothing but a couple of stragglers puffing away on life’s last cigarette. But here they are in all their glory. The Hollywood Royale Retirement Home and today is field trip day. A Latin woman, early thirties, curled, long, tied up hair calls out the names on her roster. There’s the toothless midget sucking away at his cigarette leaning on his walker, yup, he’s bustin’ out. There’s a man of North African descent feeding peanuts to a squirrel, though I think it is they who are feeding his soul, not sure on that one, will have to get back to you. There is a Bard in there as well who is a long way from Stratford practicing his soliloquy in front of an audience of none. And even though it’s senior living, there are a lotta folks who do not look to be seniors. Just people hitting their expiration date early. God, for their sake I hope they’re taking them down to Jumbo’s, the ultimate in casual striptease. Let them be moths please, lead them to the red of the light and let them flutter.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50420642018-01-24T17:30:52-08:002018-01-25T11:03:33-08:00ACHILLES HEEL<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/ed4873cb9758a1ce55d99ba1473f90b0a2392b90/original/110923-cfinlay-theblvd-6941.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></p>
<p>I’m out here with a throng of people who all believe in something. There’s Johnny Depp, Homer Simpson, Freddy, Pinhead, midget Yoda, two guitarists playing Stairway to Heaven, Hotel California, Smoke on the Water and the Guns and Roses version of Knockin’ on Heavens Door. Out here it’s a big sun, shining better than it does anywhere else. Star maps are on sale today. They’re normally five bucks now they’re four. It’s a summer Sunday here on the blvd. and everyone’s fallen for the lie. The lie that says there is substance to be found in lives other than your own. I wonder what it must be like to dress up as Johnny Depp and stand out on the blvd. all day charging people money to have their pictures taken with you. I think it’s a racket, and Superman’s running it. I saw him trying to recruit a few new hires. I also saw little Chucky hiding behind a planter with his mask off taking a big hit of something. I found Superman and ratted him out. I never liked Chucky and I shafted him. I’m in my own movie now with my own ending, and I wiped him out, fuck it. They probably have a union anyway and he’ll be protected. Maybe they’re all fucked up underneath their masks and Superman’s running the drug market as well. Shit man, maybe Chucky put a hit out on me, and Rambo’s gonna slit my Achilles heel and they’re all gonna descend down upon me and rain their rage into my soul. They’d cull me out of a herd of tourists like a pride of ragged lions; they’d take me down for sure. Yeah, I’d better avoid the yard for a while; I’d never stand a chance.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50420592018-01-24T17:23:03-08:002018-01-25T11:09:38-08:00635-5388<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/60ec2c2b71bb11a07aad6e9fabcf1514f2244f37/large/number635.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /><span class="font_regular">And from the blvd., it comes by way of a fallen universe. Where cleanliness and godliness, they struggle to co-exist. I inhale, snatching bits of code. Cipher them. I wrote my name upon the water on top of a star. I stood on the blvd., the crossroads of Hollywood and Vine and I waited. Hundreds eased by in the bitter heat but nothing. No great people, no notes from heaven. I know I am not beautiful, but I deserve at least a taste, so I drift down river over the red ochre stars and I wait. I wait for the sorrow, for Johnny Cash to sing me into the darkness. I come across a poster, torn mostly to shreds under the eave of a first story construction site. An eye, part of a torn face, a phone number, slivers, fragments in time printed and then lost. And then I remembered, Pollack stole from Picasso. It was the drip from the horse’s mouth in Guernica. Created, birthed an entire career, a movement from just one drop. Picasso, rarely if ever dripped and Pollack caught it. </span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/50420632018-01-24T01:35:00-08:002018-01-27T09:00:06-08:00WRONG SIZE<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/c58c964f5a2f5c3508724a90707ce1aef024c71e/original/mg-8535.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /><span class="font_regular">Another homeless man approaches, pushing his red guitar in a blue baby carriage. I’ll bet he knows three chords and the truth. He’s one of the charcoal people, beautiful and innocent. The life preserver with the biggest hole is his. He wades out into traffic picking up a single black shoe from the double yellow line. A moment’s inspection is allowed, then he drops the shoe. Wrong size. The car horns belch at him but he’s oblivious. He’s never in a hurry to get or go anywhere. He doesn’t have any appointments. He is his own sun. In retrospect, he belongs to the street wader clan. These are the guys that just wonder out at any time. Twisting fate and altering people’s lives. It was on Sunset; right in front of me when the wader went out, and no it wasn’t a cross walk. The Cadillac had less than twenty feet to stop. He could either lock it up or run the man over. He locked it up and got rear-ended by two other cars. The wader just kept walking, he didn’t look, I don’t even think he blinked. Ambulances came and the bloodied people were taken away on stretchers.</span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49282822017-11-10T18:06:32-08:002018-01-24T11:32:22-08:00LOVE PARK<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/3a2a50742bffb28d67e6d33909b960a38af8add9/medium/110926-cfinlay-star3-v2-copy-2.jpg" class="size_m justify_left border_" />And as I walk down the blvd., I simply snatch broken pieces of conversation... </p>
