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Description
Project 52, week 2
[my theme ]
The song: Play It Again, Sam! You Don't Have Any Feathers (listen to it on YouTube here )
The lyrics: You lift your skinny fists up in the sky,
Packed a change of clothes and left,
In the middle of July 2005.
But when the glass, it hit the wall,
Mother cried and the cops were called
The day you said goodbye.

Your father left his work by one or two
To a crying telephone.
His wife was on the other side of you,
Really did it this time.
The boy looks down and begins to cry
The day you said goodbye

And I know you've been abandoned,
But don't abandon ship on me.
Just know like a winter white snow,
You've been forgiven, come back to me,
I know right now that don't mean anything.

Your skinny legs bounced up into the sky,
I tried to tell you to be careful not to jump that high.
With your fingers crossed, you fall against the ground.
I saw it all, the day you tried to fly.

When the red and blue lights made the scene,
Your eyes were glazed, and honestly,
Can you remember anything?
But when the others ran away,
I prayed to God they wouldn't stay.
But sometimes He doesn't listen.

From a father to his daughter,
My prodigal child, come back to me.
From a sinner to his Maker,
Your prodigal son is on his knees.

Sweet God, please hold on to me.
Sweet God, hold her please, oh please
The day she tries to fly.
Hold me, the day I try to fly.The inspiration: This is one of the songs where Manchester Orchestra uses minimal instrumental support yet still manages to create an extremely emotive song. I love songs like this. When I listened to this the first time, I stopped everything I was doing and just listened to the lyrics. The last lines seemed really tragic to me – especially "The day you said goodbye" and "The day you tried to fly" – and in my photograph this week I wanted to attempt to portray the emotion I felt in this song and it's lyrics.

Again, there's a sense of loss. The girl he's addressing has left and he wants her to come back. At first it just seemed like she ran away, but it became apparent that she was gone in a much more real sense. My initial thought was to scout out an old decrepit house somehow, but I don't have many houses around where I live and I can't drive alone yet. When the song came to a conclusion and started talking about trying to fly, I thought of a birdhouse.

Why a birdhouse? It's simple: baby birds making their first leap, forced to trust their instincts. I'm pretty sure they're risking death, and that seems utterly scary to me. But for the baby bird, it must seem so natural, you know? I wonder if it's somehow similar with suicide.

A birdhouse is also abandoned for half the year, which adds to that theme of being abandoned and ... emptiness.

The technique: I strapped on my snowshoes and went for a jaunt in the field in front of my house. Well, I call it a field because that's what I think of it as ... it's a young pine plantation and to be honest some of it has made the transition to legitimate forest. But I still call it the front field. So anyways, I wandered around, taking pictures of icicles and singing to my dog.

You know, just enjoying winter.

On the way back, I stopped near my house at the edge of our maple forest and took some pictures of this birdhouse. I had the depth of focus as shallow as possible and just changed the zoom trying to figure out what I liked best, the full birdhouse or just the top. And I digitally altered the colours to give it this vintage blue/yellow style.

> View all of my Project 52 submissions.

© 2011 Jonathon Reed
deviantART | Society6 | Tumblr
portfolio.jonathonreed.com

Description
Project 52, week 2
[my theme ]
The song: Play It Again, Sam! You Don't Have Any Feathers (listen to it on YouTube here )
The lyrics: You lift your skinny fists up in the sky,
Packed a change of clothes and left,
In the middle of July 2005.
But when the glass, it hit the wall,
Mother cried and the cops were called
The day you said goodbye.

Your father left his work by one or two
To a crying telephone.
His wife was on the other side of you,
Really did it this time.
The boy looks down and begins to cry
The day you said goodbye

And I know you've been abandoned,
But don't abandon ship on me.
Just know like a winter white snow,
You've been forgiven, come back to me,
I know right now that don't mean anything.

Your skinny legs bounced up into the sky,
I tried to tell you to be careful not to jump that high.
With your fingers crossed, you fall against the ground.
I saw it all, the day you tried to fly.

When the red and blue lights made the scene,
Your eyes were glazed, and honestly,
Can you remember anything?
But when the others ran away,
I prayed to God they wouldn't stay.
But sometimes He doesn't listen.

From a father to his daughter,
My prodigal child, come back to me.
From a sinner to his Maker,
Your prodigal son is on his knees.

Sweet God, please hold on to me.
Sweet God, hold her please, oh please
The day she tries to fly.
Hold me, the day I try to fly.The inspiration: This is one of the songs where Manchester Orchestra uses minimal instrumental support yet still manages to create an extremely emotive song. I love songs like this. When I listened to this the first time, I stopped everything I was doing and just listened to the lyrics. The last lines seemed really tragic to me – especially "The day you said goodbye" and "The day you tried to fly" – and in my photograph this week I wanted to attempt to portray the emotion I felt in this song and it's lyrics.

Again, there's a sense of loss. The girl he's addressing has left and he wants her to come back. At first it just seemed like she ran away, but it became apparent that she was gone in a much more real sense. My initial thought was to scout out an old decrepit house somehow, but I don't have many houses around where I live and I can't drive alone yet. When the song came to a conclusion and started talking about trying to fly, I thought of a birdhouse.

Why a birdhouse? It's simple: baby birds making their first leap, forced to trust their instincts. I'm pretty sure they're risking death, and that seems utterly scary to me. But for the baby bird, it must seem so natural, you know? I wonder if it's somehow similar with suicide.

A birdhouse is also abandoned for half the year, which adds to that theme of being abandoned and ... emptiness.

The technique: I strapped on my snowshoes and went for a jaunt in the field in front of my house. Well, I call it a field because that's what I think of it as ... it's a young pine plantation and to be honest some of it has made the transition to legitimate forest. But I still call it the front field. So anyways, I wandered around, taking pictures of icicles and singing to my dog.

You know, just enjoying winter.

On the way back, I stopped near my house at the edge of our maple forest and took some pictures of this birdhouse. I had the depth of focus as shallow as possible and just changed the zoom trying to figure out what I liked best, the full birdhouse or just the top. And I digitally altered the colours to give it this vintage blue/yellow style.

> View all of my Project 52 submissions.

© 2011 Jonathon Reed
deviantART | Society6 | Tumblr
portfolio.jonathonreed.com