I keep going longer and longer between blog posts. I think this might be the longest I've ever gone. Partly I'm really busy. Partly I'm really tired. And partly, I'm just not that excited about blogging anymore. For a long time, blogging was the center of my life and not just something that I wanted to do, but something that I needed to do. Now, I don't need to blog. All the things that I used to do for the blog--taking pictures, researching photographers, etc.--I'm perfectly happy just to do for myself. I used to feel like what's the point of doing all this work if no one's ever going to see it, but now I know. I would not be the person that I am if not for everything that I've done through blogging. But the person that I've become through blogging doesn't really need to blog, if that makes any sense.
This doesn't mean at all that I'm going to stop blogging. It just means that I'm going to change my focus. Blogging has become a bit of a chore lately and I don't want it to be that, so I'm really only going to blog when I want to. And maybe this will be liberating and actually mean that I'll blog more. We'll see. I'm in this crazy state of transition right now where I've become completely uprooted and everything I've ever planned for and wanted has been thrown aside. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do both artistically and generally as a person. So I think that's what this blog is going to be about: figuring things out. From your perspective, what I post might not be that different from what I have posted in the past, but it will be different for me.
This weekend the youth symphony I play with had a retreat. We rode buses up the freeway, away from the city and through the fog towards the fields and forests. In addition to the ordeal of 15 hours of rehearsals, it was strange to spend a couple days in such close quarters with people my own age. Never have I seen so much texting in my life (so I guess this is what I missed in skipping high school). What struck me, though, was how they looked when they weren't prepared to be seen. How they looked first thing after wake-up call, straggling into the bathroom, make-up not yet applied, hair still mussed from sleep. I love how faces look first thing in the morning, slightly swollen, puffy and rosy. They look vulnerable. They look human. There's a beauty to it that's lost the moment we begin to prepare for the day, fixing ourselves up. I'm not saying we shouldn't care for our appearances, I'm merely saying that maybe we should take a moment longer to appreciate the humanity and vulnerability before we begin to disguise it.
These photos by
Claire Sloan seem to capture that vulnerability perfectly. As she says on
her website, "these photographs are 6-8 hour exposures of myself sleeping, each one capturing the dreaming, the subtle movements and the peacefulness found in the course of one sleep cycle." I just love how simple and authentic they are.
PS I took a roll of film over the weekend and I actually have a bunch of other rolls to be scanned, too, so I might do a massive film post soon.