Finding time to Think.

My friend C and I are on a mission to challenge ourselves. So, based on the movie “The 5 Obstructions” we have came up with a plan to send missions, in a sense, to each other and see what happens. The first mission that C gave me was based on the song “Boots of Spanish Leather” a Bob Dylan cover by Nancy Griffith. My constraints are as follows: I must take photographs. I must be within 5 feet of my subject. I must set my aperture and shutter speed for the first picture then use that setting for all of the pictures. All of the pictures must be outside.
I listened to the song a few times over. I like it, and at first I didn’t realize it was a Dylan cover. I think it works for me and I’ve managed to get some inspiration out of it. I’m working now on getting my pictures together in my head before I head out to take them. I’ll post a couple of them on here when I’m finished.
Keeping along the lines of my friend C, we have been debating lately the thoughts of a possible road trip ala moped. Now, to some this might sound a bit ridiculous, or it might sound like a knock-off of the Motorcycle Diaries, well that it might be, but if you can picture 2 20 something guys on small 1970’s Vespa’s, then you get the picture of this sort of trip. Road trips are interesting in that sometimes, we feel it might take something like that to help us “find ourselves” in a sense. We go out on the open road and just see what happens. There have countless movies and books on this sort of subject and probably the most famous of them all might possible be “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. I myself have not read this book yet, even though I own a nice old copy of it. I’m waiting, of course, for a road trip to inspire me to read it. I recently heard that the director Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station etc.) is planning on adapting the book to film. This, I feel, is a great challenge for not only Salles, but also the writer and actors. Bringing a book of such great heights to the screen is never an easy task. Of course, Salles has the Motorcycle Diaries under his belt, also a road trip story, but he wasn’t starting to mess with the likes of Kerouac. Beats around the world will either a.) flock to see the film in droves or b.) not because of the pure nature of adapting such a classic of that culture. I salute Salles for making the attempt.
So road trips. Ah, finding yourself. I think it is interesting the ways that we go about finding ourselves, looking around Europe, and on the open road of the United States or anywhere else for that matter. I myself attempt each time I travel overseas to find some piece of myself that I feel is lost in each one of those places, waiting on me to come and claim it. It’s like a big puzzle, and each piece is in a different country. The puzzle can’t be completed until all of the pieces are put together. Granted that a lot of those pieces have been right here in the US at school, at a friend’s house, at a concert, in a coffee shop or perhaps on the road. Sometimes these pieces are terribly difficult to track down, but then just when I’m not expecting it, it just appears and I calmly pick it up and realize that my time there might be over soon.
I once heard this quote:
“Maybe what we go in search of abroad is what we hunger in vain for at home”
and realized that sometimes it is true. I go in search of so much other places and sometimes all I have to do is look around the place I’m in.