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this is the first day of ramadan last year, a smallish mosque on nueces in the quiet of the day. this is the first photograph i ever shot for the texan.
i have been spending most of my nights at the bar at kerbey, with a constant flow of free coffee graciously offered by all the kerbey kids of whom i have become so fond; if not here, i am at the foundation with tibet, open sky and all of austin sprawling before me in the deep of night. or, as of late and in the case of an unfortunate rib, lay down with a beer and a clove on the still-warm drive of my house, dust in my hair and the earth turning upon my fingers upon ashen concrete.
it is terribly lonely here sometimes. it has been the worst lately. it is strange accustoming my body to only itself at night, when i spent my entire last semester with constant companions. i ceased living in my own room for some time. and now, i am left with only tibet and the wide streets of austin at night all to myself. this is strange.
and so, i have been musing over my art, or whatsoever you should wish to call the work that i pursue. since my arrival in austin some ten months ago, i know and understand now exactly what i want and where i want to be; also, what i want to do. my immense difficulty with galleries here, whether it is dressing snappily and trying awkwardly not to act the punk-ass to land a job, or else searching for a venue in which to show my art, has made me to wonder why i am doing all of this.
i know that my work at the texan is a meagre reflection of what i seek with my photography; that having been said, i do not neglect anything in my photography or art, whether i enjoy it or not, and i do enjoy my work at the texan. but i have come to recognize already that i will not end up at a newspaper. i do not know where i will go after i take my degree from this ridiculous school that is presently beating me over the head with its consistent stream of bullshit, if i finish school at all. i have begun again to turn over in my mind the idea of taking off for some time; i am fortunate to have the texas tomorrow fund and this is counted by hours, and i could come back and pick up what i left behind. but would i come back? i don't know.
before i lose my more important points in this sea of tangents which is carrying me, i should say this:
i am not a fine artist.
i am not an artist at all.
i am a person before all of these things, and i know this best in my conversations with dustin. he says that what we do is too profound to remain contained in galleries and museums. the art that we make isn't fine art; it's the most dirty, unpleasant, mundane, ordinary art. we do not begin with philosophical conceptions. we begin with people because it is what i've fallen in love with, people. we refuse to look like respectable and promising young students, piercings and body art, and we refuse steady jobs and fucking financial stability, and we refuse any other saviour but ourselves. we have our love and our art and this age at which we are very much indestructible, and who shall stop us? we are not afraid at all.
on fine art, the exhibit presently on display at women and their work gallery is slower still, by allison hunter. she takes photographs of animals at zoos and edits the backgrounds out of recognition into a dark, foggy haze, therefore taking the creatures out of their context. this is fine and admirable in its own manner, but i want to know: how is it pertinent to people? why should this matter, save to look beautiful in a whitewashed gallery?
the art that i create is my life and those that i love most. it is akin to stripping myself down in front of my audience, and there are those who are unrelenting in their critiques, and perhaps justly so. but in the photographing of these things, the photographing becomes a part of the happening and so, indistinguishable from that. i want to be alike to mike brodie, the polaroid kidd. this is a rail-riding punk who is essentially a drag person, only he takes polaroids of his comrades. his work is in fecal face online, in american photo in print, in m+b gallery in los angeles, in needles and pens gallery in san francisco. and oh, don't be deceived. if you read his interviews, he is a little bit bewildered that he has been misnomered as an artist. he's only a traveler with a polaroid one-step.
this is what i have come to understand, and i may very well disappear someday, if not before my completion of school, then surely soon afterwards. all this leaves me breathless, to be able to live righteously and religiously, joyously and exuberantly, fearfully and in such great trepidation of this knowledge.
lily and chair, a soundless january morning unfolding upon my mother's birthday.
i suppose i have taken a sufficiently long sabbatical from posting here. in parallel, summer seems to have rendered that inevitable effect of sunlit days and softly focused lenses upon all photographers alike, and i will spend my nights refusing sleep and bicycling about austin with my usual armoury of holga and nikon. that having been observed, i am in want of a scanner with which to reminisce my bag full of negatives and prints, so in the meanwhile, i will proffer the remainder of older work which i have with me.
