India, Day 1 - Goodbye is always the hardest part.

This is part one of my recap of my forty-day journey through India.  Some entries will be short photo essays, others will be more prosaic, long-form narratives.  This first one is more along the lines of the latter.  Enjoy.

"So, when do you leave for India again?"

"In about four hours."

Every trip is bookended by goodbyes, first to the people you leave at home, and later to the people you meet while traveling.  I hate goodbyes, and this day was to be full of them.  I love traveling, but only in the middle.

The night before I left for India, I didn't sleep well.  Even though my day's schedule began early, I got up several hours earlier than was necessary, because I simply wasn't resting well, and laying in bed rolling back and forth seemed a greater waste of time than getting up and pacing back and forth on my feet.  As there was a marginal possibility that my family would finish construction on our new home in my absence, I rose up and got dressed amidst a landscape of stacked boxes containing all of my worldly goods, which I had packed in anticipation of the possible move.  The environment drove home every aspect of the idea of "leaving home," and for a brief moment I felt like I wasn't coming back.  Once I had my clothes on, I had nothing left to do.  My bag and check box were both packed, double-checked and by the door.  Yes, I packed six weeks' worth of clothing in one backpack, my Monsoon Gearslinger.  I pack light and travel light.  I anticipated the inevitability of my buying gifts or a some new shirts along the way, and a packable duffel bag, reduced to a six-inch disc of fabric when collapsed, dangled from the clip of my backpack.  Sadly, my own efficiency had left me with too much time on my hands; the morning dragged on forever.  I was also experimenting with intermittent fasting at that time, and as such I didn't even have breakfast to kill a half hour.

I did a lot of pacing until I called my dad to say goodbye.  He was out on a business trip to Washington D.C., and I wouldn't see him again until I arrived home.  Afterward, I left at 7:00 to meet my friend, Jeff, for coffee and a book swap.  He had lent me Lucifer's Hammer, and I wanted to return it and loan him my copy of The Four Hour Body before I left town.  We only had about forty-five minutes to chat, a restrictive time for two people with a tendency toward motored-mouthing, but we did the best we could with the time we had.  But upon saying goodbye and exiting the Drowsy Poet, my next stop wasn't the airport; far from it, in fact.  An associate pastor at my church had passed away that week, and I wasn't about to miss his memorial; international flight be damned.

The loss of Pastor Mike Dekle was a blow to our church and the community at large.  Mike wasn't just a gifted administrator, he was a devoted husband and father and a great friend to many people.  He and I weren't very close, but I saw all four of my grandparents succumb to terminal illness, and I was very sensitive to Mike's own battle with cancer, and I wanted to support his wife and son during the service.  In addition to supporting the family, the service allowed me the unforeseen opportunity to see the members of my church one final time before I left town, as well as a number of other old friends from other churches in the area.  The service was a celebration of a well-lived life, and the reception gave me a chance to say a few final goodbyes and pray with friends.

After the service, my mother, sister and I went to one of our favorite restaurants, Siam Thai.  It might sound funny, eating Thai food before going to India, but I honestly love Asian cuisine, whichever region it hails from.  Siam Thai is also a family favorite, and I wanted one last opportunity to splurge on something familiar and well-loved before leaving home.  Several plates of chicken and bamboo shoots later, my mother and I had coffee at a The Bad Ass Coffee Co. while my sister attended her voice lesson.  When the lesson was over, we regrouped and the three of us went to the airport together.

In the airport restroom, like a scene out of Burn Notice, I changed out of my jacket, trousers and tie and put on a lightweight khaki shirt and a pair of Magellan cargo pants, emerging from the lavatory looking, well, like someone bound for India.  India was (and at the time of this writing, is) in the throes of monsoon season, and I had purchased several new athletic shirts and a few pairs of fast-drying pants for trip, all in accordance with a self-imposed rule of "pack no cotton."  I would love to travel the world attired like Indiana Jones or Josh Bernstein (I even have the hat), but practicality often dictates otherwise.

Clothes changed, there was still time to kill before I needed to go through security, and I re-entered the limbo of the early morning.  I sat with my mother and sister in the terminal, and we passed a few minutes in uneasy silence.  There really wasn't much to say.  We're an emotional bunch, and I didn't want to cause any unnecessary strain by speaking too much.  In the context of a year, seven weeks isn't a terribly long time, but it's still a respectable period of time to be apart from loved ones, especially when I would be making so much of the trip alone.  We talked a little bit, here and there, but I was honestly relieved when the time finally came for me to put dignity on hold and pass through security.

