This is what You Get when I Surf my own Website for Inspiration


Another Story.
For some reason, I have been very inspiration-less this week. I am not sure what it is, but I know I go through phases like this and I know it will pass. Blogging is like life that way.

On this post, I mentioned that I had met Stuart Klipper because I quoted him. I also mentioned that it was a long story and I would tell it later. I guess now is later, because here is the story:

Many years ago, in a magical land far, far away (okay, it was circa 1992 in Minneapolis) I went to an exhibit of polar photographs with my dear friend Alicia at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The artist had taken wonderful, panoramic shots of polar snowfields stretching in vast, undulating whiteness, empty as the skies above. Occasionally, the otherwise empty landscapes were augmented by whimsical things like a giant velvet Elvis in the middle of the landscape. I was captivated.

In addition to these photos, there was an annex with a few non-polar photographs by the same artist. One of the photographs was of a manhole cover that had the longitude and latitude of the manhole's location, inscribed with the quote, "Know where you are, be where you're at." I love quotes, and scribbled this one in my ever-present notebook.

Fast forward a few years to 1995. I signed on with America Online and sketchily filled out my profile. One of the fields was for a quote, so I typed in "Know where you are, be where you're at - Stuart Klipper." Several months later, when I was living in California for a few months with friends, I got an e-mail from Stuart Klipper. A friend of his had done a search for Stuart on AOL and had come up with my quote and cite. Stuart politely wondered how I had come across the quote. I replied, and thus started my first e-mail friendship.

A few years later, I even got to meet Stuart - he had a gallery show in SoHo and I was able to make some New York meetings coincide with its opening. I still have the snapshot he took of me in a rack on my desk. We have drifted in recent years, and I have not written or spoken to him in quite a while. Perhaps it is time to reconnect.

Posted: Thursday - June 02, 2005 at 08:38 AM         | |

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