by virtually nothing.
It seems we’re coming out the other side of this thing, whatever that means. But something’s changing. And it’s funny, because, that’s all I’ve been waiting for. For a person who’s pretty anxious sitting still, it’s been hard.
But now, as a person forced to sit still for so long, I’m scared I can’t go out there again.
Anxiety has been my main demon. But I forgot how deceivingly destructive depression can be. Apathy.
I only had this dream once, but it will haunt me the rest of my life.
I was about 14 years old. I was in the middle of some barren, suffocating landscape. No green, everything splashed in dull orange. I walked up to an old dilapidated building, in the shape of a semi-circle. It was a crumbling museum.
Echoing throughout this dream, I heard a song. I can’t remember all the words now, but I heard, “Five Little Indians, standing in a row…” I don’t know where I heard this song, but it comes from an old racist rhyme.
Nine little Indians swingin' on a gate,
One tumbled off and then there were eight.
Eight little Indians gayest under heav'n.
One went to sleep and then there were seven;
I entered the museum, I started walking along the walls to see several paintings, all of the same subject, but each painting was slightly different from the last. It was a row of Native people in their regalia. Each painting got more and more grotesque.
The first painting, they stood there. Stoic and still. The second, disturbed looks on their faces. The third, some beginning to hunch, holding parts of their bodies that looked to be in pain. The fourth, blood and pain were clear. It went on and on until they were on the ground dead.
Throughout all this, some omnipresent voice saying,
Two little Indians foolin' with a gun,
One shot t'other and then there was one;One little Indian livin' all alone,
He got married and then there were none.
That was the dream. I’d never seen anything like that before in my life.
I wonder where it came from. I wonder if I’ll ever forget it. I can’t seem to.
I don’t miss the florescent lights
I could feel their buzz in my stomach
enough to make me sick but never vomit.
which could be worse.
I don’t miss walking down halls, seeing a half-stranger from down the way
Every week, I analysed my hellos and my goodbyes
I’m bored but I feel blessed to hide
I hate bookends of a conversation, I just want the meat.
the in
between.
I don’t miss my heart pounding
at the thought of speaking
to people likely not listening
I’ve told myself a million times
it doesn’t really matter
but my heart pumps like my life depends
on the nothing I have to say.
I’ve found the best music between the times of 12:00 AM and 6:00 AM.
Some of the music I like best sound full of grime, hiss, and pops. It’s comforting, for me, to hear a crack in the voice and the warble of emotion. This could be the romantic in me, but I am pleased to be reminded that a human being is on the other side of that recording. Just like a human being that is writing this.
A human being that cries hard, laughs with saliva dripping from their mouth, and rolls their head into their pillow with frustration. The weirdness of being human. I want to hear that. It softens the reality of my weirdness, or at least, gives it some sort of purpose.
A dateless night, still soaked in the days heat.
It’s 2014 in the attic-room of a very old house that I’m managing to live in, rent free, with my boyfriend.
The darkness is thick but the glow from the computer sheds a sickly light on my face. If my boyfriend were awake, I might care about my posture or my neanderthal like expression as I gawk into the window of the world wide web, but we’re past caring at this point.
I believe in guilty pleasures. The unexceptional teen drama, The OC, is one of those for me. But iI’ll be damned if that show didn’t have a killer soundtrack. I was revisiting the long ago cancelled box set. When I first heard that soundtrack, my 12 year old mind took away artists like Modest Mouse and Death Cab For Cutie.
Now (then) at 18, I hear this:
Don’t be sad I know you will.
But don’t give up until…
True love will find you in the end.
Beck, a familiar voice.
I throw the words I can pick up on, into that window of the world wide web. But I forgo Beck and find the man… the boy… who first wrote and performed it to an 8 track in his bedroom. 1980 something.
Daniel Johnston.
He’s manic. He laughs with hysteria. He bounces between a rigid and limp hand to strum at his guitar, I can almost see him furrowing his brow, and closing his eyes:
Only if you're looking can it find you
'Cause true love is searching, tooBut how can it recognize you
If you don't step out into the light, the light.
Be it love from a lover, or love of yourself, it’s a message unobstructed by pretentious ego.
