A twisted kind of optimism
I've always been a passionate guy.
And I don't mean the sweaty, long-haired, shirt off, Fabio kind of passion, but the kind of passion that drives a person to do what they love regardless of its financial or real world impracticality. It's the kind of passion that won't even consider getting a job that "just pays the bills", even though you hate it. Its the kind of ridiculousness that makes a person want to be poor. It doesn't matter what I love at any given time, whether that be a book, a job, a woman, an entire field of study; if I'm interested in something it's 100%. But 100% for like...a chapter...or a month...or a failed six month relationship...or a semester. My passion is strong but fleeting. If I love you now, be careful. I may not love you next Thursday.
And it scares the shit out of me because up until now my life has been completely driven by those evanescent passions; passions that fulfill me for the minute but vanish twice as quickly as they came. I changed my major four times. I have hundreds of 1/4 finished books. I was really Catholic for a year. I have 20 amazing introductory paragraphs for 20 non-conceptualized novels. I thought I was always going to be an aggressive in-line skater or a baseball player. I'm no longer playing music; something I swore to myself I'd do forever. Theres a natural rush in discovering anything thats new and unknown, but after the unknown moves into the realm of the known it loses its intrigue; it loses its initial ability to captivate and mystify. Thats a normal feeling for most people and is also why the first few months of a relationship are--while exciting and emotional--realistically artificial, pretentious, or even delusional. The heart of a relationship lies in the period after the butterflies have flown. But my problem is that I strive on that feeling. I need the feeling of freshness to satisfy my desire for something new. I get bored with the known and need to find, create, and discover another unknown.
So professionally, I'm now at a job that--while completely unrelated to my ludicrous Philosophy studies--pays me well and for the time I actually enjoy. But I have to compare the situation with my past track record, and the way things have been going my excitement for this job should be taking a turn for the blasé in T minus three to six months. But my job is a close derivative of my most current and most promising future: photography. Of course this hobby should be yet another transitory interest until I start picking up zoology or woodworking or whatever outlandish creative enterprise comes strolling my way next. Thankfully, however, at the heart of photography is exactly what I need; something that must be consistently present in order to keep me interested in just about anything.
Writing takes time. It takes lots of time, and for someone that's a little lazy that's not a good thing. So when I feel like writing I will, but may lose the desire to put a sentence together halfway through the first paragraph. And if I don't want to write, sorry, but Im not writing shit. And it's the same idea for music: if I want to write a song I need to feel inspired or some bullshit, so to put something down I have to take the time to create the sound I want in my head, transpose it to guitar, figure out a sexy chord progression, add some cool guitar voicings to avoid sounding boring, find a tempo and the rhythm, and string it all together seamlessly. That takes time too, and lots of it. Dammit. But photography is intrinsically that rush of innovation, over and over again, but in a fraction of a second. I represent the world how I want to see it and it all happens in the same amount of time it takes me to blink my eye. I then reframe and do it again. And again. And again. In 1/125 of a second I express myself in the same manner that I do when it takes me a month to write a song, or a week to write a page. Every picture I shoot is a completed melody. Its that first paragraph. Its a whole semesters worth of Philosophy. Its another girlfriend.
And its not that there's less there substantially. Its just more compact than a piece of music or a book. In one photograph you see a multifaceted arrangement of perspective, composition, saturation, depth of field, color, lack of color, focus, movement. You see a whole story wrapped into a 4x6 frame. Most importantly, it's an ongoing creative process that's much more time efficient but just as rewarding as any other method of creativity I've engaged in so far. And that's why I have a feeling this is actually going to stick. I've been worried--very worried--that this interest will piddle away like everything else in my life that's piddled into nonexistence. This is just more substantial because it's the only passion so far that has paid me. It's creating my way of living right now, and I enjoy my way of living right now. But I will not do something I don't enjoy. Call it selfish, impractical, or downright stupid; I just won't subject myself to the kind of professional monotony that will drive me to insanity before I'm thirty.
So here I am, taking pictures and enjoying it. And I would've never thought that a part time job at Longs a few years ago would lead me to a career that I love more than music, but for now I'm thankful and happy, and I guess that's all I can really ask for...for now.