The actual goodbye was still hard.  I hate leaving people at the airport; it reinforces the separation before it even begins.

After the last hugs and kisses were exchanged, I shouldered my Gearslinger and went forward.  The exact protocols of TSA screenings change a little bit each year, but I stay one step ahead by keeping all of my change, toiletry carry-ons and phone in plastic bags in my pockets until I'm through the screening area.  It's a practice that saves me the trouble of rummaging around in my backpack while ill-tempered fellow travelers urge me to hurry up.  As much as possible, I like to design my circumstances to stay relaxed.  It works pretty well, so much so in this case that a female flight attendant, seeing my buzzed hair and single, compact bag, asked me if I was military, because she was unused to seeing any other group of young males be so polite while going through security.  Plus one for Southern manners.

Once through security, I boarded the plane.

The plane flew.

The plane landed.

I found myself in Miami International Airport, with a long layover and, again, very little to do.  I wandered through the terminal, marveling at the sameness of every shop.  I made a few phone calls home, speaking once more to my dad before I crossed the threshold into the realm of international phone charges.  My father runs his own business, and with the added pressure of handling a lot of his own contracting in the construction of our new home, he had been unable to see me off at the airport himself, and it was important to me to speak to him one more time.

When dad and I were finished speaking, I hunted down a coffee shop and bought a cup of green tea to chill out with while waiting for my flight.  It was a long trek--the international terminal in Miami rambles on interminably.  On the way back, I passed a heavyset black man on the concourse, and he hailed me in a thick Caribbean accent.  It turned out that he was from Haiti, and was passing through Miami on the way to visit family.  He was having trouble finding his gate in the massive terminal.  It so happened that I had seen where his gate was located on my way up from my first flight, so I walked with him for a while and took him to where he needed to go.  He summed up the airport with a single sentence: "Miami's just too big, man."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

My Haitian friend at his gate, I made the hike back to my own gate (tea still in hand!) and gave Jeff a ring to tie up the loose ends from our abridged conversation of the morning.  Jeff has also served in India; that was actually where we first met and became friends, and that left us with plenty to talk about before I left to go back for an extended period.  Anyone who has been to India will testify that it is a hard country to adjust to, between the cultural differences and the sheer frenzy resulting from a population of 1.2 billion people, and Jeff and I enjoyed a few good jokes as to the challenges facing me upon my return.  As we spoke, the call came over the loudspeaker: it was time for my section to board the plane.

I finished with Jeff, shouldered my bag once again and boarded the plane.  It was late.

Next stop: London.

Hatuey, Texans, Kites, and other Memories from Guantanamo Bay

I had the opportunity to be part of something very special this summer.  Through the Department of Public History at the University of West Florida (holla, alma mater!) I was part of a team of volunteer historians who interviewed various naval veterans who did tours of duty at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.  These interviews were recorded and archived in their entirety for purposes of further research, as well as for incorporation into an upcoming nationwide exhibit. Growing up, I always enjoyed listening to older people tell stories from their lives.  Ironically, I know more about many people outside of my family than I do about my own grandparents' histories.  While many of my peers were bored by the storytelling of various "old ruins," I enjoyed hearing tales of days gone by.  Most recently, I have made it one of my personal goals to spend more time listening and documenting what my elders have to say.

History is much more than the headlines and the chapter titles.  When someone says "Guantanamo," a million images might spring to an audience's mind.  Castro, Soviet missiles, post-9/11 detainees; these things are common knowledge.  But what are the people like?  What do they do between the headlines, between shifts?  Those "core elements" are what this project seeks.  We want to understand the communities and their relationships.  In the brilliant conversations which I had recently, I heard stories of everyday life in GTMO that spanned from as far back as 1939 to as recently as 2003.  I met interesting men and women whom I never would have connected with otherwise, and I am incredibly grateful to have had these opportunities.

Here are some excerpts:

Thinking of Florence and missing the magic...

