Gianluca Ricoveri ~ Landscape 1225 Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
—Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971
This is a very appropriate image for our last {daily pic} on this site, pixelsatanexhibition.com, evocative of promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep.
I believe in the power of art and music and literature to sustain and guide us in dark times. I have never given on my hopes for a more just world (and for true love).
So maybe it's time for the oceans to rise again. I'm hoping the new P1XELS site will engender a second renaissance in the mobile arts.
The official launch date for the new site will be November 29, the seven-year anniversary of the launch of the very first P1XELS site and the calls for submission for the very first iPhone photography gallery show.
We have published 29,000 images here over the past seven years. It has been an amazing journey. The curated history of mobile photography and the arts. This site will become a permanent and searchable static archive as a sub-domain of P1XELS.com.
I am very excited about the next incarnation of the site as a true social network.
I won't be posting as much here for the next two weeks since there is a lot to do still to get the new site where I want it for when we open it up to the public.
If you want to get in there early & help get the forums going & create your profile & add some galleries to it, write me.
And don't worry, I'll be doing the {daily pic} on the new P1XELS website!
Happy Trails by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans
Categories: Country Life | Permalink
Source: {the last daily pic} Gianluca Ricoveri ~ Landscape 1225
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