Oh Yeah Life Goes On

November 5th to 27th, 2022

I sat on a couch that hugged the wall of the bar as my friends got drinks, staring vacantly at a row of fluorescent lights beneath the skirt of a bar table as it illuminated a maize of patron legs. There was a potential photo forming here that was too tempting to let drift into memory, and yet, I knew this was an obviously inappropriate setting to shoot in. I was overwhelmed-- the wall of white noise that penetrated my head was so washed and singular that it morphed into an indistinct drone, which lulled me to sleep. I sank into the couch's soft leather cushions, cradled in its bosom as my eyelids sagged. Someone approached me asking if I was okay. I must have looked very intoxicated. I sat up and gave them a white person's smile followed by a thumbs up or something stupid like that. I probably should've gotten up and joined my friends, even if it was just to stand around, not drink and pretend to comprehend people's conversations. My attention returned to the proto-image. I sat there in detached thought for a long time, assessing the risk of photographing in a bar, especially given that I appeared alone and indisposed. I made a quick decision free from further speculation and snapped the image. A momentary violating light washed over the walls of the bar and lapped the legs of strangers. I forgot to silence the flash.

I caught my breath at the unambiguous act, waiting for the inevitable consequence. Very shortly, a staff member approached me. It was an ill-lit place, but I could guess with a shameful amount of confidence what expression she was wearing. She greeted me in the way people do when they have more pressing things to say but still wish to maintain a modicum of professionalism. I returned her greeting, feigning ignorance to the direction of this conversation. She was a short woman, but I was sinking so low into the couch that she still had to stoop over to speak to me as if I was some child left unsupervised. She quickly accelerated the string of usual dialogue and interrogated me with a slew of questions: was that a camera? What was I photographing? Why was I photographing, etc. I did my best to explain myself honestly so as to lower her guard, even showing her what I had photographed. She weighed each of my answers, nodding silently, staring at me then my photos then back at me again, not in any way reassured by my explanations.

I was aware that nothing I could say would lower her suspicions of me. I was already sitting by myself. I was also a guy, not dressed in a particularly flattering or advantageous way given the circumstances. I had that sort of Unabomber fashion, which I mostly blame on my oversized jacket. Plus the beard and glasses combo. It gave me the aire of some antisocial private investigator. I knew that the photographs I showed would only raise more questions. I don't mean this to be an ulterior compliment on my photography being too esoteric for her, only that there was no amount of explanation at that moment that would do any good in such a truncated social situation. There was a degree of public decorum that I had violated by photographing people here, though others in the bar had likely done the same, stealthily or perhaps brazenly raising their smartphones to record as they leered and laughed at other patrons. That was besides the point though. I knew at the very least I should have been more discreet.

It would've been strange and long-winded of me to go off on some tangential explanation of my camera philosophy, attempting to yell over siren music that made it hard to hear myself speak as an exhausted worker fulfilled her obligation to investigate me as a problem. It was an unfortunate instance of compounding social barriers preventing us from speaking plainly with clarity, and I was frustrated and sharply aware of this invisible border dividing us. The woman was eventually at a loss for words. She had exhausted all questions and looked at me dumbfounded as I pretended like I wasn't aware of the issue. In resignation, she shrugged, deciding I was not worth the effort and went about her myriad of other tasks. I took one more half-hearted photo and shamefully stowed away my camera for the evening.

Second Draft

First Draft

Hotinit

< beginning of transcript >

"october 15 and 16

hotinit

I passed through the kitchen and away from the party noise that clung like mist to the back of my neck. If someone were to stop me at that moment, I would have lied and said that I was searching for the bathroom. In truth, I wanted to wander. There is something exhilarating about sticking your nose intrusively into someone's home, especially at a party, when the crowd is occupied. You'd slip between warm bodies unaware, roaming unattended, every entry inviting you to push further into the boundaries of this space. 

I walked down a corridor on carpeted floors that silenced my steps, the rows of locked doors like paintings in an exhibit. I never had the courage or irreverence to open any of them. I might at best rattle a door knob quietly, but even that was beyond my comfort or desire. My real end was reaching the edge, a spot of silence when, traveling so far beyond the boundaries of the party, I encountered a threshold, surrounded by family photos and unprepared rooms where my assigned role as guest verged on intruder. I might make note of the faces in these portraits and the rows of relatives and children. It was fun to mark with little context the elaborate and unfathomable lives that existed apart from me. But these were only curiosities of small reward compared to the energy that radiated at this place beyond the boundaries. I lingered by a door listening to the sound of small paws scratching at wood. A restrained pet moaned pitifully in desperation to greet guests, locked like an undesirable beast beneath the castle. 

I stood under a perfectly-cut space that ran deep into the ceiling above me. It seemed to trail up forever, a dark, square void that hung ominous over my head. I sat on the carpet floor and let my hands sink into soft polyester as I craned my neck to stare up at this bizarre architecture. I speculated it to be an inaccessible attic space or a skylight made irrelevant at night.

I composed myself before someone turned the corner of the hall in search of a place to pee. I hid my strange and anti-social interest, making small talk, or more likely, no talk at all."

