ABNER NOLAN: “Away”

abnernolan4 ABNER NOLAN: Away

And it always ends in death… the Home of the Brave – the Land of the Free and the fragile thread that is our breath.

We reach back into our head and touch the collective dream… the shared memento-a memory quilt, the things, they happened-it happened-everything happened – the connections, the land, the race – our race. The dusts and dirts, our happiness and our hurts… the cycle, our circle, a continuum, our line from our past. Our future, our present and our path, it’s out there, it’s happening… we get there, and then poof – it’s gone, behind us, fading grey then into the black. The heart beats, the mortality… our essence, our being. The life goes in, into our heads and it’s buried, it’s us. It is, it was, then it’s gone. The portals – our eyes– the holes in our heads – they glare out from within and soak up all the frames – they’re whirling by, accumulate, the images collect – before we’re dead, their stuck – in our head. We’re racing, the moments, the feel, the flesh but it goes – the past slowly becomes more of our view. The frames that drift Away into our heads, the fade that leaves us with the dents, the impression, the American Ghosts, our Ghost – the trace of what once was, and now a vapor and a whisper, the Ghosts that are called up with just a tiny scent. Far away-so close-trapped inside – yet there is nothing there but the memory that we own – that we share. The real fades into a trace, the trace blends into your dreams – and it is moving further behind, leaving you with only the fragments and the scent… what was is Away – what is Away is all that there was and yet it’s here, so close, floating Away with the wind, carrying you toward your death…

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It is coming – the past – it’s running by. Further behind and Away, off your back… death is coming, you’re moving toward her, she’s here, right on track.

From Paul Schiek and his lovely little white (TBW) book, Abner Nolan’s “Away” sits your head upon the fragile thread, the thread of the dead – the shared memories & the voices inside our Collective American Head. An American past made of dirt and dust – of dreams and lust and of memories on the wind that are blowing away with a powerful gust. With found photographs and a delicate, sparing touch comes a beautiful tale of impressions and dents, of ghosts and spirts, of the past – of human bents… the traces of what once was – the gone’s and the went’s. As an almost antithesis to a cold, contemporary photographic world that has engulfed us, comes a rich and layered palette of photographic dreams and beautiful aesthetic flaws…a filmstrip that breathes and warmly touches your head even as it speaks through the dreams of the dead.