the vacant lot

Pink Power Stranger

Add comment | April 25th, 2010

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Went to Coachella last weekend, and had a fucking blast!!! This is the first post I’ve ever done on my blog where I neither talk about my photographs nor show one, but Coachella was a truly inspiring experience for me, and will undoubtedly influence my creative process from that day onward.

The truth to why I don’t have any pictures to show you is because I lost my camera on the first day… I know what your thinking, but no it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Music is meant to be heard not seen through images. All those people holding up their iphones and digicams are are just diluting their experience by paying too much attention to their gadgets and not what is really going on, only to create a horrible reproduction of a performance that would never do the artist any justice. Photography is like a decease, especially to a photographer. It is a burden that makes you feel as though you must record every amazing event that takes place before your eyes, and if you don’t then you’ve failed. It’s all a false illusion though. Life is meant to be lived not recorded, and music is destined to be heard not seen. I’m glad I got to shake this flu for a few days and suck everything in: the sight, sense, and sound without a filter in between me and the emotion that was being radiated those three days.

The amount of emotion that is emitted from these artists is immeasurable, and it’s a reality check that true art should always deliver this overwhelming amount of “energy” should I say. I’ve never created a single piece that could ever do what I saw in the past few days. I guess my work is more about subtle emotions collected over a series of time, and music is more of an explosive expression of the moment, the “now.” Two different art forms with two very contrasting deliveries. I dig them both though.

Hands down favorite set of the weekend, (keep in mind that I barely even got to see even a quarter of all the performances that took place that weekend, and same goes to all the reporters writing for magazines and newspapers, so take mine and their opinion for a grain of salt.) was Fever Ray. It was a live horror show with entrancing lights and skin crawling music. I was sitting right smack in between being mortified and having the best time of my life. Its funny how those two can work side by side, but they somehow do.

While Jay-Z was putting on a Disney show on the other end of the venue, the shaman Fever Ray was opening corridors to the spiritual world.

Photo: Johan Renck

Add comment | April 21st, 2010

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another one…

My roommate found this poor little guy a week or two ago with a broken wing. We tried our best to take care of it in a hope that it would recover, and be healthy again. It would have probably never been able to fly again, but we thought it could at least live a new found life. We fed it and did whatever we thought would help it’s recovery process, but one morning the thing’s soul had left its body.

I don’t really think that it was the physical injury that killed the poor fella, but probably the frustration of not being able to fly again. The thing was meant to fly freely at it’s own free will, and if you’ve ever seen a humming bird you’d know that its one of the most talented flyers in the bird world. I think when the one thing that it was meant to do well in this world was taken away, it lost its will to live.

Sometimes I feel like a lot of people are actually in this state in the world. They let go of something that was really true to them, and ever since that they’ve been emotionally dead. I think its important to have a purpose in life.

So we were probably mistaken by thinking that it would be better off if it lived with a broken wing. We were probably just torturing it, prolonging it’s fate…

Add comment | April 6th, 2010

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