Merge--

Sorry for this being so lengthy

What do I care about?

Last time I was asked this (damn you, Shane!), I said I cared about body language. More specifically, how people (myself included) hold themselves when they know they are being observed, and the differences in body language among people.

While I do still find this very interesting (and always will), I think my main interest has shifted from that to something else.

Right now, I am interested in words. In their arrangement, in the way they make the reader feel, in the way they look, how fonts convey tones, how they look on a page. I'm interested in sounds, fragments, diction, rhetoric.

This may sound weird, but I get told frequently that I should be an English major. I'm a HUGE book nerd, and I'm not too bad with writing when I really try. This probably has something to do with the fact that my father got a degree in English, and is currently an English professor at my hometowns main university (UNCC, 49ers!) (among other things, he also teaches a class on cult films, an anthropology class on the culture of America in the 1980s, and a womans studies course that analyzes the portrayal of women in noir film). Also, as a child, I was something of a literary prodigy; by the time I was 10, my reading comprehension was at the collegiate level. I learned to read before I was 5 years old, at the same time as my older sister. I'm fairly certain that if I weren't retarded at math, they would have made me skip a grade in elementary school. As I child, I spent my summers indoors reading (I had no friends and with my bizarre phobia of butterflies spending time outdoors in the suburbs didn't seem like much fun), so my father made me write book reports on the books I read to make sure I was understanding them, and he at one point made me read every Shakespeare play he owned (Cleopatra and Marc Antony are my faves).

So, with all this, I've spent my whole life obsessed with reading and devouring words and history and stories. And most people tell me that because I'm so good at it and spend the majority of my time on the internet looking up Faulkner analysis that maybe I should try my hand at being an English major. But, it's not really what I want to do. Photography speaks to me in way that simply reading cannot, even though I'm not as good at photography as I am at being an obnoxious asshole in discussions about books.

However, I am fascinated with words and the power of words. I've incorporated words in my artwork before; for my final portfolio in darkroom last semester, I did a project on the Ophelia complex and how that affects lifestyle and how young women portray grief, and wrote little vignettes to accompany each image. I may include an image and one of the vignettes.

Even now, in darkroom, I am working on narrative, in which each image is representative of a state of being that I may find myself in, and I am relying on having captions to help me express this narrative.

I see no problem with using heavy literary influences and words in my artwork, and want to pursue it more and really perfect the interplay between the verbal and the visual, diction and composition. However, I worry that I will begin using words as a cop-out; falling back on captions and written word because my visual images are falling short. I've realized that my images really make sense to me, but I cannot for the life of me make them make sense to anyone else. It's weird, trying so hard to express yourself visually and just being so misunderstood (ANGST).

Ugh, oh well. I just love writing, I want it to be part of my work. Maybe that can be my thing. My life dream as a photographer has been to make a book of images with corresponding essays.

Here is an image with a vignette (back story on this: In August, my older sisters boyfriend died tragically at the age of 20, he drowned in the Mississippi. He was a great person, and my sister loved him dearly, as did everyone that knew him. He was caring and funny and one of those people that you just implicitly knew you could trust. He was supportive of any decision you made, no matter what it was. I struggled for a really long time with not only the grief of having someone I know dying but also with seeing my sister so hurt and wanting so badly to make everything better for her but not knowing how. Also, I personally have always had trouble expressing grief, and still to this day have trouble coping with my own grief. I used this project to wrap my head around expressing grief and better come to terms with my own emotions about everything. The image is not of my sister, but the accompanying story is supposed to be from her viewpoint about the death of Eli).

You were the key to my happiness.

You brought so much happiness into my life. You were enlightening. You were fun and dangerous. You were everything I could’ve asked for and then some.

You were forgiving when I needed it and stern when you needed it. You were everything you should’ve been.

You made me so eternally happy. We were equals. Nothing could’ve gone wrong with us. We were so in tune, so in sync. We were made for each other.

Our hands fit perfectly together, and our bodies intertwined just right. We were everything for each other and nothing all at once.

I’m not sad without you. I’m just not happy. It’s a sad place to be in when you realize no one else could be quite as perfect as that one person, though many people will come close. It’s just something I have to live with. I’m fine with it. I wouldn’t want anyone to be more perfect for me than you were.

You were taken from me far too soon. That sweeping river that flooded my heart with your loss. I can’t bear the thought of it.

When you lived in my bed, every morning when you woke up you would look me in the eyes and tell me ‘This is the first day of my life’.

I tell myself that every day when I wake up. It’s the one connection I still have with you.

Claiming your things might have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Seeing all your stuff, knowing it no longer had an owner. When I found my letters in your wallet I thought that surely my heart could take no more of this pain. That I couldn’t be continually reminded of how strong our love was, and how desperately soon it was cut short.

For the first two months afterward I would find little reminders of you all around me. One of your long brown hairs still on my sheets. Your scent still lingered in my car. That sock you swore you could never find was lodged deep under my bed.

I want to forget the pain without ever forgetting you. I pray every day that somehow, some way, you’ll make your way back to me. I know somehow it will happen. I can’t believe that the universe would give you to me and take you away just like that. There has to be a bit of you left for me on this earth. You were just as much a part of me as I was of you. That’s how you live on here. You live on forever as a part of me.

I’d rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery.