Shakey was one of the books I received from Amazon last week, a biography of Neil Young. I'm about 200 pages inside up to the release of the first Buffalo Springfield album. Not sure what my reaction is at this point, although I've been thinking about some of Young's comments on how he wrote his music, how it came to him or through him or whatever the current fashion is in describing the process. And the fact he appears to have been, probably still is (I've still got another 500 pages to go, you understand.) a man who does not deal with life easily.

Most of the composers I've heard of and half the writers and artist's I've known seem to have similar issues. I say half the writers as I'm hopeful a miserable existence is not an absolute prerequisite to practicing the craft. I'm a loner, but for all my carping, I've never really been all that unhappy. Been fucked up now and again, but haven't we all.

Sunday. The Carnaval parade took place today in San Francisco and I went over on BART this morning lugging the cameras. I say "lugging", because shooting Carnaval means walking some ungodly number of blocks from the BART station at 24th and Mission to 24th and Bryant where the parade is forming and walking up and down the floats shooting as people are preparing, almost three hours of moving and shooting before the floats finally move out onto the parade route. I actually shot myself out of film, sixteen rolls. Good thing I bought that film last week. Not supposed to do that, you know, shoot yourself out of film. What happens when the photograph of the century presents itself as you're going home, bag slung over your shoulder, back aching, feet aching, belly aching, camera empty? I guess you wave as it passes.

I'd been going through links on ALLABOUTGEORGE.com yesterday, the ones with little asterisk denoting them as sites maintained by journalers whom he's actually met (leading me to think they were probably done by people here in Oakland) and noticed butoh babe was dancing in the parade today with MaraReggae, float number 23. What the hell, I thought, if I can remember what she looks like from the photos she's posted and if I stumble across float number 23 I'll shoot her picture.

I have no idea who George of ALLABOUTGEORGE.com may be, by the way, although his site is a real production, but it made me realize there are quite a few people keeping online journals here in Oakland. A hotbed of artists and writers, murders and mayhem, skyrocketing low rents (as opposed to skyrocketing high rents in the surrounding areas) and Jerry Brown. What more could you want?

The Carnaval parade (we were talking about the Carnaval parade before my digression) is a large parade in that it takes over an hour just to get everyone over the starting line. I arrived before nine, the parade started at ten and I finished shooting dog tired at 11:30 with floats still leaving, so I had no idea if I'd find float 23 or remember the name MaraReggae, but I did find them when I walked through a group of dancers shooting pictures and noticed the signs. Big signs that said MaraReggae. Wadda ya know.

I asked a dancer next to me which member in the troupe kept an online journal. She shook her head. (It occurred to me later she might not want any of these people to know about her online journal. Must remember that. I often talk without thinking.) I walked up to the one Asian dancer I could see and asked her the same question. She frowned.

"What was the name of the journal?"

I had no idea.

"Well, what color are the pages?"

Oh, hell. The color of the pages? This poor woman thinks I'm an idiot - name? color? - but I've obviously found her. I mean, "what color"? So I said I'd found her link on ALLABOUTGEORGE.

"Ah", she said. This made it OK. George, you've got clout in this neighborhood. She'd never heard of my journal, but she was in a good mood (everyone was in a good mood, the music was pulsing, the street was crowded with half naked dancers and you could feel the emotional heat building as the starting time got closer) and posed for one or two quick portrait shots before we both got back to business. Her troupe was dressed in white. I probably screwed up the damned exposure.