For Whom the Bells Toll

It happened quite unremarkably about three weeks ago after many months of wait and see. I received an email from Zurich informing me that I had finally been selected to photograph for a large Swiss bank and that I would hear shortly about the details.

This was a project I was happy about. Over the course of the summer in my emails back and forth I had felt enormous respect from the bank for me and my work, and I was hoping that there was a potential for a great collaboration. Besides I have always had German schnitzel and potatoes for blood.

I love the precision and exactness of Switzerland and their intrinsic respect for craft, and a job done to perfection.

Then some days later I received an email from the project manager asking me to come to Zurich for discussion with the bank and it’s representatives.

Without much time to reflect, I and Adam, (my new studio manager), boarded an immaculately clean Swiss airplane. I was sitting in the front of the plane snacking on cheese after cheese with Swiss wine and pate with gracious service. I lazily began to fall into a restful sleep as we crossed the ocean at 38,000 feet.

Immediately upon arrival I was met by an impeccable Mercedes Sedan that whipped Adam and I effortlessly to our hotel for a very brief breakfast before the negotiations began over the pictures.

But this is not a story about what could have been. This is a story about evenings in Zurich.

After a day of discussion we retired to our hotel for dinner with an early to bed so we could rise early the next morning to continue our discussion about the pictures.

Our hotel was a five star hotel nestled into the old part of Zurich. From my bedroom with the windows open I could look out onto medieval slate rooftops and numerous ancient churches with tall spires aspiring upward. It was a picture perfect place right out of a medieval Christmas story. It was as if the reformation had never left this small Swiss canton.

Everything was perfect. I had my new suit pressed and ready for next days meeting with very senior management. Dinner had been beautiful and relaxing, the streets were being cleaned by a contraption that was throwing fresh water everywhere. The air was fresh with Fall and life was feeling for the moment, wonderful. People respected me in Switzerland. They liked my work and perhaps they even liked me.

As I was preparing for bed humming everything I could think of from The Sound of Music (I know it’s about Austria but it’s close enough), “The hills were alive”, I was alive, and as I lay myself down to sleep, reflecting on the near perfection surrounding our hotel, nibbling on the very last piece of some perfect Swiss chocolate I remember smiling happily over the events of the last few days, and slowly drifted into my fairytale.

All the sudden the medieval story outside my window sprang to life. Every fifteen minutes the church bells chimed. Not a delicate little chime but a loud tolling to convince any would-be strayers from Christianity to hold tight. Bells, bells, bells, and more bells. One after another these bells chimed, until there were bells going off in my head. I don’t know what happened to Swiss precision because these bells never chimed together at the same moment but rather each church seemed to respond to each other. Getting more and more clamorous as the night wore on, each outdoing the other until midnight arrived with a boom, where one after the other each church bell exploded twelve times to set the hour and to commence the new day.

By now I had shut every window and covered my head in pillows to drown out the continual tolling of bells throughout the night. The bells didn’t even have to go off anymore, I had it down perfectly every fifteen minutes I would wake with a start ready for the new bell.

I swore I would remain penitent if the bells would stop. They never did. Even after my return home to the total confusion of New York, I still have heard bells chiming in my head. Happily I had left Switzerland with very strict instructions to begin work on this project immediately upon my return.

The morning of September 18, 2013 at 9:45AM Eastern Standard Time, after a whole crew has for days been working frantically to prepare props, locations, talent, assistants, hair and makeup, production, etc. so that we could begin shooting early next week, I received a call from Switzerland. I was informed abruptly and with no true apparent reason that I could discern, that my services were no longer required. Just as I was about to start I was told to stop. All the Swiss chocolate and cheese came tumbling down. I had gone from being on top of the world to landing at the bottom. All of this came as a complete shock and surprise, but then again did it? The bells of Zurich had foretold of something impending.

So as the poet John Donne prophesized I guess the bells were tolling for me.