Have you ever been to a place that does more than get under your skin?  Have you ever woken up to the morning bells of a dozen churches and been able to honestly tell yourself "I am happier here than I have been, would be or could be anywhere else?" That is what Florence, Italy means to me.  Of all the places I have been, it is the one where I felt least like a stranger.  To the contrary, I felt a part of it from the moment I arrived.  The people I met, the places I visited and the monumental relics of art and history to which I stood witness all beckoned me forward instead of pushing me away.

It has been just over two years since I was in Florence.  I've wanted to go back ever since, but can just never get the time and funds to align to make a proper trip there possible.

But I still have my memories.

Locking my camera away in an effort to literally avoid putting anything between myself and the city.

Clambering up campanile steps in a blind zeal to see the city by morning's light.

Botticelli's Venus hanging in the Uffizi; bigger than I thought it would be.

Being taught how to properly pronounce nocciola (hazelnut) at the Gelato Festival.

Walking across the Arno on one of the city's many bridges to watch the sun set from the Piazzale Michelangelo.

Getting lost on the way back from the sunset and seeing the southwest neighborhoods come to magical life in a manner rivaling scenes from Midnight in Paris.

That beautiful girl behind the counter at the pizza shop.

Michele, the hilarious shop owner near the duomo who always demanded a kiss, like a blustery Southern aunt.

Mirko, the architecture student who moonlighted as a waiter.  He emailed me a year later to that I photograph his wedding...I wish it had worked out.

Michelangelo's David, tall and proud in the Galeria dell'Academia.  I swear he was breathing.

Kissing the cold marble of the duomo when it was time to leave.

Myself.  Alone and quiet, entirely at peace and completely content to move through the city on booted feet, and simply bear witness to it.

Florence is magical.

Persistent memories.

Do we choose everything that we retain?  I wonder about this sometimes, because some memories seem to choose us as much or more as we choose them.  Somethings are obviously more significant than other, and we remember more about them.  But sometimes our brains only have the briefest of moments in which to collect the information which forms our memories.  Sometimes these memories from brief moments contain such staggering levels of detail based on such brief sightings, that I wonder if certain memories choose us as much or more as we choose them.

I have a good memory.  For some things.  Even before I took up photography, my capacity to remember visuals and conversations was downright startling to my parents.  But it was always on the condition that I was interested in whatever subject I had to recall.  If it was something I found intriguing, I never failed to recall the most minute of details.  However, if I didn't find the subject engaging, I dismissed it entirely and had to be refreshed if it came up again.

This continues into the present day.  When people repeat the same stories or the same "news" in conversations, I often have to smile, nod, and pretend that I haven't heard it before.  To betray my recollection of details from conversations weeks or months prior, when it's still fresh news to the teller, might give me the reputation of a stalker.  People are funny these days.

I say all that to say this, I have a good memory for things which I find interesting.  But my brain still surprises even me with the images which it has retained in full photographic detail.  I don't mean the simple reconstruction of an event, I'm talking about internally revisiting events and seeing them in glorious Technicolor and a high-definition level of fidelity.

Now that I am out of school for the summer and have the time, I decided to share a couple of the more meaningful recollections which persist in my brain.

The Girl at the Fort

We were in the same homeschool group; I think we were both ten or eleven at the time.  This memory is notable for its place as a landmark in my personal development; I had grown out of the "girls are yucky" stage into the "girls are annoying" stage, and this day in particular saw me move forward into the "girls are interesting" stage.

We were on a field trip to one of Pensacola's local forts, Fort Barrancas at the naval base.  Barrancas, at that time, was notorious for sometimes being open, sometimes not.  Unless you called ahead, you had to park the car and walk a few hundred yards up a hill to see if the drawbridge was up or down.  If it was down, the fort was open to the public.  This being a somewhat impromptu visit for our group, we trekked en masse up the hill to see if we could go inside.

Being an enterprising young fellow, far more extroverted then than now, I charged ahead to be the first to see the bridge, and consequently be the one to inform the rest of the group whether or not it was open or closed.  Like most "charge-aheads," this one was poorly planned and did not begin soon enough for me to be the first to see the bridge.  Flanked by a few friends, (my fellow charge-aheaders), we turned and I began to call back "It's closed!"  And that's when I saw her.

