Press Play ⏯️ 🕹️
🚪⬅️👁⏱👁➡️🚪
When I was 17 I was driving too fast in the snow and slid off the road hitting a stop sign.
🛑
I lied to my parents and the police officer because I didn’t want to be harassed about this mistake for the rest of my life.
Little did I know I would be harassed relentlessly anyway and the night of my dad belittled me about not having cash to pay the nice guy who pulled me out of the ditch making me feel even worse.
In my family, we collected these mistake jars 🫙 on one another ready to pull out a myriad painful memories at the worst time like it was a game, usually when someone was celebrating a success or something good (seriously). We’d remind that person of something awful under the guise of “playful teasing” to “bring them down to earth”.
What a sick family tradition. ❌
No wonder why I never want to celebrate anything.
Sadly I was just as guilty of it as them and I don’t do this anymore. It’s so hurtful.
If I ever did something like this to you I am sorry.
I told myself if I could be perfect and never make a mistake, they would never have anything to hold against me. My parents even made fun of me for having such a clean record calling me star child and prince perfect because they had nothing else to go on.
It might seem like joking but this is where perfectionism, “I’m not enough”, self-hatred, and shame are born. ☮️🫶🏻
I still tell myself I have the best “no mistakes” record in our family which is true, but where the failure lies is in never having tried, failed, learned, and grown because of this fear. There’s far more loss in not trying than there would have been in any mistake I could have made.
I was recently at a game arcade with some friends. One of them held out a hand with coins in it.
🪙 🤚🏻 🕹️
I took one quarter and immediately started judging myself harshly for “not being adult” “quit acting like a child” “not being prepared” and feeling stupid for not having planned ahead. 1000s of awful critical parent statements ran through my head instantly. I decided to walk to a nearby 🏧 to get cash like a capable adult but it was too late.
I went right back to the innumerable times my dad belittled me for not having cash and unfortunately had to leave for a self-care serenity walk for the next few hours.
♾️
🚪⬅️👁⏱👁➡️🚪
Thanks for traveling through the tesseract with me, infinity loops can be broken.
Rebirth 2023
It’s been a week since I dropped my Rebirth set and I still can’t stop thinking about it.
The feeling of being up there and ripping through 50 tracks that my friends loved and danced to, the other DJs being blown away by the progress from the last time I played, and most importantly, playing the set that I wanted, that was 100% me and having the time of my life revealing it.
What a journey from first seeing my friend Adrian play some tunes at a barbecue during covid lockdown to my first live set that I barely survived (seriously), to this moment of euphoria. My head was so far in space I couldn’t speak after I was done. I’ve never felt anything like that before. The only thing I can compare it to is when I presented at a conference in front of a huge crowd, but this was way more fun.
I said to myself, “I think this is what people mean when they talk about something that makes them feel alive.”
Thank you to Adrian, who showed me the craft and keeps putting top-level DJ tips in my head.
When I was pulling this together, I kept experimenting and mixing with those thoughts in my mind and I couldn’t be happier with what came out of the speakers. I also have to thank him for getting my 30 mins for my first live set, it’s just something you have to get over the fear of and do. It helped a ton to have your support getting up there.
Thank you to Brock, who pulled me aside after that first challenging set and said, “You’re an artist, don’t stop playing.”
That meant so much to me to hear, it was hard enough getting up there let alone reflecting later knowing I wasn’t any good. The alone hours in my studio practicing can get tough and when you’re not getting what you want out of the music, unfriendly voices rise up and I repeated what you said to me to make them go away.
Thanks Biff Cooper at Power Plant Records for the guitar lessons and enthusiasm for music. It’s your passion and I learned so much from you. The downbeats and one-ey-two-eys made even more sense to me when I saw them on a computer screen! 1,2,3,4 - 2,2,3,4 - 3,2,3,4 - 4,2,3,4
Thanks to Mike and Stacy for always inviting me out on these desert trips and letting me play on your stage and killer speaker setup. 1,000% more fun when you can feel the bass rattling your body (and with a music-hungry crowd that makes you feel at home). You guys are the best! Desert Fam!
