the camera eye

There's a place on campus called "The Pointe". It’s a place for lovers and dreamers and me. The Pointe is a knoll sitting high above the Broad River, looking due west across the river to flood plain farmland and the department of corrections complex. If you stand on The Pointe and look left, you can see the I-20 bridge about 2 miles away. From this distance, you can see cars and tractor-trailers crawling along the interstate, but you can't hear a sound. About 4 miles past the interstate, on down the river, the Columbia skyline is visible. At night, all lit up with energy, but not a sound. The first time I stood there and looked out, I remembered an obscure Rush lyric (what's new, you say?). "Pavements may teem with intense energy, but the city is calm in this violent sea."
Years later, in a guitar lesson, when I had just played a piece for him by Roland Dyens, my teacher asked what images I had while I played the piece. Images? I didn't need images, I was making music. He ruined it for me. Immediately, I said, "urban". Actually, the scene I just described to you entered my mind. So it was a kind of "urban, detached." I imagined all the hustle and energy, but as if observed from a distance. This time, though I was not on the point, looking miles down the river, but atop a building watching the traffic from above. Now and then, the noise of a car horn, or stray siren, but mostly noiseless movement. As I played, I wondered if I wanted to be down there in the chaos, or if all those people wanted to be up here in the quiet. Maybe I wanted to be down there in the energy, but experience it in peace. To be unaffected by the chaos, stress, the pace. I've seen video where someone is moving at normal speed while everything around them is speeding by at 10 times the speed of life. I think that is possible. Didn't Einstein say that time isn't real? Stress is probably not real either. How can we figure that out?
Tonight, Dan and I went out to The Pointe at sunset. I took my camera and shot dozens of yellows, oranges, and gradient blues. I shot the I-20 bridge and the Columbia skyline. Every time we'd hear some stray noise invade our space, I'd joke, "oh man, now that's going to be in my picture."
But tonight when I got home and looked at the pics I'd taken – not a single noise could be heard.