Daniel is heavy, and light, and he gets these things just right, in a way I might’ve never thought to say it. Whether it’s talking about Walking The Cow or Playing Cards With Satan, I feel like I need to reach my hand out through space and time to hold that weirdos hand. In his room. In the 80’s. Alone. But maybe… not so misunderstood.
Some of my favorite songs —
the ones that have hands and arms
grip me out of the gutter
Some of my favorite songs —
supply the immortal kindling
for my fire
Some of my favorite songs —
disintegrate the levee behind the curves
of my eyes
They shed a light on a river
that only flows in a bitter privacy.
Some of my favorite songs —
have the strength to dig up something
too deep for me to ever reach
The things
Unscathed by a wilting mind.
Some of my favorite songs —
Were written by no one,
for nobody,
Grateful to be the nobody I am.
A poem inspired by Randy Newman. A man who can write an emotional masterpiece, and yet be so detached from the influence of his music. A man that can write better when instructed, than from introspection and vulnerability. So many of his songs are written for nobody in reality, yet speaks to many real people. I am one of the many.
8.5 million bodies shuffling around this city, and I'm only a visitor, maybe an imposter, amongst the crowds.
For a person like myself, who revels in the ability to be anonymous, New York City is my kind of bag. The average joe combats that thought with sky high rent, crime, shitty New Yorker attitude, the usual. But — I can dispute those factors pretty easily.
A) I'm set on being poor for awhile. I'm not keen on it, but it's my reality. I'm definitely romantisizing the struggle of moving to NYC with nothing and making your way up, but that's a hell of story. I'm at peace with risks. I welcome a feared dip into the unknown. It's 50% terrifying and 50% liberating. In this respect, i'm an optimist.
B) Crime is around every corner in the world. And, statistically speaking, crime has decreased drastically since 9/11 and there's police everywhere, with emergency buttons peppered through out the city. Again, risks! I'm alright with it.
C) Shitty NY attitude? All the people I met were pretty sweet. If i'm being candid, i'm kind of an asshole, too.
I come from a small city in the prairies of Canada, the kind of city you would still call your "home town". It's flat, slow, and if it's not bitterly cold, it's scorching hot. That place is the antithesis of NYC. Naturally, I was smitten with the city that is said to never sleep. Because... well, either do I.
Back home, there's a rooftop of one of the taller buildings you can stand on top of, but you had to scurry around sub par mall security to get to it. It wasn't that hard. Reiterating the fact this place is slow. I'd stand there, hoping to feel empowered, somewhere I could look far off into the distance and see another life. It never delivered. I don't compare these two places, but it's a drastic change in the feelings that stem from these experiences.
It's likely that if I were to move there, nothing would come from it. But — you have to at least buy a ticket to get on the ride. Maybe it's too fanciful to pretend that something exciting may happen in my life, I might do something i'm proud of and be financially successful, but I'd rather give it my best than never try at all. I'm painfully aware that is a cliché sentiment. Still, I can get behind it whole heartedly.
“I’m so tired of gettin’ nowhere/ seen’ my prayers goin’ unanswered/ I guess the lord must be in New York City”
Prayers unanswered in one place goes unanswered in the next. But since when did art need logic or reasoning? I thrive off of that notion. The sunrise separating you from your yesterdays. Good omens. Bad omens. Flying in to New York City was like skipping along the yellow brick road, and the skyline reminiscent of Emerald City. You're bound to be hurt everywhere you go in life, I might as well be living out my odds in New York City. It's not nessecarily a path I'm set on by any means, but since moving away from my home town, I've been standing on a pretty high building, and at least from here, I can see it's out there, it is possible, it is an option.
The buildings are packed like a colourful can of sardines, the smell of pot creeps over every narrow cobble stone path, and the people are happy. This is the dutch capital, Amsterdam.
It's nearing the end of our 3 month European trip, and by this point, our patience for heavy backpacks, long walks, and little direction has dwindled tremendously. Fortunately, if you look even the slightest bit lost in Amsterdam, locals are more than willing to offer a hand.
After a long and sweaty plane ride from Stockholm, we managed to find our way on a train, to the core of Amsterdam where we'd have to pretty well guess as to which bus would get us closest to our Airbnb. We've got sore backs, and fresh tattoos on our shoulders that really needed a chance to breathe. We are ready to get "home" and little to no energy to accomplish that.