I had seen this girl every week at church for years.  Our families knew each other well.  Not best friends, but still far from being just "acquaintances."  But that day, it was like seeing her for the first time.  I remember seeing her come over the top of the hill and down the path in such vivid detail.  She wore a dark tshirt and shorts.  Her eyes and face were turned down slightly as she picked her way over the cracked and uneven walking path.  Her mahogany hair was blowing in the stiff breeze of the hilltop and crossed her face slightly.  She was talking with friends, and honestly couldn't care less about the fort's being open or closed.

That brief moment of a few seconds, seeing her come over the hilltop, has been with me for almost twelve years.  For seven of those years, she was the only girl to capture my attention.  I don't know if it makes me a hopeless romantic or an irredeemable sad sack, but I never made my feelings clear to her.  I mean, I should have, shouldn't I?  But I didn't.

I'm past those feelings now; I actually ended up photographing this girl's engagement portraits several years ago, and, strangely enough, it didn't feel awkward.  Is there still a tinge of regret in there somewhere?  Yes, deep down.  But it has more to do at with the underlying principles beneath this memory--namely my bizarre penchant for keeping my strongest feelings internalized.  I don't know what I might be afraid of; I have nothing to lose if I tell people how I really feel, but I still don't communicate the way that I know I should.

My relationship with women remains oddly quixotic.  I idealize one here or there, but I speak to them as little as possible, because to know the human being would destroy the ideal.  Such a mindset is, probably, very unhealthy.  But sometimes the comfort of an ideal is worth preserving in a world filled with all-too-harsh realities.

The Child in the Ruins

I was reminded of another standout moment this morning, while looking through a photo editorial about Sierra Leone.  I saw a photo of a young boy standing in the ruins of a house which was destroyed in the country's civil war a decade ago.  It brought back another memory of a girl, albeit a much more different one.  I can pin this one down to a date.  It was January 2nd of this year, and I was in India.

I was on a crowded bus, but I didn't mind, because I loved the people with whom I traveled.  Some of them were dear friends whom I've known for a while, others were people I had only met that week.  But I love them all dearly; they are a second family to me.

We were rolling through the dusty countryside of Northwestern India.  Pakistan wasn't far away, and the tropical zone was arid and continental in the winter dryness.  The city was far behind us and we carved a dusty swath through the mountain foothills on our way to visit a school.  We descended into a fertile valley for time, then emerged to climb another set of hills to a dry plain.  Houses were few and far between at this point.

We passed a house that was no longer a house.  The roof and supporting timbers were gone and it was little more than a foundation and some freestanding walls.  What walls that were left were made of dusty stone which blended in with the surrounding landscape, contrasted only by the dark and gnarled tree which stubbornly clung to life behind and to the left of the desolate structure.

Sitting alone in what was left of this house was a small girl.  Children's ages are sometimes hard to gauge in India, where many children are forced by circumstances to mature far too quickly, but I would place this girl between eight and nine years of age.  She was crouched in the squat position which is how most people repose in India: heels on the ground, body and legs so closely compacted that one can never tell if their buttocks are actually touching the ground.

The sight of any child in such an environment is stirring, but this girl was dressed in pink.  This was not a simple, faded pink scarf, but a bright, spotlessly clean and radioactively pink sari.  In the midst of an dry and dust-colored landscape, this little girl peered out at us with eyes full of query and suspicion.  I only saw her for a second or two--from a moving bus at a distance of a hundred paces at that--but every detail of the scene was committed to memory.

Upon seeing her, I was instantly struck with a question, a regret and a realization.  My first thought was why is she there?  There were no other houses for a half-mile in either direction, and nothing in between.  Had this house been hers?  Was she the lone holdout of an old homestead?  Was she simply catching refuge from the sun in the shade of these tattered walls while en route to somewhere else?  This will nag me until my dying day.

My second thought was a regret.  I didn't capture a photograph.  In all honesty and objectivity, a photograph of this girl in that old house would have been award material.  National Geographic could do no better with a veteran cover photographer, a case of gear and a local fixer.  An image of that child, in that environment would be pure gold for any photographer.

In the space of a moment, possibilities flooded my mind: a framed print with a large ribbon on the corner, a certificate of merit, cash prizes and magazine attention--these delusions struck me so hard and so suddenly that I completely forgot why I was in India at all.

This selfish thought was instantly followed by a realization: I was a hypocrite.

