I took this photo years ago when I was young and green, before I bought a “real” camera, before I had any idea of where all this chasing of light and form could take me. 

I was driving across the country, living in a van with a street magician and trying to find my own little piece of the wild blue yonder. 

This is the home of  strangers father. The stranger was a tough looking guy I met in a bar in Oakland. I remember  talking about heroin, I remember talking about Bradley Nowell, I remember talking about how difficult it was to find a shower on the road when you lived in a vehicle. 

That was the reason I found myself here. In search of cleanliness in a house full of beautiful clutter. 

This photo was all instinct. I didn’t take note of it until years later. With a more seasoned eye, with a heavier heart it caught my attention while I was flipping through my archive. 

This is how memories look to me. All golden light and old dusty things and warmth. They’re beautiful half truths that I can take apart and live inside of for a few seconds when the “real” world becomes too much.

If I were a trucker this would be my mighty steed. It’s all done up in the color my mother painted our house when I was a kid. The same color my family adopted as our own.  It’s nostalgia and horsepower and the open road. All things I love and respect. 

About to start another project. I’m standing at the edge, the jump off point. This undertaking feels almost too big, bigger than me. So, I thought it might be a good idea to explore my roots first and find the kernel, the origin space that all of this came from. I’m trying to pull a little nod from the past that it is indeed okay to move forward into an abstract future.