<p>Wake up blood bags, its time to consume</p>
<p>I don’t really want to go to Japan, but they have everything I want there </p>
<p>It’s good because it’s slow but it’s fast </p>
<p>She talks to angels, that’s not the point </p>
<p>Baby I can break you down </p>
<p>Movie star homes </p>
<p>Free paternity test </p>
<p>Stomach shots lets turn around </p>
<p>I mean like, like, like, I’m creative </p>
<p>Tell mom I want to be a sumo wrestler </p>
<p>Stop walkin’ into people before I smack you </p>
<p>God’s she’s fuckin’ hot </p>
<p>Do a good deed today </p>
<p>Everyone’s gettin’ somethin’ </p>
<p>Just eat what you can </p>
<p>The mushroom cycle </p>
<p>I’m already sick of the playoffs </p>
<p>Love Park </p>
<p>I’m gonna submerge my double dip </p>
<p>What’s your number on the Internet </p>
<p>I’ve got a hole in my foot </p>
<p>The sooner these things pop the better </p>
<p>Half is half of half but it’s not a quarter </p>
<p>Let me see that look on your face</p>
<p>Stick to the spicy milk in the cup </p>
<p>I can eat all day what about it </p>
<p>She’s an easy lover, awkward limbs </p>
<p>I just stuffed my face with calories right now </p>
<p>I dropped a pound in a week and a half on my meat diet </p>
<p>Yeah lets go we’re burnin’ daylight </p>
<p>I love a well-dressed woman who uses fuck every other word </p>
<p>Make that tortilla bleed </p>
<p>You know we shouldn’t have left the puppy in the car </p>
<p>I’ve got lights for the man cruiser </p>
<p>Tear the lettuce off and throw it on the ground </p>
<p>I lost 7.15 inches in the last 6 months </p>
<p>I can't get it out of you, your gonna need a doctor to do that </p>
<p>I should be a doctor</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49280252017-11-10T15:15:37-08:002018-01-24T11:35:59-08:00AFTERLIFE<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/cef56cc3e497245ff577a2a305c15ebd53a7a408/large/07481-fr5-copy.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />I arrived, maybe sixty seconds after the man was shot, before the police, before the fire guys. I knelt before him to my right under his outstretched arms. His eyes were pinned back before the blood closed them. The red, it poured from either side of his mouth, his nose. There was no pain as I entered the cavern of death with him. I was soon pushed aside by the ghosts of his afterlife. These men who have taken so many down its halls, have another. As do I.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49280132017-11-10T15:10:28-08:002018-01-24T16:31:30-08:00BOTTLE NOSE<p><span class="font_large"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/04dff71c61b0f295341cb96ab1caaff4b7563e39/large/3q5x2234-sized.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" /></span><span class="font_regular"><span style="font-size: 1em;">To she who once swam without fear, I acknowledge you. To your Bottle Nose beauty. Your last breath, lost in the vastness of our sea. Without a voice, left to die alone. Until your body meets with my camera, my soul and I breathe back in the essence that was once you. The photographs came from a different place this time. Reflected through a 7th prism, a dimension that had expressed itself only briefly over the last two decades. I’d removed the mind from the photograph.</span></span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49280122017-11-10T15:09:08-08:002018-01-23T23:34:50-08:00BOB'S SNORKLE SHACK<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/365245707f0b160ecacae45bed3c8f61b4d1c939/large/bobssnorkelshack.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />“You having fun yet? Nope. You having fun yet? Nope. You having fun yet? Nope. You having fun yet? Nope. You having fun yet? Nope. Pass me a fucking banana would you…” And that’s how it all began, as the baboon tourists sat, waiting with their bellies full of boredom, apathy and misery. They looked fresh off the bus from the Lithium Institute with nothing but pick axes and death in their eyes. The one big fat guy with his mask on his head, wetsuit on backwards with bulging pink limbs full of high blood pressure and cholesterol was the worst. Oh shit because that could be me in ten or less; note to self, always have cyanide handy. Hawaii is all about mirrors and being seen in public. The veil must be lifted, but I ignore, choosing instead to busy myself in the completion of photographs, my greatest distraction in life. I think of the Curse of Lono… the last big voice that came booming out of here was Hunter ST. Spreading the thick hummus of his words across the printed page. The devil surely had him, wrestling that thick tongue of his, scraping off the paste and throwing it under the might of Steadman’s bloodied blade. Two knights, savoring their collective lust.