babinscreams

The past six weeks have been some of the most intensive in my life. With an early July date for putting the house on the market looming, work began with paint applied to every surface, inside and out. The results were so inspiring, that new carpet, tile, refinished wood floors, and landscaping became mandatory. New fixtures, knobs and hinges throughout, and the house became something very exciting and creative. I moved in, working with tilers, painters and handymen to fix and improve, all the while thinking about how much Mom wanted to do the very things I was doing, but didn't. What has emerged is a cleaner, pared down, brighter, less confused, more contemporary home than the one my parents lived in. My hands are knicked, pierced, worn, stained and arthritic. The decorative gaps in my wedding band are clogged with spackle. I've destroyed three pair of Levis and two pair of tennis shoes with paint, mud and bleach. A few days ago I was planting roses in the back yard. It was wel...

After Dad died, I phoned Dr. Whitaker's Corporate Headquarters where a nice lady offered her condolences when I asked her to stop the never-ending deluge of literature and magazines and vitamin ads and seminar invitations emanating from the good Doctor. The cards and letters kept coming, though the magazine stopped after the subscription ran out, but they were nice enough to offer my father several opportunities to renew. When I called the second time, I got another nice lady who offered her condolences; I think I was a little hot under the collar. Now today, I get this nice card in the mail, addressed to my father. Wow, Doctor Whitaker really does care! Had I known....Damn, I'm so embarrassed. I imagine the cremation rules out any chance of a "full" recovery.

My mother was all about pink. From the dress and shoes she wore on her wedding day to the plastic, kitsch knick-knacks that populated her life to the end. The pink plastic mirror that I've been using for a candle holder made a pass at the shoes last night. I had to photograph it.

I'd forgotten how breath taking the beauty of a July evening looking west from our backyard could be. The sun is at it's most northern drop point on the horizon. In the other seasons, it is usually obscured by the hill long before it sets. This vantage point was visited often by me and my friends. I built a brick barbecue pit in honor of the spot. Our backyard was a sanctuary where Spring put on a grand display and came to represent for me the essence of existence. Rebirth. Life erupting in color - a theme that played out in abstract paintings I made. The barbecue oven was rarely used. The shoddy workmanship became an embarrassment over time, still it remained an icon to younger days when pausing before a staggering sunset, I "sucked the marrow of life" oblivious (thank God) to death and finality. Tomorrow I will knock down the brick box, put sod in it's place, and say "goodbye" again to another symbol of times passed.

Yesterday I took apart the bench and shelves that comprised our darkroom. Following the dictates of painters, real estate agents, and common sense, the space in which you and I once shared so much forever changed. What a fabulous laboratory our darkroom was - a goddamn closet in what should have been a bedroom for the sibling I never had (I'm not complaining). The stains of chemical splash marks are still there. The light-tight shade you devised isn't there; when did you take that down? Speak up! So, there I am yesterday, pulling out the structure that held the enlarger and trays of chemicals (By the way, the enlarger and accessories went to Manual Arts High School in South Central Los Angeles. The photography teacher came out and got a bunch of stuff. He showed me the work of one student, an autobiography in captioned, black and white photos that tore my heart out.). I was struck by the craftsmanship of your construction. You actually used oak plywood for the bench; your faste...

One day soon, I will extract and play...hee, hee, hee.

We lived in Gardena, CA in the early 1960's. Next door to us was a family with a dog that barked quite a bit. My father complained without success. He was extremely noise sensitive and only got worse with age. The barking dog phase coincided with the purchase of a toy over which Dad I shared a lot of common ground - a reel to reel tape recorder. It not only became a tool for Dad's audio diaries and communicating with people around the world, but also served to bring out the 12 year old in him. After repeated attempts to get the neighbors to subdue their dog, Dad placed a microphone outside and recorded a few seconds of the barking. He cut the segment of tape out and joined the ends creating a loop of incessant barking. Giggling with delight, we put a speaker outside, next to the fence and played the loop. That's the last I remember. I don't know if it worked, got a response, anything. Just the pure joy of such a technologically creative prank was so thrilling the rest b...