People come into your life for a reason and I believe it.
Playing music has been on and off in my life since my dad bought me my Fender Strat when I was a sophomore in high school. We did music lessons, I learned a lot, and kept practicing and learning.
I have to thank myself for not giving up on music. It’s been a journey. Exploring this creatively, 100s of hours feeling like nothing is happening, giving myself space to experiment, it all came together to become the most fun I’ve ever had.
Ice Hockey 2.0
The best question that was asked of me in 2023:
What would it look like if you went skating this weekend?
It would be pure joy.
And it was. I connected with my friend Keith who had been asking me to join his team for the last year, borrowed some equipment, and got out there for game 1 of my 30s. It felt a bit odd at first, but the trust in my edges came back quickly, getting low - winning faceoffs. My legs burned, I was winded, but it was awesome.
What a blast coming back to a game I love, and grew up in.
The feeling of the blades cutting through the ice beneath your feet, the freezing air in the rink passing across your face, effortlessly rushing up to full speed flying faster than anyone on the ice. My childhood was spent in a hockey rink. It’s a game I love and know inside and out.
I didn’t realize how much I missed it.
A few weeks into getting back on the ice a former NHL player from Canada and I were chatting on the bench at pick-up night, and his quote to me:
“It’s cerebral, keep moving and all of it will come back to you.”
It took me a moment sitting at the blue line to realize I wasn’t going to get a pass waiting there.
“MOVE like you’ve played this game before!”, I told myself.
And there the puck came, ready to turn in and create a scoring opportunity.
There was no mistaking the difference in his posture, vision, stickhandling, and the 100 mph pass as I cut across the neutral zone perfectly in stride onto my tape. That’s what I live for.
Last week I collected the puck in the neutral zone, stickhandled through four defenders with little space, cutting towards the net with each move, I looked up, read the goalie, and buried the puck perfectly off the lower post ringing the bell.
I cut around the faceoff circle surprised at what I just did. Both benches were standing in awe.
Holy shit that was fun!
I didn’t score the most goals that night, but I certainly scored the prettiest.
Reviving Photography
It feels great to have completed two recent posts: Death Valley & Huntington Library. Was really delightful writing a photo travel essay again. It’s been a minute since I’ve posted and even longer since I’ve had the camera out.
At times I go through phases where I get shy or disappointed about the camera and I put it away. Feeling dorky about shooting photos or lacking creativity in my work. For my photos that means many shots are starting to look too similar and I’m not challenging myself sufficiently to find greater depth and mastery with what I’m pointing the lens at. But I’m always enormously interested in looking at photography and continuing to find new and unique aspects to shoot from. The one element that I find on the street or in candid moments with loved ones.
I re-watched one of my favorite documentaries recently, Everybody Street (2013) which follows a number of renowned photographers in New York City discussing all the different angles and experiences of the craft. I quickly became re-inspired by their stories, experiences, and how the camera brings creators into the world.
Continuing to study how film, directors and directors of photography get creative with their visual applications has been another source of inspiration. Looking at how they frame shots and seek out different angles to tell the story. I was recently inspired by the last scene in the movie, The Fabelmans (2022), where the young boy finally gets his break with a well-known Hollywood Director. The man asks the boy what he thinks about a picture on the wall, and the boy doesn’t really notice anything,. He pushes the boy to look closer, and the young man sees that the horizon is below where it should be, and the boy learns quickly that one strange unique piece is part of what made that artist successful.
There are a lot of photographers that are out there, shooting the same thing and I keep thinking about how I can push myself to capture it differently and where I can place the camera to tell my story differently. This practice can be done with anything and I hadn’t realized that until I attended a Dina Litovsky photography webinar where she spoke about her night photography in New York City.
