Maudlin

I think I get maudlin. More often than not it happens unconsciously, which is maybe the most honest way to say it. I don't decide to. It just arrives.

At this moment, some music from YouTube Music is playing — "Beautiful Relaxing Music — Stop Overthinking, Stress Relief Music," et al. Piano. Mellow. Very rubato, as if the piano is speaking to an audience, and in this case an audience of one. There are bird song sounds woven through it. And in real life, the sun is peeking through the slats of the blinds in my office, covering my desk in beautiful golden light.

I'm half expecting a director to say cut. It's very cinematic.

A few things come to mind. The more obvious one is Dad. I'm still coming to terms with his passing, and the light right now is the kind of light that brings him forward — not in any specific memory, just in the general way that beautiful things tend to do lately. He arrives in the edges of ordinary moments. A song. A slant of sun. The quiet of an office in the early afternoon.

The other thing is that I haven't picked up my camera in over a month.

That one's harder to say out loud. I've been a photographer for nearly fifty years. My dad gave me my first camera, a Canon FTB, in the late 70s.

There's a photo of us at Niagara Falls, circa 1981 — I just changed my Facebook profile to it. We're posed, the two of us, and I've got a camera around my neck. That camera was always our give and take. He'd give me a good talking to about it, telling me not to think too much of it, not to let it become the main thing in my life — keep it on the side. And then in the next breath, he'd ask me to take photos at a family event, or to shoot his passport photo, or whatever else needed shooting. That tension never really resolved. Maybe it wasn't supposed to.

And here I am, sitting in light I would normally be reaching for — the kind of golden, slatted, painterly light that I'd usually try to catch with the Leica or set up a frame for with the Nikon — and the camera stays where it is. On the shelf. In the bag. Untouched.

I don't know exactly what to call it. It's not that I've lost the eye. I can see the light. I'm describing it right now. I just can't seem to lift the camera to it.

Maybe it's grief. Maybe it's that creating right now would feel like business as usual, and nothing about this season is business as usual. Maybe the camera is too tied to him — the gift, the years of carrying one because he handed me that first one. Maybe picking it up means picking up the version of myself that existed before April 2nd, and I'm not ready for that yet.

Or maybe it's simpler than all that. Maybe sometimes the right thing to do is just sit in the light and let it be light. Not capture it. Not frame it. Not make anything of it. Just see it, and let it see you back. They say when you're creating, don't focus too hard on creating — be present, live in the moment. Maybe that's what this is.

The piano is still playing. The birds are still in the recording. The sun has shifted slightly across my desk. The camera is still where I left it.

And maybe this is my way of dealing with loss. As I write this, the music continues to play, the tears begin to well up, and I'm once again crying at my desk. I do this more often than not these days. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older and I'm more affected by things than I used to be, or because I'm missing Dad, or because I'm pondering my own mortality, or some mix of all of it. Probably all of it.

And I'm still here. Sitting in beautiful, relaxing music designed to stop overthinking, but overthinking anyway, but gently. Maudlin, maybe. But also — present. Which is its own kind of creating, I suppose. Even without a shutter.