24 February 2011

Cole Coffee & a video(!)

You can watch this without the sound, if you prefer (I do, slightly):

Well. Something different was bound to happen eventually. You could accuse me of having a short attention span, or lacking focus, or something harsh like that, but I prefer to think of it as having an open mind, paying attention to how things change, looking for openings & possibilities, & learning—always learning.

It was good for a while to not work on this project when it was rainy & gloomy out, fine to notice when I just didn’t feel like asking strangers to take my picture. But today I stuck my camera in a waterproof purse, opened my umbrella, & walked through the rain for a lunch date with a friend, who never showed up because she thought we were meeting at her studio, & I thought we were meeting at the cafe.

By the time I finished my sandwich, I knew we’d miscommunicated somehow & she wasn’t coming. I settled in to being alone with my tea, & thought about asking someone to take my picture, but it was really all wrong for that. Cafes are particular; people in them often wrap themselves in a little cocoon of daydreaming privacy that I tend to respect, having done much of the same myself.

I thought about how this project in one sense is a study of my time alone in public—a very specific slice of my life—& how cafe space is so much about that. Why not enlarge the parameters, just a little, to include how I see the world when out alone, what it looks & feels like to me when I’m not talking to strangers? Instead of having a project on/off switch for sunny extrovert vs. rainy introvert, how about a dimmer that allows for something in between?

No comments:

Post a Comment