I thought to myself I don’t have New York City. I only have San Clemente. What is there for me to photograph here? The pier? Beach? Sunsets? All of those are things that are relentlessly photographed and shared on the community's Facebook pages on Instagram. The exciting part of it is the subtle nuances that only your eye catches. Because you’re the only one standing there with the camera, or when you find a new way to look at something that’s been looked at 1 trillion times. That’s what I’m searching for that lightning-in-a-bottle moment and something unique.
It was time to spend some time this week going back through my library, reviewing photos that I’m fond of to look for new ways to frame and angle them - or think about how I would shoot them differently. It’s been exciting focusing on creating tighter shots, and revisiting fond memories with friends and strangers out on the street corners.
I bought a series of three coffee books this week by Gray Malin, a fine art photographer, who photographed beaches and coastal scenes from the air. He was another much-needed boost of inspiration, finally reading his story after having followed him for several years. It was uplifting to learn that he got his start where you see many other photographers - at local street fairs, peddling their work to the local community. It was exciting to hear more of that story reading the first few pages of Coastal this week, hearing that one special moment when Gray first caught the idea of snapping beach scenes from the air, and how he found his way to bring that vision to life through conversations with people at his modest photo booth, having learned what’s important to people, and that there was a keen interest for what he saw through the lens.
The last and final bit of inspiration was a local gal, Lindsey Bro, who I met briefly at yoga. She’s a freelance creative type, living her best life traveling and working with a wide variety of clients (something I also aspire to). I really like the aesthetic of her Instagram posts @ladybro and her storytelling capability. I recently saw that she had also released a photo book, Thermal, inspired by healing with heat.
I keep writing and thinking and writing and thinking, and I have the camera back out again, and I’m really excited at the prospect of continuing to push myself through the lens and assemble my own work to be published.
Look for my first photo book called Street, featuring a wide variety of street corners in intersections from across the globe.
Valentine’s Day 2008
A 27-year old man walked into a lecture hall to show the world he thought nobody truly loved him. Earlier that day, he called his girlfriend to say goodbye.
I was less than 15 minutes from being in Cole Hall at the time of the shooting. In the time it took me to make a short walk back to my dorm room, he walked in and it was already over.
If Steven had showed up even a few minutes earlier, I would have been in the room.
If he had walked in from the back instead of the front, I would have been one of the six.
Who knows if I walked past him heading back home.
I know people who were there.
A friend of a friend, did not walk out of that hall.
I stood at the veil of her dark, empty room weeks later. Empty and silent, just carpet, as if nothing had existed in that space at all. Standing there, I saw her parents collecting her things in my head.
I hung up with my mom and entered my room in Douglass Hall. Moments later, I learned of the shooting when my roommate, JP, came in and told me he saw lots of police with big guns like the movies moving through another building. I thought he was pulling my chain.
I turned on the TV and it had already hit the news.
I tried to call my parents but the phone lines were dead.
When the phone lines worked again, I listened to a phone call from my dad and heard fear in his voice for the first time ever, asking for me to call or text so he knew I was OK.
My friends and I gathered in the common area on our floor waiting and making calls to ensure each of the Foreign Language Residence Program students were safe.
One by one, people returned. Some left for home right away.
That night, a small group of us huddled up with some pizza and watched Ratatouille in my room, crammed onto a bed together, eyes on a small, cheap TV.
Days later, I saw the black and red cleaner vans entering the campus and later driving away as I walked back from soccer.
I was lost in the song Dig by Incubus for weeks prior to February 14, 2008, listening to it on repeat walking back and forth across the cold winter campus.
Some days I would walk in front of the hall past the fountain and pond. Other days, I would walk behind the hall past the last door Steven would walk through.
Try to give space, listen, and love people as best you can.
You never know what’s going on inside their head.
And you never know when it could be the last time you see them.
I wish I could have tossed Steven a light grenade before it all happened.
He was a husky too.