Despite all my noble intentions of going to India and helping children through our Christmas in a Backpack project, despite the enduring question of just why the girl was there in the first place, I fell prey to unadulterated selfishness.  We were less than an hour from our destination village.  Our bus was loaded up with backpacks to fill with supplies and living materials for a group of impoverished children.  I already had several dozen gigabytes of superb photographs and video footage documenting this country and its people stowed away in my gear bag.  And at that moment I sat in my seat, suddenly fuming because I couldn't jump out, snap a few photos of this lonely child, and then continue on.

And I remembered.  My first duty to this child was not to capture her likeness.  It was to help her.  To offer her food, a backpack full of clothes, a ride, whatever she needed.  Not to put an enormous camera in her face, snap off a couple of photographs and rush back to the bus, congratulating myself.

When you confine your joys to just a few things in life, realizations like this can be hard.  I enjoy good friends, good food, good books and the visual arts.  Those are the things which I seek out; all other good things in life, to me, are gravy and pleasant surprises.  Participating in a creative process helps me stay sane, and I believe firmly that what I do is a positive pursuit.  But when I allow that, however benign it is, to totally distract me from what is really important, I have to reel it in.

Those are a few of my memories.  I hope you enjoyed them, and if you want to share some of your own, I invite you to use the comment box or write an entry of your own.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Redux

There is nothing quite like a Victorian adventure story.  Victorian adventure novels have a unique flavor; detached, yet oddly engaging.  Often written in the first person as diary entries or a journalist's notes, they offer a unique perspective on adventure and action in a style that is now coming back into vogue in books like The Hunger Games and World War Z, which seem to be reviving the art of first-person narrative.

In the world of Victorian literature, one name stands apart from the rest.  You can talk about H. Rider Haggard or Jules Verne, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left the greatest literary legacy of his era in the creation of Sherlock Holmes.  I could almost stop with that, because just the name "Sherlock Holmes" carries enough weight and individual associations that my thoughts on the subject are, honestly, entirely superfluous.

Much like I enjoy Doctor Who without feeling the need to identify as a "Whovian," the adventures of Sherlock Holmes occupy a special place in my heart, but I don't call myself a "Sherlockian" or a "Baker Street Irregular."  I enjoy good books and good films, and Doyle's stories happen to be some of the best one can ask for in either medium.  I have enjoyed the stories since before I was old enough to fully appreciate them.  The annotated editions are on the shelf next to me as I write this piece, and through the added maps, background information and photographs, the books inspired me to take a sincere interest in the actual history of London and the life of the man who wrote the stories.

The impact of the character of Sherlock Holmes is indicative of the brilliance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Harlan Ellison, the great science fiction writer and endlessly entertaining raconteur, went so far as to make the following statement in an interview:

"You want to be smart?...Read the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories.  You read the entire canon--there aren't that many--you read the entire canon and you will be smarter than you ever need to be.  Because, every one of them is based on the idea of deductive logic.  Keep your eyes open and be alert.  That's what all good writing says: wake up and pay attention!"

Ellison was right.  If you read a Sherlock Holmes story online or on a device, make the text as small as possible and look at it statistically.  Most of the stories are made up of questions.  Holmes asks questions until the interviewees are out of answers.  When he has asked enough questions, he sifts through all of the pertinent facts in his mind and often deduces a correct conclusion without leaving his apartment.  Solving a crime was, for him, an intellectual exercises, and one in which he engaged largely for selfish reasons.  This fact was made clear in a passage from The Sign of the Four that is most often included in adaptations for its perfect summation of his character.

“My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.” 

Holmes is incredibly nuanced and interesting as an individual, but beyond the literary skill required to create good characters, Doyle had to create a believable genius.  Holmes couldn't satisfy readers or project brilliance by simply ascribing titles and backstories to the people he observed; he had to be able to explain how he knew what he knew.  And that is where Doyle was truly brilliant.

Doyle was able to take simple elements of daily life, from splatters of mud on clothing to a dog's tooth marks on a walking stick and extrapolate correlations and plausible causes from them in his stories.  Bear in mind, he wrote for his audience.  The distance of time between the original publication and the present day can lull modern readers into a casual acceptance of "that's just what it says," but that is a cheap form of acceptance!  Doyle made Holmes impressive because he made perfect sense to his readers in 1887.  His stories were authentic because they referred to tools, professions, crimes, international political climates, pets, clothing and customs with which his readers were intimately familiar.  And he did it so well that his stories were extremely popular in their day.  If they had been outlandish statements that didn't ring true with his readers, such popularity would not have been the case.

