Long Life Cool White: Photographs by Moyra Davey at the FOGG Art Museum

             I immediately connected with Moyra's photographs at the Fogg museum because the images brought back remembrances of my past. Vivid memories of listening to great music, bringing joy into my life, independence, separation from my parents while living at home, finding my own path. It's funny, as I'm writing these words and my 15 year old son is sitting behind me on the computer, just beginning his separation from me. His attitude, the music blaring in his bedroom, his "space", all remind me of myself at his age. One advantage I have over my parents in dealing with the teenage "loud music" phase is my son and I have very similar taste in music, so I like the majority of the songs he plays. I find that fact pretty amazing.  Music plays such a huge role in a persons independent rite of passage. Music truly begins to define who we are during the teenage years. It did for me, and it's now beginning to happen with my son, too.

The image of Moyra's that launched me back in time was the close-up of the shure record needle pressed into the grooves of black vinyl. The records that I loved had perfect scratches at the beginning because of all the times I just guessed at where to start the song, moving the needle over to what I thought was the correct spot by eye, and dropping it down into the sound.  That feeling of standing in my bedroom, blasting the volume when no one was home, really came flooding back into my mind. I wandered around, looking at the other images of the show, shifting back and forth between being in the "now", and then floating back in time to my old house, my old friends, neighborhood, in essence "childhood". 

The first LP I bought was American Woman by 'The Guess Who".  It was the mid 70's, cassette players in cars were hi-tech inventions. When I begged and begged some more, my older sister let me take her Midnight blue , metallic paint Pontiac LeMans to bring my girl to the movies. OK,. back to the gallery.  In the second room, the photographs of LP's reminded me of how much physical "space" the records used. The whole experience of examining the LP cover art, pulling out the paper or plastic sleeve wrapping the vinyl, and then pulling out the jet black 12" record, became a somewhat spiritual ceremony with certain LP's. One other thought that occurred to me when scanning the Lp titles in the photograph. I used to think that I could tell if I'd truly like a person or not based on the record collection they had. Based on the collection of LP's in Moyra's photographs; Al Green's Have A good time, John Coltrane's Impulse, and Gang of Four's Entertainment, to name just a few, it sounds like me and this mystery person would get along just fine.