Today I finally made the decision to sell the house. The material thing will be good to let go of. The past will evaporate in a big way as another family takes over the space we once occupied. And speaking of space. The last couple of weeks I've moved the computer and tape recorder(s) into the room and the very space Dad occupied at the end. There, I have been listening and digitizing some of the audio recordings he made ranging over nearly 50 years. The most moving were a monologue recounting his layoff in 1970 and another on a weekend encounter group he attended. The most painful was listening to him patronize a woman who was a friend about her racism in 1963. Dad recorded hundreds of hours of monologue. It was amazing how long he could talk without needing anyone to prompt him, critique or question him. He was for most of his adult life a man who pushed himself to question and learn. My respect for him in that regard continues to grow as I hear him on these tapes, so alive and ...

Fascinating changes keep coming. My directing has taken off via the world of political commercials. I traveled to Hawaii and over the course of four days filmed two spots. There appear to be several more coming in the next few weeks. The day before leaving, I had lunch with the head of the cinematography division of USC cinema. It looks like I'll be teaching a course in the fall there. The week before that, I was asked to become the editor of The Society of Camera Operators Magazine. I accepted. I don't know the first thing about editing a magazine, but ignorance will probably serve me well, and I have a few ideas that people seem intimidated by, so I guess I'm on the right track. And lastly, I've been offered a job operating a "virtual" camera on an animated film called "Monster House". This mostly computer created film started with actors on a stage wearing dots all over their bodies which emitted light. The light information was fed into the compu...

Yesterday, I had to mail documents regarding a pension my father had through his company. This batch of paperwork required a copy of my mother's death certificate, which I'd included. At the last minute, I was instructed to add one of my father's death certificates as well. His are in an envelope, in a box, in the trunk of my car; so, I drove up to the curb-side mail depository at the post office, stepped quickly out of the car, unsealed the package, took one of dad's death certificates from the trunk and clipped it right on top of mom's. And there they were - together again symbolized by two, ornately textured, multi-colored, official, state-sanctioned documents. Then someone honked at me, I was blocking their access to the mail box. I put Mom and Dad in the box and got the hell out of there.

One of the great mysteries of our family is my dad's father, Sidney Homer Babin. Sidney died in Chicago, it is alleged, sometime shortly after my father's birth, in 1925. At that point, my father was living with his maternal grandmother and two aunts on a farm in rural Wisconsin. Sidney's passing is "alleged" because Dad's mother, Maude, was an infamous twister of the truth, and in spite of hours of research, no death certificate for Sid has ever surfaced. There are virtually no details of Sidney's life that survive other than: he was from Louisiana, was 15 to 20 years older than Maude, and worked as a sign painter in Chicago where he supposedly was killed in a car accident. To keep the legend even more intriguing, only one known photo of Sidney was said to exist, an indistinct full-length shot, taken of him on a visit to the farm where my father was raised. This has been the only image I ever had of him. Yesterday, I came down to the last unopened cache o...

Sidney Homer Babin

A new discovery and one of my favorite photos of Dad. I love his serious expression as he cradles his new Leica camera. The date is 1947. He is about 22 years old.

This week I worked on a remake of the classic "My Friend Flicka". Whether this will even approach the level of "classic", I can't predict. On Monday we filmed a "wild horse race", an event that takes place at rodeos and fairs around the country on a regular basis. Wrangling the animals for the movie is one of the foremost experts in the world. The cowboys who participated in the event are real cowboys, huge lugs the size of football players. Groupie cow girls were there too. The race utilizes wild horses released into a ring all at once. Cowboys in pairs try to still the horse long enough to saddle it, mount it and ride it once around the ring. First to do so wins. The first take was exciting, the crowd of extras enjoying the mayhem of wild horses having their way with the cowboys and clowns. At the end of take two most of us looked over to discover a horse down near the fence. It was on it's side, absolutely still. Within a minute a vet hired by t...

I've begun inviting people to view this site. The possibility that I may be judged pretentious and egotistical haunt me. There I got it out.

Right after the last post, I put on music, blessed music, righteous music, silence busting music...Pink Floyd "Division Bell". I opened the windows and turned it up loud. Real loud. Loud enough to get the neighbor's attention, which in this borough is a no-no. And the glorious sensation of doing this reminded me of August 1974. Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency in a televised speech. In preparation of this, I set two speakers at my bedroom window. As the momentous broadcast came to an end, I turned the volume to max and pushed play on Jimi Hendrix's rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner". Music gives expression where words fail.