Nearly the entire trip we had arrived in every new city during day light, not noticing how much of a difference this makes in order to feel comfortable enough to stumble around a new city, and often times a new country. 1 wrong train, 2 right trains, and 1 plane ride later, we'd been travelling for roughly 8 hours. Still refusing the high fares of cabs, we're at a crossroads. It's dark, it's raining, and this new place looks awfully villainous at this late hour. We are waiting for, what we think, is the right bus. An old drunken man wavers by us, rendering Chance and I both tense. The old man over hears our conversation and pipes in and tells us which bus to catch, and where to catch it. We make small talk for a bit while we wait, he's as harmless as they come. He even apologizes for mistaking us for Americans (not the first time this happened through out our trip). He hops on his own bus, quickly re assuring us to wait for ours that would be arriving shortly, and bids farewell with the same 2 words I only had gotten tattoo'd on my arm a day before, "Take care."
We're on our bus and another obstacle comes swiftly after the last, where do we get off? Again, we must look somewhat pathetic, sitting in a jagged manner with our precariously stuffed backpacks, discussing where we think we should get off. It's night, we don't have data, and we want to get there as quickly as possible. These factors certainly don't help each other. As fate would have it, these 2 young men strike up a conversation. The same questions come up that we've gotten plenty of times the past few months, "Where are you from?" "Why are you here?" "Where are you going?" Luckily enough, these fellas were going in the same direction as us, and instructed us to follow them.
No matter how open-minded I am, there's something to be said about a gut instinct, and not letting open mindedness replace good sense. We're getting off in a quiet neighbourhood, and following these guys into darker and calmer side streets. I'm not so sure about this. Nothing they said or did, or even the way they presented themselves, gave me any reason to not trust them. The soul reason being this; you just never know. Alas, I was proven wrong anyhow.
These guys looked like they just left from a last call at an open mic, or a slam poetry event. Suede jackets, maroon pants, slick shoes, and one with a guitar strapped on to his back. How could I really be wary of these guys? It wasn't entirely picture perfect, they actually walked us all the way to a hostel they thought we were staying at. Right neighbourhood. Wrong place. But we didn't want them to know so we let them walk away, pretending we were grateful they got us to where we needed to go, and left the hostel lobby once they were out of sight. After all, they went through all that trouble just to walk some strange tourists to their lodging, we didn't want to discredit their good deed. We walked back to the main street, just a couple blocks over.
It's the dead of night, our host is waiting for us, I have no way to contact him after being hours late, and there's no on in sight. Literally no one. We look down for a couple seconds, fiddling with our iPad, once I look up, there's a woman crossing the street to talk to us. I'd been scanning all of our surrounding areas just seconds before, after a quick glance down, she seems to appear out of thin air.
She's a sweet woman, greeting us like old friends. She asks us where we wanted to go, and points us in the opposite direction we were thinking of going. Thank god for her. Only a few blocks away from our apartment, we finally end up where we need to be. How awful that experience could have been if it weren't for 3 entirely different encounters with well intentioned strangers. We make it to our final stop until we go back home to Canada. What do we need to accomplish before concluding this incredible trip? One last concert.
It's my 21st birthday, we chug a cheap bottle of wine (for money saving purposes only) and catch the bus to the venue.
Upon the first couple of minutes you might wonder why this is the song I decide to associate going out with a bang with, but it's the build that makes it so damn topical. I liken the message to why we, why I, came out here in the first place.
“In the backseat of my heart/ My love tells me I’m a mess/ I couldn’t get the car to start/ Left my keys somewhere in the mess.”
I was restless with my surroundings, I was fed up with stalling and waiting for something better to happen. I kicked it into third and finally committed to getting the hell out of there. "There" being a shitty mental state, a yawn of a city, a thankless job, a comfort zone. This is where I started, this is where these lyrics begin, but it doesn't end there, and neither did I.
“It’s not too late/ Turn off the engine/ Get out of the car/ And start to walk/ Drunk drivers.../ It doesn’t have to be like this!/ It doesn’t have to be like this! ”
It's an intimate venue, no one is even crowding the front of the stage, excluding ourselves, and I'm closing my eyes tightly, these bright white lights combust the second the music catapults away from the melancholic sludge it was originally treading on, and it feels so incredibly freeing! "It DOESN'T have to be like this!" A song of theirs that they had only recently written and I was hearing it for the first time, live, right in front of my own eyes.