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49280042017-11-10T14:55:39-08:002018-01-24T11:39:25-08:00ANGEL CITY<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/a6f2169659c3ce29faedec4a81bf716191a62337/large/3q5x5369.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />For the abandoned and the neglected, for the overflow of life there is a safe house. It is both a home of hope and a home of sorrow. I am conflicted. I find myself drawn into each of their faces, their emotions, and I am held in that moment as they are. A reverse image is made of me, my camera, my presence. I am long forgotten by them now, but the conflict, the guilt is my being able to turn and walk away from their corner of the world and just vanish. They have shared their very essence in that brief moment, and I find myself... well, I have given nothing.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49279482017-11-10T14:36:18-08:002018-01-24T11:40:03-08:00SPIRITWOOD<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/97f31e3d2d81c67128c4626bbba80b770970b922/original/110926-cfinlay-redbirds.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />Finally, I’m off the grid of humanity, off into a place where I can just drift and drive. After four hours, I’m out past the cell zone, out past the radio. My mind and my quixotic soul are now in complete congruence. And on into the silent sheets of rain I spin. Into God’s great sky of grey, folding into each breath of wind. I slow, feeling the pull of an easy magnetism and ease the car to the right. Before me, hundreds of ravens take to the air circling my car. They too are the blood and bone of me, and I am breathless as they share their spirit wood with me. The black sky, their painting of feathers above me, the way their wings brush against the sightless horizon enter me as myth. The birds feel as if they’ve soldiered through time to be here, and that this is their final immaculate place of rest. Four hours and hundreds of miles of exits, and this is the random one I chose. I will not spread my camera here upon your silent landscape of rain. Instead I will touch your black earth, the roots of the trees from which you were born. I chose not to photograph you; I chose instead to commit you to my inner world. Not everything needs to be rendered still. In these recent years, I’ve chosen to walk away from more and more images. I am happy in the fact that I alone have seen them. The cumbersome nature of the camera takes away from the sense of being true and pure as witness in spirit.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49278282017-11-10T13:39:14-08:002018-01-24T11:40:43-08:00MARLIN<p><span class="font_regular"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/717a6011d438295c9256c5250f759dca70e0be95/original/3q5x1153-edit-plus15sat.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />I find myself here over thirty years later holding onto the thread of just one memory. I was on a dock somewhere on this island, and a massive, gargantuan beast of a marlin was lifted off of a boat for all of us mere mortals to fathom. Christ, these were big men, real men who fought this sworded demon to its tumultuous death. So yes, I returned to the memory, the myth and started chasing down every boat launch and pier… until I found her. Females are the big ones, and she was a “Grander” tipping in at 1,004 lbs. I was told two obese ladies from the Midwest landed her, took them about 4 and a half hours, plus or minus the crew’s help, which I imagine to be substantial. They drug the gargantuan female up onto the boats deck and took to her beauty with baseball bats until her soul was gone.</span></p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49278272017-11-10T13:35:35-08:002018-01-24T16:50:11-08:00THE BARBIE OF OIL<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/ce562303bcf50d97094761b424ed2db8bbef2437/original/3q5x0269.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />In an abandoned oil refinery, I drift alone under the 108 degree heat. The camel in me manifests, sucking water from one of my humps, my ghost appendage. I feel no thirst or hunger as my soul guides the process. I reside under the eclipse. I am so well accustomed to the loss of self, that photography becomes a complete and utter meditative process. My heart no longer beats and I no longer breathe. I am lost to myself, totally immersed and this is the space that I inhabit. Endorphins flow. The addiction to photography rolls so deep, so strong, it's out beyond a state of mind.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49278082017-11-10T13:26:09-08:002018-01-24T11:42:06-08:00GOLD OF AUTUMN<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/e7a5464c99f6fd2a66f44f365402cbd6464b1d42/original/3q5x8186-copy-plus15-sat.