LOcation, LocATION, LOCATION
I find myself in an ever-evolving and confusing dilemma. What to do when you want to leave and cast free, but can’t? Movement feels faraway not because of obligation, but because of means. An escape feels impossible as a result of circumstances not due to lack of want. I don’t desire to escape and give up on Los Angeles, but I do feel I need a change of scenery. I find myself retreating to the same areas in the city, looking for a taste of somewhere foreign, a grasp of life in another city or moment. A wish that somehow this will satiate the need for difference never comes true and I find myself wanting the same thing. I do not lack wealth in family, friends, or comfort. I have all of this and more, what I want is something else entirely.
A step into a different routine, a new life, or phase in my story. Location, location, location. A change of scenery is needed, a new city, a new scene, a new movement. I want to feel the hum of humanity in my chest and let it filter out into the way I live with new strangers and friends. Fresh experiences to draw from when telling stories to friends old and new. New things to photograph. Late nights in the chaos of Saturday evenings in NYC, the buzz of a Tokyo fish market at a time I may find too early in the morning, or the spontaneity of a Parisian restaurant only the locals really know. Life isn't meant to be had sitting down, you hop into it, claw into it. And I have not been plunging my face into the world as much as I’d like. I think the first and foremost move to make is living on one's own in the city, closer to the things that make Los Angeles an actual metropolis. Closer to the music, the bars, and weirdness. We forget how much of Los Angeles is dead, liminal, or pointless. Whole swaths of suburbia with no other goal other than to extend the sprawl, house single families, and prop up the long dead American dream. For young people in search of the reason humans decided to live amongst each other, we have to be closer to the city center.
Los Angeles is strange though; downtown is a relative dead end and as a result pockets of excitement exist spread across the region. A car is a necessity, though as you get closer to these pockets a bicycle may suffice, public transit still is not a strong suit of the city. Within these pockets are two sides of a coin, performance and reality. People who seek to seem interesting, but do not attempt to live it. The other side is those who are real. We are all real, and we are all trying to seem more interesting. Make of that what you will. Yet in these spaces a slice of what makes other places so great appears, though in classic modern Los Angeles fashion it can come off performative. And this is not to say the same thing does not occur all over the world, it does and it is a result of life becoming an extension of our social media algorithms. But in Los Angeles it feels particularly strange. I want to jump into these scenes in my city, across the country, and around the world. In cities older than our nation, in places whose history is written in the walls, in areas untouched by western geopolitical gambits. There is a real world out there, and it is still somewhere in our city. I just want to find it here, then immediately immerse myself in it somewhere else. I want to move, and keep moving. Picking up pieces of the world and human experience along the way. Capture it with my camera, write about it, taste it, hear it, see it, feel it dammit! I'm tired of being sedentary, I want a trajectory to follow, a location to seek. I do not have a lack of good in my life, I just want to add to it and expand upon it. Is that so much to ask?
