Do You Have Passion?

In a movie from nearly two decades ago that many, many reviewers consider utter tripe, there is a quote that strangely sticks with me. The wise-acre character portrayed by Jeremy Piven (an actor formerly beloved as Droz and now besieged as a sexual predator) utters the following would-be wisdom:

You know, the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died . . . "Did he have passion?"

Okay, so the main problem with that is that it's not actually true and the Greeks did write obituaries, but there's a larger point to be made, and it's one that I embrace as much as John Cusack's character does in the film.

When it's all said and done for us, have we had true passions, and did we savor and explore them and make the most we possibly could out of them?

I love humans' passions, and I love them way more when they are way random. Weird. Possibly hard to defend to the masses.  And seemingly pointless to most others.  Passions from people who see personal value in some off-kilter art form, or activity, or quest. Or blog.  And then see it through to the hilt. 

You know, taking life less seriously.

Enter Alex Bartsch. He's a London-based photographer who seems to be known almost exclusively as the man behind this project. The Covers Project.

As it's described in this article:

He was first introduced to Bob Marley when he was a child, and he got so inspired that he spent 10 years of his life traveling around London searching for original locations of the most famous reggae vinyl covers from 1967 to 1987.

That introductory sentence does no justice to the effort involved or the finished product of his photos.  Check a few of them out.

There are many, many more.  Have a gander.

This is what passion looks like.  Passion that may possibly, now that Mr. Bartsch has published a picture book, make him a few bucks, but this cannot be a project he embarked on for pecuniary purposes. It's one that you may look upon with an eyebrow raised. You may question his sanity. You may label it a waste of time. You may label him someone with too much time on his hands.

Which is why I love it and appreciate it enormously.