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />There was a time, when those who came to spawn were the only ones. They were soon followed by the fish who swim as rainbows, those who came to swallow the egg. Then came the bears with their dusted coats of caramel, all gathered for hibernations harvest. They dove out from the shores of the Kirkuit as brilliant acrobats into their shared river of life. All of them feeding a hunger that time alone and consequence has brought. As it has brought me. I am compelled however to speak of truth. I am here to witness beauty, sidestepping my stock and trade of tragedy. In these first days of fall, as the leaves of cottonwood turn to trees of golden fire I fan out into the water in my chest waders to swim with the bears. The camera I have brought with me lies at the fringe of irrelevant…I am now one with the water as they are. This river of autumn’s gold.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49278072017-11-10T13:22:01-08:002018-01-24T11:42:36-08:00BELFAST<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/ba7721fc19fe295be10c78f3b0357c3b93348f6e/original/70123-fr4.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />Yes, it emerged here on the streets of Belfast. Innocence, mine was about to be lost. It came by way of two children. And it was their smile, their youth, the exuberance, the joy. Held in a moment inside their bright blue eyes. In the opposite direction was an elderly man, shoulders narrowed from the weight of his life as he carried his invisible yoke with him up the delving road. He took me on life’s journey of sorrow that day, and I left my youth cutting the string to my own life. I’d like to go back to that place now, almost thirty years later, to that place where I traded my past for my present.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49277952017-11-10T13:07:36-08:002018-01-24T11:43:18-08:00SACCHARIN TREE<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/b22ff544eafcede202a89c9375fe055b32f4e276/original/110923-cfinlay-saccharintree.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />Saccharin Tree is my timeline; it represents the frozen years that are behind me. It is also about the unguarded creativity of youth, the loss of that innocence and then the slow reclamation of soul, which comes from spending nearly thirty years on the road as a documentary photographer. </p>
<p>I am in search of answers. Blackened by life, I am the one legged albatross in search of salvation. Words, thoughts, reflections and artifacts will be added...</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49277942017-11-10T13:04:16-08:002018-01-24T11:54:34-08:00ENTER HYENA<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/4ae2f002d898876a2ee80484d55a96fcf71b8fd0/medium/babyphotos12-top-crop-72dpi.jpg" class="size_m justify_left border_" />I was born in Edinburgh Scotland. Shortly thereafter, I was on a jumbo jet crossing the Atlantic, landing in the punch bowl of sunny, Southern California where I would spend my formative years surfing. But in retrospect, the first of my many rebirths was not until I reached my early 20’s. I was borderline idiot savant until I started to write with my left hand. This single event, allowed me to switch from left brain to right and the photographer I am today, the hyena was born.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Roadtag:colinfinlay.com,2005:Post/49277382017-11-10T12:45:00-08:002018-01-24T11:44:51-08:00A FEATHER FALLS<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/273822/59e8c2e32967f9df988d0add14f9233fd44e14fc/original/110419-cfinlay-102-23acr-cropped.jpg" class="size_l justify_left border_" />It began here, from the 5th or 6th roll of film I ever let spool through a camera. I’d maybe shoot a roll of film a week, but I knew early on that I was drawn to photojournalism. So, I bought a scanner from Radio Shack, and would drive around comatose Santa Barbara in my ’65 Mustang waiting for something, anything to break loose. Desperate as a treeless squirrel, my camera, mind and soul were all for rent. Driving back home on an uneventful day, a screaming red blur of fire trucks stampeded by. So I flipped a u-turn and roared after them. It was then that I saw the black smoke; they would be the 1st engines on scene. I parked a quarter of a mile behind them, and tore off into the carbon and orange field that was now ablaze. Dante’s gatekeepers though, damn, these were efficient men, and they had reduced the flames down to a whisper of smoke and filtered light. I dropped to one knee and no I don’t recall why and snapped a handful of images into my little black box and I was done. The smoke, it oozed from every pore, up inside my nose, clinging to the back of my throat and I finally felt vibrantly alive in those brief, searing moments. Adrenalin mixed with serotonin and I was hooked and deep with a triple barb. The subtle beauty of the black and white film completely seduced me. I got back home and pulled out my little metal tins and reels and my D-76 and I went to work heating and agitating, and like the fire, burned my film, allowing sections to melt together. By grace, the 1st of many feathers fell from the sky and I was saved. I had one, my earliest image, and that would help me stay the slender course that was to come.</p>Colin Finlay + Hearts Road