Tom: Handball Courts, Venice Beach, CA

The handball courts were a particularly interesting place.  Very early in the morning the homeless would sleep in them.  Around 8am the retirees, of various eastern European descent would appear to take over the courts and play handball.  Latinos of every age would start showing up around early afternoon and play till evening.  Tom was in the first shift.  His actual place of refuge was a small encampment on the beach a few yards from the courts.  He would arrive with his guitar and small battery powered amp to play for a couple of hours each morning.  The morning we met, it was around 7:30 and the still grayness of the fog had not yet lifted.  My interaction with Tom was fascinating.  He accepted my presence as just another random sequence of events in his life.  Our initial conversation wandered non-sequentially, ranging from various musical topics as he played.  He would then drift back into consciousness, talking for a few minutes before the music in his head would start again, disappearing to wherever he goes when his fingers begin to move on the strings.  Clapton, Zeppelin, blues and rock, all intermingling with his own songs would spill out echoing through the handball courts on his small amp.  The presence of my large view camera was incidental to the more compelling aspects of how our conversation ebbed and flowed, often overtaken by the more powerful force that would take Tom away for a few minutes when the music would start in his head and work its way through his fingers, becoming amplified off the concrete walls breaking the gray stillness of a Venice Beach morning.