Ariel's House

Ariel's House. Casa and home, at one go. Made in the first weeks of the México class (VS185X: Songs & Places: México) in the Spring of 2013. First time I'd offered it--and all the questions were fresh, each one with a new unknown. To me as well. I remember the first night, the challenge of starting up on the first song--with a group of students many of whom came from México—at least in a family sense. But Mauricio (my great helper) had urged me beforehand—do a song first, not a recording--sing one of the songs with them... (He and I had been playing them together for a year or more by then—so the advice was well taken.) And I did...

Starting with was Ojalá que te vaya bonito, from José Alfredo Jiménez—May everything go well for you, May all your sufferings be ended, with all José Alfredo’s rhetorical flourish as he sings to a woman who’s abandoned him. The song is both tender and formal—the rhetoric itself is a part of México. The distance and the close feeling combined. And José Alfredo’s public adored him.  El hijo del pueblo… 
_____

And the Casa above. Ariel's family had come from Mexico City (referred to as D.F. in those days)--and from Russia before. Syria as well. Ariel Cherbowsky. It was a complicated, intertwined story, one that he wanted to explore. (His first project I remember was a world map with México as destination.)  I’d used the phrase, los abuelos de tus abuelos in the course description—your grandparents’ grandparents—and Ariel told me later that those were the words that reached him. Caught his imagination and made him think to join the class. That such questions could be asked, put into words, formed into images.

Just as he’s done here, with Casa--our word for the second week. Yes, a house--but also home. The fresh white clay, already cracked a bit, the plaintively scalloped roof-line (and tell me, how can a roof-line be plaintive? Only Ariel...) And then, of course, the living plants. This being his focus in school, his major in Natural Resources—Ariel’s thesis was a plan for the conservation ecology of Strawberry Canyon. So how not living plants? And at the same time, I think he probably knew that their flowering time would be brief--the green is already a touch droopy. But that has its poignancy, too. And he included the dried leaves and twigs alongside, maybe in recognition.

Both Ariel and not Ariel--a now and a never was, a present and a dream...

In a way it became a question of when to photograph. To catch this beautifully imagined casa in the moment, here on the wall of Room 170 (that's the old plywood behind)—everything still vital and alive.

I'm glad he acted! We're blessed with such moments...


____

Ariel as continues to follow this path of his--at work, holding a shoot of lupine...

.