Go West

Lately, Jason and I have been watching a lot of films and documentaries about artists and writers who were part of movements in the 50's and 60's. Howl and How to Draw a Bunny, films about Allen Ginsberg and Ray Johnson respectively, are two recent watches available on Netflix Instant.

It's easy to wax nostalgic about a time you were never a part of. It's easy to imagine Ray Johnson hanging out with Rauschenberg or Warhol; to laugh at images of The Factory covered floor to ceiling in tin foil; to envy how dirt cheap apartments in North Beach or Greenwich Village were back then and how, though they lived on little, it seemed possible just to be an artist.

It's probably pretty obvious how much I crave this sort of community; volunteering at Review Santa Fe counted for 3 out of my 4 best days of 2010 (it was a rough year... but still). I've spent enough time in strange corners of the world and now I want back in. More people, please.


Photo by Matt Nuzzaco

Separately, and yet related: there's something going on in California. You see those people in that beautiful picture up there? All photographers. I know and know of so many great-people-who-also-take-pictures living in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and they all seem to know each other through varying degrees of separation. Best of all, they make work together (the Phoot Camp crew is a pretty prime example). There is a constant crossing of Flickr stream paths and discoveries of "Wait, you dudes know each other?" among the photographers I know. It's happening everywhere the more connected via Twitter and Facebook we become in terms of the larger photo community, but since my giant fucking I-need-major-life-change Sauron-style vag-eye is focused intently on the west coast, California is starting to seem (in a dreamy idealist sort of way) like a fucking photonerd lover's playground.

And I do love y'all.

Lately I've been waking up every morning with my eyelids glued to my withered eyeballs and my throat sore from the soulsucking aridity around me. So, the above combined with the inundation of ocean-and-palm-trees photographs that have been streaming my way from various sources recently, is enough to make me want to throw some shit in the car, hit Interstate 40, GO THE FUCK WEST and never look back... except maybe at sunrise.

That's my shit-feels-shitty escapism talking, but genuinely all I want is to fix my broken life. In doing so, I will remember that good people are a good priority to have. Now if I can just figure this community shit out for real.