I met David Joseph Harr while doing some pinhole photography downtown this evening. He walked up with his guitar in tow, asked about the strange wooden box on the tripod ("Does it make video?"), played me an original song, and chatted with me for 20 minutes or so.
He knows he shouldn't be drinking and he's tried to stop, he said, but he does it anyway. He lost 11 guitars in 2014, mostly because he stashed them in alleys or up in trees when he was blackout drunk, and couldn'tremember where he put them when he woke up in the morning. This past week, he hitchhiked from San Jose to Sacramento, from Sacramento to Grant's Pass, and then, finally, from Grant's Pass to Portland.
He got in late last night (the car that picked him up bought him food and gave him some cash), got "wasted" and woke up without his guitar, yet again, without any recollection of where he'd stashed it. An hour later, a police officer stopped him, asked his name, and then returned his guitar to him. The universe is lining up for him these days, David said.
When I asked David if it was ok if I took a portrait of him with my f100, he insisted that I take a couple different shots with different poses ("Does this one take video?"), as long as I promised to email him the scans. I made a couple images, then David played me another song (this time a cover), shook my hand, and walked off into the soft blue evening light with his guitar, at least for now, in tow.