on an unrelated note, austin and the corresponding summer season have been witness to more lovely misadventures and miraculous transfigurations than i could possibly have anticipated. of these i am unafraid.
meet my brother, eric. he is five years older than me and in five days he will be moving to seattle for a shiny new job! i am really very excited for him, and in the city he will have all his rainy humdrum days to himself, but (as i sit in his apartment and write this) already i know that i will miss him when he is gone. everyone round me is swiftly scattering to their place, and i find myself wandering without any semblance of certainty or foresight. 
this is my brother's volvo 850 turbo; he keeps it glassy and bright all the time. here, he is working in our garage at home. when i was just a little younger i used to finish my homework at two or three or four in the morning -- junior year of high school was really a beating, i remember -- and i would slip out barefooted into the driveway and doze in the passenger seat of my brother's car, music blearing and an autumn night's chill.
for some time and lately in particular, i have been pondering with childlike blitheness and naivety my current circumstances: how it came about that i am doing what i now do, and my desire for the most absurd way forward i could have chosen. is it strange that i revere mike brodie's photography and his accompanying itinerant philosophy, and that i want to do exactly what the polaroid kidd does at present? i will not even endeavor to think of what my parents would say to that. anyway, i am forcing myself a little painfully through school -- i've three years left at most -- and it has proven very difficult to elicit any great degree of concern for the remainder of my formal education.
these things do not worry me, really. if he has not yet abandoned me to the swallowing night, i have wholly left god behind in that curious thing of my past -- but even so, i have great faith in goodness and in the engineering of my own fortune. i refuse to settle down, because i've my closest friends and my camera and pockets full of film and the innocence of being young, and what more could possibly be of want? i do not know. the window during which the world opens its womb for your wandering -- and while you are just beginning to be a real person in all its realisations -- is so very small, and i am not going to miss it.
so, these are the things i have come to understand outside the hindrances of school since i have come to austin. i was not always ridiculous and unreasonable, but it is incredible fun.
this is me and dustin and caitlin, shot by allison. we will all be too far away from each other much too soon, but summer calls for spontaneity and roadtrips and loves, as it should.
sunshine saviours and blush night. summer has not even really begun in earnest, and it promises unequivocal adventure and mishap already. in the meanwhile, i've a paper due in t-minus three hours and fifteen minutes, and i don't see how i could possibly write anything of use now. shit!
p.s., i got my black and white roll of 120 from marleyfest back from precision and it is damn good. not too shabby for a first run with my kowa six. fucking sweet.
this is scout niblett playing one of my favorites, will you be buried with my people? these are some the most remarkable words ever when in the end she sings, but who the hell knows which way the gods may pull us tomorrow? cause honey, we're writing our past right now, and fear will only beckon sorrow.
fuck.
among my favorite words also are these, sung by why: this goes out to dirty dancing, cursing, back-masking, back-slitting pranksters, kids. as all this earth grows i'm planted, that's some pull. in berlin i saw two men fuck in the dark corner of a basketball court, just a slight jangle of pocket change pulsing.
how dark and casual and fucking amazing is that?
and so, i have decided that you are a false messiah. until you find me in the manner in which i found you, i will wait impatiently and sighing.
caitlin with pomellos and skirts and skies amidst a rooftop picnic. 
alex with magnificent afro and sunglasses, jovially carved pillar. 
alex and ngan. love is watching, love is watching someone die. 
taylor and dustin, vodka night and sharpie. debauchery is my favorite!
dustin and me, strange faces and bare bellies, rolling rock. 
alex and his friend malcolm x, hanging out by the lounge with us. 
aaron and me, feets and rocks, screaming bridge and trinity banks. 
daily texan meeting, chris and peter, blue bras in the prather lobby.
caitlin and a camera, a little bit of heaven and looking glass of god.
i don't know what this means.
oh, friend.
i love you.
i love you.
i love you.