Nevertheless, Holmes is still a fictional character.  Detractors from the stories will likely remind the reader that many of Holmes deductions never reference any unspoken margin of error, and were furthermore dependent on the strictly defined social customs and not-yet-disproven pseudosciences of the Victorian age.  This is exemplified in the following passage from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, in which Holmes draws conclusions from trace clues found inside a hat.  His deductions only work in an era in which phrenology is accepted as science and women were expected to maintain their husbands' accoutrements, but Doyle's level of detail is nonetheless staggering:

“I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual?”

For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. “It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have something in it.”

“The decline of his fortunes, then?”

“This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world.”

“Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?”

Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Here is the foresight,” said he putting his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. “They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect.”

“Your reasoning is certainly plausible.”

“The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training.”

“But his wife—you said that she had ceased to love him.”

“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's affection.”

“But he might be a bachelor.”

“Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife. Remember the card upon the bird's leg.”

“You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in his house?”

“One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning tallow—walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains from a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?”

“Well, it is very ingenious,” said I, laughing; “but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.”

Waste of energy, indeed.  But impressive, for both Doyle and Holmes.

As the development of entertainment technology increased by leaps and bounds very soon after the introduction of Sherlock Holmes into popular literature, it is no surprise that Sherlock Holmes started appearing onscreen as early as 1900.  It is hard to imagine any literary figure who has been adapted for the screen more times than Sherlock Holmes.  At present, Wikipedia lists seventy-three men who have played Holmes on the stage, large and small screens, and radio.

The two actors who have most recently brought Holmes back into the public consciousness, Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, have reintroduced Holmes to the world in unique ways.  The interpretations of Doyle's stories have been incredibly unique when compared to previous adaptations, but also surprisingly respectful to Doyle in their respective steampunk and modern-day treatments of the stories.

Looking at it objectively, Guy Ritchie's first film adaptation of Holmes, starring Downey Jr., is much closer to the original material than most critics give it credit for being.  In Sherlock Holmes, which I saw with my family on Christmas Day, 2009, draws much of its dialogue verbatim from Doyle's stories.  Of course, the story itself is a new narrative for Holmes, one with manifold problems, but a fun story nonetheless.  Where it succeeded most, however, was in its interpretation of Holmes himself.

In the stories, Holmes is constantly referred to by others as having skills and abilities which he used when necessary.  But, Doyle was careful to structure his stories so that Holmes is never actually seen by Watson when engaged to the fullest extent of his abilities.  Holmes is shown to the readers via Watson as action in repose.  We only see him when his mind is doing the work, but throughout the short stories and novels, Holmes talked of by others as a superb boxer, a chemist in the tradition of mad scientists, and an accomplished collegiate theatre actor who used his craft professionally to completely assumed new identities while in disguise.

The screenplay of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes diverged from its source material by showing Holmes fighting and assimilating his disguises.  Whereas Watson's point of view, often catching nothing more than the aftermath of a fight or hearing the story of a journey in disguise from Holmes after the fact, is the reader's only glimpse of Holmes in the text, Ritchie's camera follows Holmes when Watson is absent.

Through this shift in viewpoint, we are treated to the Holmes that actually did exist in the text; the difference lies in which side of him we see.  Sadly, last year's sequel Game of Shadows, while having moments of brilliance, was very inferior to its predecessor as a film as well as an adaptation what makes Sherlock Holmes the character that he is.  When Sherlock Holmes gets too far away from London, he is no longer Holmes, and the most recent film inadvertently turned him into James Bond.  I will say, however, that the casting of Jared Harris as Moriarty is a decision for which I will never cease applauding.

Most recently, the BBC has brought an entirely new perspective to the Sherlock Holmes mythos, delivered through the mind of writer and show runner Steven Moffat.  More and more, Steven Moffat is styling himself as the Leonardo da Vinci of screenwriting.  He possesses a mind with a seemingly endless wellspring of creativity, and a propensity to turn viewers on their ears with plot twists, overlapping timelines and character deaths.  In the space of five years, he created and ran the underrated Jekyll, took over the writing of Doctor Who's two most staggeringly complex seasons to date, co-wrote the script for The Adventures of Tintin, only to leave Tintin early to be the guiding hand behind Sherlock.