Silence

After a period of absence I again am at my parent's house. This trip is especially difficult; the distractions are many. My goal is to clear the place in preparation for sale or rent. A huge decision I look forward to having made. Last night I found my mother's collection of celebrity autographs. Marion Davies and Gary Cooper from the 1930's. A signed letter from Bing Crosby responding to one she sent as a 17 year old fan. A discovery like this invariably sends me to the computer and eBay..."Just what the hell are people paying for something like this?". And I find that the relative monetary value of a Marion Davies autographed photo is around $85. I look up and two hours have passed. As in March, sensations of the insurmountable return. This morning I stood in the kitchen and experienced something I last remember having in 1987 in a remote section of Colorado desert - complete silence. Only the hum and crackle of my synaptic world.

In mass last Sunday, I found myself taking the communion wafer from the man who sponsored me when I became a Catholic in 2000. He is a gentle soul, a life-long Catholic who attends mass every week and serves communion, "The expressions on people's faces is extraordinary." The ritual of Mass often opens my emotional sluices, but last Sunday I was primed. As I took that dry wafer, muttered "Amen", heard my friend say my name, the profound sense of father-loss washed over me.

One of the most surprising things about this time of grief is how greatly I feel compelled to talk with men who have some mileage on them. To listen to as well as offer my earned wisdom with men who've been here. It's like I've gained entry to a club. I'm ready to sip refreshments by the pool with other members and tell no-shit stories about the drive there. I guess on the surface its obvious why now I'm drawn to the company of mature men - longing for that source of heroic power my father once symbolized. The sad fact is that Dad, advisor and teacher, passed from my life years ago as the cycle of becoming a caretaker to him overtook both of us. His passing now allows me to catch up on missing Him. It's easy to imagine how the breakdown of the flesh can destroy the hero-philosopher in any mortal. Unless, I'm convinced, he has some kind of spiritual core. We've just witnessed the passing of a pope whose spiritual vortex was so profound, that in spite of h...

Torrance Memorial Hospital, where Dad spent his last nine days is staffed by health care workers who are caring, committed human beings. The nurses and paliative care staff live this transitional world day after day. Their non-intrusive guidance, sometimes subtle as a look, allowed me to work through decisions they witness daily. Then, if Dad had not worked so diligently to make clear his wishes regarding life support, how long he would tolerate it, and under what conditions he'd tolerate it, those nine days and the weeks that have followed might have been tortuous. When Mom died in 1999, Dad began drafting his advance directives. He put countless hours into it. He insisted I read each draft and file it away, destroying the previous so that it not superceed the latest version. I became angry, resistant, judgemental about how he was spending his time. I wish I could apologize to him.

the throne

It’s been six weeks since my father died. Like a lot of people faced with a grievous event, those first weeks were consumed by settling estate issues, dealing with creditors, assembling tax information and consulting experts about my family and our changing financial world. I then went to work for a week, a welcome diversion in which I shot, directed and edited two political commercials. When I finished, and returned to my parent’s home, feelings of loss and grief reintroduced themselves. Mom and Dad really were gone - for good. And I found what I missed most was the moment of sharing a revelation, being able to recount an experience or epiphany that my parents would have enjoyed: “Dad, I was working on a test yesterday, Michael Mann is going to do a movie based on his TV show, ‘Miami Vice’. We were testing three different high-definition video cameras against a single 35 mm camera. And we shot on the water in Long Beach harbor at sunset. And right after the sun went...

It's been six weeks since my father died. Like a lot of people faced with a grievous event, those first weeks were consumed by settling estate issues, dealing with creditors, assembling tax information and consulting experts about my family and our changing financial world. I then went to work for a week, a welcome diversion in which I shot, directed and edited two political commercials. When I finished, and returned to my parent's home, feelings of loss and grief reintroduced themselves. Mom and Dad really were gone - for good. And I found what I missed most was the moment of sharing a revelation, being able to recount an experience or epiphany that my parents would have enjoyed: "Dad, I was working on a test yesterday, Michael Mann is going to do a movie based on his TV show, 'Miami Vice'. We were testing three different high-definition video cameras against a single 35 mm camera. And we shot on the water in Long Beach harbor at sunset. And right after the su...