One thing that has always bothered me is when people don’t show up. I’m just trying to accomplish something beautiful with my life. In order for me to do that, in my little philosophy of what is actually beautiful, I need people to participate. I don’t live in a time like Cartier-Bresson, where you could shoot random people on the street doing random things. While that would technically satisfy my creative desire, it is considered in my time to be an invasion of privacy, and I don’t have the social prowess to reassure people that I’m not just some creeper on the streets shooting the wrong thing, plus, everyone with things as mindlessly passive as a cell phone are already doing that.
All that is just more on the list of things that people don’t understand about me. I need a more intimate connection with who I’m shooting so I’m not a shy, backward, dork who fucks up the photos because I’m basically having a very well disguised panic attack… I am an actor. People have said, “you’re an actor; why can’t you just act friendly.” I do; that is primarily what I do. Right now I am sitting on a rock on my mountain, with my computer and a beer. That’s my safe place. If someone else wandered into my setting, I wouldn’t very well say, “fuck off, I was here first.”
I would be as friendly as I can be, which for those who know me is definitely a debatable definition of friendly, and I would pack up my silly little car and, instead of finding a new place, I would probably just go home and abandon what I’m writing, because that doesn’t just interfere with what I’m doing, it completely derails my train. Somewhere there is a list of things that people don’t understand about me. Oh, these weird tangents I go on. I’m a stupid social retard. That has been the number one reason I haven’t accomplished anything with my life. Well, maybe a close second to my past habits of total and complete self destruction.
So, yeah, I actually need willing participants to accomplish what I’m trying to accomplish, but for the most part all I can find is people who want to be a part of the beautiful that I’m attempting to accomplish, but don’t show up. There’s always a viable-ish reason, but it’s usually just basic things that make life what it is, or underlying fear. One thorn that has been in my side has been this little mountain town that my parents moved me to when I was 12. It sells itself as a free, open, art community, but all I have ever found is a very conservative, terrified of everything community.
I hear stories about the interesting, open people, but they have never been in my social circle, if such a thing exists for me. That could be explained by the painfully obvious reality that people either really don’t like me, which is pretty easy when there’s a list of things people don’t understand about me, or people are afraid of me; forget what I do, or what I’m trying to do, straight up afraid of me, like I'm some psycho serial killer. Each and every person I know could easily fit into either category, or both. I am absolutely surrounded by free, open, spiritual, beautiful people, who have little to no interest in actually being any of those things, and are terrified to just BE beautiful, which will always require nothing more complicated than simply being.
It truly baffles me how few people understand that. Maybe they do understand it, but they just don’t want to share it with me, because they don’t like me or are afraid of me? In the meantime, I’m just sitting here waiting for people to show up; people who not only agreed to show up, but pushed the case. I am fortunate to have my beautiful family to document; I am grateful for that; and while they are my figurative world, it is incredibly difficult to see so much beauty in the literal world, and be denied access to capture it. This is all relative, of course; I have communicated with little to no models who weren't interested in working with me, but that is always stomped out by location, time, and money, in which case I was usually the one who disappeared from the conversation because it’s so fucking depressing. I am surrounded by beauty, though. It is everywhere. It exists primarily in places that are incapable of realizing it. It is a basic truth that people don’t understand. We have these amazing minds that keep us from understanding the blatantly obvious, primarily because we are surrounded by amazing minds that can’t see past the petty, stupid shit, and our potentially beautiful, amazing minds settle for the worth of their wasted potential of maybe one day realizing how amazing all of this is.
We are a beautiful animal, who has no idea how beautiful we are, before we do anything to BE beautiful. The sun is setting…the moon’s out…no one to shoot. Story of my life. All you had to do was be here. You’ve got more important things, though, or you don’t like me, or you’re scared of me, or you are terrified to be beautiful.
I have fallen so deep into my mind at this point that I can hardly function. I feel like I'm living in the foggy aftermath of wasted potential. I am pretty confident that I've typed that line a number of times in the past.
So...gemeinschaftsgefühl...you elusive bitch...you invisible ideal. Where are these beautiful souls who just are? Why must everything come with a laundry list of bullshit delusions? Why can't people just be? Why am I asking so many questions that I already know the answer to?
I used to exist to make you feel beautiful, or even loved, for just a brief moment in a world that drowns you in feeling like you have to do more than what you were born with. Now I feel like I'm harassing people to make them feel better about themselves.
Maybe I'm just a crazy psychopath.
There's a list.
Love your life.
Live it.
Why can't I document it?
No comments:
Post a Comment