one of the stranger things about buying old photo postcards is that the writing on the backs is almost always uninteresting. i'm consistantly disappointed to discover that an incredibly strange image on the front usually co-exists with a seemingly disconnected and extremely dull greeting on the back.
this is one of my favorite recent RPPC finds. i remember an early art history class where we had a many houred discussion about a steiglitz photo of people on a ship, where every part of the the photo was discussed for symbolic content towards a greater narrative. well, this is certainly no steiglitz, but there's a lot of visual happenings here to mull over if you are so inclined...
what interested me most though, was the fact that for once the text on the back suggests a similar variety of paths to wander down as the image on the front. i have no idea which one of these folks did the writing; but this little gem of a text seems to be in secret code, or perhaps a quotation of a few lines from one of frank o'hara's early poems...
"i know what you're doing now. that's what they all do johnny my boy. look and listen but mum the word. take me back to swanee shore - sweetheart's still."
Labels: hats, RPPC, sheet music, trombone