< end of transcript >

first draft excerpt completed May 2024 at roughly 12:00 am

Scenes From A Wedding

first draft excerpt completed Thursday March 29th, 2024 at roughly 3:00 am

Preface Note: I've been experimenting with a late-era typewriter that I received from a friend of mine a few weeks ago. Writing on one of these machines has always been a dream of mine, but I couldn't initially think of what purpose it might serve given its impracticality. There's a certain amount of tension in typing with something so much less forgiving in its editing. I tend to spend a lot of time deliberating on a single sentence, and I'm constantly rearranging the structures of paragraphs. The pace at which I write slows down dramatically when I use a typewriter; I have to commit to a thought with a sharper awareness of what I'm going to say a few lines further down or within the next few paragraphs.

Of course, much of this is due to the free-form nature of my writing habits. I'm sure many people who used typewriters never dealt with this issue because they did a significant amount of outlining before their fingers ever touched a key. I enjoy writing as things pop into my head and more-or-less just formalize my abstractions.

All that being said, the following is a copied transcript of what I wrote using the machine. This significant restructuring of my writing style was very stimulating in its difficulty, but I'll admit that this combination of committing to paper with my loose sensibilities means that this isn't my strongest work. I ask that you give me a little bit more grace in reading this material, especially in the areas where I fail to elaborate properly. I did my best to make necessary adjustments with spelling and grammar, but otherwise, this is an exact copy of my original transcript. I wrote this in one sitting very late at night with a bit of a headache, satiated only by the excitement of the machine to finish it then and there.

< beginning of transcript >

september 11 2022

scenes from a wedding

"There's a certain enchantment cast upon the landscape of an endless green pasture resting beneath the unobstructed firmament that has penetrated the dreams of my generation. I speak on behalf of those my age, but I suspect that this vision of a place has existed in many iterations of imagination across time. The Idyllic as a genre of art is one such reference-- paintings of picturesque landscapes set in an idealized memory of country life, where man and nature coexist in a covenant of peace and mutual stewardship. It is in a sense a vision of heaven or "hiraeth" if you desire to refrain from the religious. Either way, there is a yearning in the heart as it is called home though the mind may be unable to recall its origin. In my generation, it is more concretely recognized as the Nostalgic even if the imagery remains spiritual.

“Bliss” or “Bucolic Green Hills” by Charles O’Rear

"Bliss", as it is titled, is a photograph of a rolling green hill along Highway 12 in Sonoma, California taken by Charles O'Rear. What was initially uploaded as a stock image was acquired by Microsoft and used as the default wallpaper for Windows XP as well as its marketing campaign. O'Rear's photograph would ingrain itself in the zeitgeist of the Internet age and in the minds of those whose earliest memories were shaped by the dawn of the home computer. The reality of this hill has been lost to those of us who gazed at it only in a state of transition between applications or upon moments of decision: its open expanse calling us to explore the unfathomed vastness of the web. It was also a threshold, a point that was crossed upon entering and exiting. We clicked "Log Off" and watched as the icons on our desktop vanished one by one until all that was left was the pasture. And when we booted up our towers, there it was, greeting us with a splendor of musical fanfare. In some regard, it is the most universal liminal space, a point of transition shared by millions.

Windows XP is no longer the primary point of entry to the Internet. And so it becomes a digital relic, and "Bliss" is its nostalgic face. There brews in that photo a collection of feelings almost too immeasurable to articulate: the Idyllic landscape that calls to home and heaven; the emptiness of its field that mirrors the low-poly edges of unexplored virtual worlds-- the inherent contradiction between the World Wide Web's interconnectivity and loneliness; the repetition of its face so that it is no longer a field, but an unreality, a simulacra of a field; the hauntology of the space, its liminality. It's no surprise then that its likeness is now in much Internet art I see today-- in Liminal Spaces, Vaporwave, and now Dreamcore, which seeks to merge all of these ideas in a Surrealist digital dream. The green pasture and the blue sky have been a point of location in my own dreams. Unlike the Idyllic though, the call to heaven is at its vaguest. Many artists may still portray this place with the aesthetics of the angelic, but there is only a faint longing and a sad resignation of its absence. Reflected in the art that appropriates "Bliss" is a cultural loss of faith, but also a preservation of its memory especially as it relates to our own childhood, and a deep-rooted desire for its fulfillment. The religious undertones can never be truly lost though.

Examples of Dreamcore Genre by theresalwayssomeonewatching and etern4lxm1sery

In the Orthodox tradition, heaven is often likened to a wedding, referring specifically to the Wedding at Cana and more broadly to the practices of the time in which the host invited guests with the gift of wedding garments to share properly in the union of love. It's fitting then that I find on this green hill the remnants of a wedding party-- rows of white chairs frozen in time. I enjoy the ambiguity of their placement, not just in the oddity of their appearance, but in their origin: whether they are waiting for a future event or if they are the remains of something long finished. Either way, they are Liminal in its purest form: a state of in-between-ism. Admittedly, I take a chair from the group and place it alone for a shot. I can't help but progress the narrative of this dream: that perhaps at some point there was only one chair left or that it was the first arriving. There is a lonely patience in its singleness, a quiet devotion to waiting in hopes of a sign."

< end of transcript >