And I don't mean the sweaty, long-haired, shirt off, Fabio kind of passion, but the kind of passion that drives a person to do what they love regardless of its financial or real world impracticality. It's the kind of passion that won't even consider getting a job that "just pays the bills", even though you hate it. Its the kind of ridiculousness that makes a person want to be poor. It doesn't matter what I love at any given time, whether that be a book, a job, a woman, an entire field of study; if I'm interested in something it's 100%. But 100% for like...a chapter...or a month...or a failed six month relationship...or a semester. My passion is strong but fleeting. If I love you now, be careful. I may not love you next Thursday.
And it scares the shit out of me because up until now my life has been completely driven by those evanescent passions; passions that fulfill me for the minute but vanish twice as quickly as they came. I changed my major four times. I have hundreds of 1/4 finished books. I was really Catholic for a year. I have 20 amazing introductory paragraphs for 20 non-conceptualized novels. I thought I was always going to be an aggressive in-line skater or a baseball player. I'm no longer playing music; something I swore to myself I'd do forever. Theres a natural rush in discovering anything thats new and unknown, but after the unknown moves into the realm of the known it loses its intrigue; it loses its initial ability to captivate and mystify. Thats a normal feeling for most people and is also why the first few months of a relationship are--while exciting and emotional--realistically artificial, pretentious, or even delusional. The heart of a relationship lies in the period after the butterflies have flown. But my problem is that I strive on that feeling. I need the feeling of freshness to satisfy my desire for something new. I get bored with the known and need to find, create, and discover another unknown.
So professionally, I'm now at a job that--while completely unrelated to my ludicrous Philosophy studies--pays me well and for the time I actually enjoy. But I have to compare the situation with my past track record, and the way things have been going my excitement for this job should be taking a turn for the blasé in T minus three to six months. But my job is a close derivative of my most current and most promising future: photography. Of course this hobby should be yet another transitory interest until I start picking up zoology or woodworking or whatever outlandish creative enterprise comes strolling my way next. Thankfully, however, at the heart of photography is exactly what I need; something that must be consistently present in order to keep me interested in just about anything.
Writing takes time. It takes lots of time, and for someone that's a little lazy that's not a good thing. So when I feel like writing I will, but may lose the desire to put a sentence together halfway through the first paragraph. And if I don't want to write, sorry, but Im not writing shit. And it's the same idea for music: if I want to write a song I need to feel inspired or some bullshit, so to put something down I have to take the time to create the sound I want in my head, transpose it to guitar, figure out a sexy chord progression, add some cool guitar voicings to avoid sounding boring, find a tempo and the rhythm, and string it all together seamlessly. That takes time too, and lots of it. Dammit. But photography is intrinsically that rush of innovation, over and over again, but in a fraction of a second. I represent the world how I want to see it and it all happens in the same amount of time it takes me to blink my eye. I then reframe and do it again. And again. And again. In 1/125 of a second I express myself in the same manner that I do when it takes me a month to write a song, or a week to write a page. Every picture I shoot is a completed melody. Its that first paragraph. Its a whole semesters worth of Philosophy. Its another girlfriend.
And its not that there's less there substantially. Its just more compact than a piece of music or a book. In one photograph you see a multifaceted arrangement of perspective, composition, saturation, depth of field, color, lack of color, focus, movement. You see a whole story wrapped into a 4x6 frame. Most importantly, it's an ongoing creative process that's much more time efficient but just as rewarding as any other method of creativity I've engaged in so far. And that's why I have a feeling this is actually going to stick. I've been worried--very worried--that this interest will piddle away like everything else in my life that's piddled into nonexistence. This is just more substantial because it's the only passion so far that has paid me. It's creating my way of living right now, and I enjoy my way of living right now. But I will not do something I don't enjoy. Call it selfish, impractical, or downright stupid; I just won't subject myself to the kind of professional monotony that will drive me to insanity before I'm thirty.
So here I am, taking pictures and enjoying it. And I would've never thought that a part time job at Longs a few years ago would lead me to a career that I love more than music, but for now I'm thankful and happy, and I guess that's all I can really ask for...for now.
posted by Ryan at 4:09 PM
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