It doesn't matter where you've been or who you've been, it's where you're going. If one way isn't getting you there, ditch it and try again. The car might be the fastest, the easiest, but there's still that option, the one Frost wrote about, a road less travelled. These experiences help me to revel in the unknown, and to have faith in myself.
Rome, Italy, January 9th, Chance and I made an acquaintance with a fellow named Felix, we drank with him for the evening, and spent the large fee of an $80 cab ride home. I woke up the morning of January 10th with the inevitable ringing in my head, but an unexpected punch in the gut. Chance nudged me awake.
“Hey... David Bowie’s dead. ”
I gave him a hard nudge back, my initial response being, "Stop. No." like it was a joke he could un tell, an insult he could take back. After a few baffled moments, and I lowered my hands from cupping my mouth, we would just lay there in the dark of the morning, not contributing more to the topic other than, "I can't believe it".
“Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth ”
I was 17 flipping through the Bowie section at HMV, and came across Ziggy, an album that got my utmost attention for years to come. It's a classic introduction to Bowie. I'm 17 years old, of course in that "I'm an alien on planet earth and no one understands me" phase. Recently having purchased my first car, a cheap and reliable '03 Sunfire. White. The emptiest of colours. And a CD player. I'd make my rounds of all the sickly familiar roads of my home town (city). The snow looks like the sky, and the sky looks like the snow, and I'm feeling the brunt of teenaged angst. The despising of my home town, and I feel alone. Who better than David Bowie himself, to send chills up my spine, driving down an other wise unmemorable city street. He punches out this line and I feel some type of communion, for the first time in a long time.
“Oh no love, you’re not alone!”
"You're watching yourself but you're too unfair/ You got your head all tangled up/ But if I could only make you care." Despite chalking up feeling depressed/anxious to teenaged hormones, I still validate those feelings and the influence music had, and has, on mental health, mine included. I've been hard on myself, I still am. But it's songs like these that ingrain a message to get out of your head, and see yourself as a whole person, full of not only mistakes and flaws, but the positive aspects that balance out the human condition.
"Oh no love! You're not alone/ No matter what or who you've been/ No matter when or where you've seen/ All the knives seem to lacerate your brain/ I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain/ You're not alone!" There's an everlasting influence embedded into these songs, this one in particular still speaks to me in varied ways, the older I get. When I was younger, I was comforted by being "too young to choose it." Whatever "it" was, is up for interpretation for anyone. Mine was feeling/being weird, a desire to be expressive, yet ashamed for vocalizing it. Whatever "it" was for you, "it" helped me find peace with who I was. It's difficult being in high school, as many people can tell you, when you feel cut off from a world that might understand you better than your peers. When you feel like you're wasting your time on subjects and standardized tests that only serve to be little your intelligence of your true passions. Where maybe my only escapes were an hour in music or a computer class. These songs were a light at the end of the tunnel, someone who made it through or past these obstacles has a message for you, just to hold on a little longer.
It's February 8th, 2017. It was just over a year ago we were in Rome, and we found out David Bowie had passed on. His words still adapt to where I am now, even in this song. "You're too old to lose it." I'm at a cross roads in this point of my life. Am I willing to compromise "it" for a more stable and secure path? I reckon not. I'm going to take those words to heart, the ones that deliver a message of ceasing the mindset that i'm not good enough, and what I have to offer is of no value. I've come this far, why not continue living a life that is true to spontaneity, refusal of a mundane life, and living over security. David's influence lives on in any moment I say yes to my true self, and advance towards a light I heard about years ago, ringing out of those crackly speakers in my '03 Sunfire.
I am grateful to have ever had this period of time to call this place "home". We only spent all of 2 weeks in Lisbon, Portugal. In that time we'd get to know the few winding streets that took us to where we wanted to go (sometimes where we didn't mean to go), a few hidden gems of our neighbourhood, a few art galleries and the world famous bakery, Pastéis de Balém.
Upon initial arrival, we had no guiding knowledge of the areas surrounding us, not to mention feeling woefully agitated trying to hurl around all of our belongings as they strained our shoulders. Portugal being the furthest south we'd go in the entirety of our trip, even in the off season, our jackets were far from necessary. We felt hopelessly lost, over heated, and exhausted, but some some reassuring words from a police officer offered some comfort, he informed us that you could spend your entire life in that neighbourhood, and you'd still find streets you'd never seen before. This bit of information helped us feel justified in hailing a cab up the hill to the apartment we'd be renting for the 2 weeks.