True to form, Moffat wasted no time in making Sherlock thoroughly unique.  He accomplished this by doing something that no one else had done before: he placed Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in modern-day London.  Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. had created a very modern interpretation of Holmes, but they retained him in his original, Victorian environs; the overall effect being one of confinement for the character's personality.  By contrast, Moffat's reasons for total commitment to a modern setting were staggeringly obvious:

“We just decided we were going to update him properly; he’d be a modern man because he’s a modern man in the Victorian version, he’s always using newfangled things, like telegrams. He’s someone who appreciates and enjoys technology; he’s a bit of a science boffin, he’s a geek, he would do all those things. I just think it’s fun, I don’t think all the fantastic tech we’ve got limits the storytelling, I think you can use it in all sorts of ways.” [Link]

"Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes - and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters." [Link]

As previously stated, staggeringly obvious.  These reasons are also in keeping with the spirit of Sherlock Holmes as a character.  As the Victorian Holmes was always on the cutting edge of the era's science, publishing articles in print journals on the subject of science in deduction, Moffat's Holmes does exactly the same thing, albeit with newer science and the internet.  Moffat even went so far as to placate hardcore fans with some long-awaited catharsis, allowing Sherlock to poke fun at the enduring image of himself as constantly wearing a deerstalker cap.  It could even be said that Moffat "lucked out" with the recent British involvement in the War on Terror in Afghanistan, which allowed him to retain even more of John Watson's original character as a wounded veteran fresh from the Afghani desert.

Sherlock Holmes, as Moffat indicated, is an individual who transcends the limitations of a specific time or place.  Furthermore, the level of respect which Moffat has shown to Doyle has been deep.  Obscure lines of dialogue and camera setups which perfectly mimic Sidney Paget's Strand illustrations make appearances in the BBC series, and are a never-ending source of delight for attentive fans.  To Moffat's further credit, he has kept the show confined to London for two seasons, with the exception of the obligatory Baskerville episode, apparently feeling no need superfluously bloat the supposed importance of a case by giving it global or supernatural import.

The idea of Holmes as an eternally modern man is also why I can defend the Guy Ritchie adaptations, albeit to a lesser extent.  Culture evolves. As Stephen Fry said, "Evolution is all about restless and continuous change, mutation and variation."  The more time that passes between the present day and that moment in 1886 when Doyle first put pen to paper and wrote Holmes into existence in A Study in Scarlet, the more necessary it becomes to update the adaptations to appeal to the very different culture that might be seeing it for the first time.

Provided that the Doyle estate protects Sir Arthur's stories from being tampered with or expanded by new writers (such as the recent continuation of the late Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne novels under the authorship of Eric von Lustbader), so that future generations may continue to experience the stories as they were written, not just as stories, but as a reflection of Victorian culture, and a stellar example of the period's style of writing.

The Ritchie/Downey films have reached the widest audience thus far in recent years, and they have their flaws.  However, they retain enough of the character's essence to make people want to read the books.  I am personally unprepared to admit that the BBC's Sherlock has any flaws, but I will concede that they are unconventional in their unabashed commitment to Holmes as a modern man.

Where too many literary fans of Doyle and Holmes make a mistake, (and this holds equally true for fans of all book franchises which have been adapted for the screen), is in confusing the quality of a film or television show with the fidelity of the adaptation from its source.  Simply being different from the source material does not automatically make a film "bad" in any objective sense of screenwriting or production quality.

The root cause of many adaptations being popularly labeled as "bad," is that good books have the tendency to become the equivalent of good friends to devoted readers, and any deviation from what fans already know and love consequently feels like a very personal slight.  The more popular the book, the better the odds are that subjective fan opinions will color popular opinion far more than objective reviews which weigh the adaptation on its own merit.

However, there is one point on which I believe that all fans of Doyle's stories can agree.  If either of the two (soon to be three) franchises currently celebrating the writing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle inspire their audiences to seek out the source material and discover the brilliance of Doyle's work on their own, then the adaptations, no matter how disagreeable to some fans, have succeeded.  And I think we can all be happy about that.