The area we stayed in was called Alfama, the oldest district in all of Lisbon. It goes back as far as the 15th century, and we had the pleasure of calling it our home for 2 short weeks. Alfama was unlike anything we'd seen before, surely one of the most unique areas we'd seen in our entire European trip. The roads were constantly changing from narrow to wide, sidewalks would appear and disappear, they were an impossible labyrinth and entangled in one another just so, you'd end up finding something you weren't looking for, a serendipity of sorts. I've read that Alfama was described as a medieval maze, and that it was. But if it weren't for getting lost half the time, we wouldn't have made the memories we cherish now, like finding a small fado restaurant, somewhere in the depths of Alfama.
Lamps were precariously placed through out this small, hole in the wall, type restaurant. Pictures of jazz legends hung on the walls in no particular order or style, the lighting was dim and soft, and we were the only customers. There were a handful of songs being played that night, classics, deep cuts, songs i'd never heard before. Nat King Cole's L-O-V-E was playing at one point as well, these songs surrounded this experience, it made for a surreal evening. We drank port wine and ate a bread/cheese platter. At one point I took a short video just scanning the restaurant, and Louis Prima's Buona Sera was playing. Thinking back, it's an untainted memory. Giddy as the piano is fluttery. Jovial as the vocals are exciting. These were moments I saw in the movies. I felt like, for an evening, my life had it's own soundtrack, a part of a movie I didn't have to be envious of, because it was my own.
It's not as grim as it sounds, trust me.
This photo was taken over 2 years ago. It was the dead of summer back home in Regina, SK.
During this time I photographed Chance's album cover. The cover is pretty heavily steeped in what Regina was. The cake had been ordered from Cathedral Bakery, a bakery in one of our few semi-cool neighbourhoods of the city. We found the plate at the same Value Village i've been shopping at since I was a kid, and the material that frames this is the aged wall paper from Chance's house growing up.
All the recording was being done in a time there was a lot of changes happening in both of our lives, but I could see it especially in Chance's. Every year slid into the next, and that house he grew up in always stayed the same in one way or another, but through out these weeks of recording and after, it was being prepped for renewal. The title of the album, and the songs themselves, were solemnly fitting for the changes occurring. Without going into too much detail, I felt that house was a large symbol of the past. By the time Chance and Dan, Chance's good friend, were recording, the house was already being pulled apart to be renovated. This was the house Chance grew up in, and after 27 years of either living in it, or having it be present in his life, the curtains were drawing. I find there's a lot more significance to the changing of that home, and the time spent there.
I'm glad the wallpaper was present in the photo. It was a better fit than I even realized when we shot it.
When I think back to when this photo was taken, it's the Everly Brothers' All I Have to do is Dream that comes to mind.
I remember the first time I heard this song, it was in the ending credits of "Riding in Cars With Boys" with Drew Barrymore. Not a memorable movie by any means, it was one of those movies that play on a channel you're stuck on because the remote's lost, and you end up watching it anyways, but it's one of those funny details I equate with my introduction to the Everly Brothers. I must've been about 6 or 7 the first time I heard it, even back then, it forced me to feel something beyond the mental grasp of a child. I always appreciate a song that can accomplish that. And this is certainly one of them.
The surfer-esque guitar strums me into a dreamy state, and it's already got me sold. It's a tender love ballad i'd see gawky teenagers dancing to on TV. Depending on the verses you pay mind to, it fits to various forms of what it means to long for something, or someone. When I was younger I likened it to losing a parent, but the verses that stuck out to me in that time were the ones written for someone they can only hope to be with in their dreams.
“I need you so that I could die,
I love you so and that is why,
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream”
When I took this photo, it was a time Chance and I weren't together yet, there were some obstacles too daunting to approach, but i'll spare you the details. Although not yet together, we did both take comfort in this song. It bridged the gap we couldn't quite leap yet. I felt some days were better spent dreaming when reality wasn't quite cutting it.
I have an unwavering love for all things music. Naturally, I wanted to incorporate the impression of music into my photos, and offer back stories behind them. My plan for this blog being this:
Here we go.