I worked as a researcher, production assistant and set photographer for the Nat Geo documentary “JFK: The Lost Bullet,” which airs this Sunday at 9:00pm. It was a great learning experience that introduced me to some wonderful folks. You can see some of the stills I snapped behind the scenes here.
John Graves, from a personal letter:
“To grow up among tradition-minded people leads one often into the backward yearnings and regrets, unprofitable feelings of which I was granted my share in youth-not having been born in time to get killed fighting Yankees, for one, or not having ridden up the cattle trails. But the only such regret that has strongly endured is not to have known the land when it was whole and sprawling and rich and fresh, and the plover that whet one’s edge every spring and every fall. In recent decades it has become customary – and right, I guess, and easy enough with hindsight-to damn the ancestral frame of mind that ravaged the world so fully and so soon. What I myself seem to damn, mainly, though, is just not having seen it. Without any virtuous hindsight, I would likely have helped in the ravaging as did even most of those who loved it best. But God, to have viewed it entire, the soul and guts of what we had and gone forever now, except in the books and such poignant remnants as small swift birds that journey to and from the distant Argentine and call at night in the sky.”
Lately, I have been wandering the Trinity Corridor for a project with the Trinity Trust, trying to make sense of why this city feels like home. Thoreau wrote, “Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness…” It’s exploring that heals, I think.
And yet with transportation the way it is: the ability migrate from sun-blanched Dallas to the frozen teeth of the Himalayas in less than twenty four hours, to swallow ground by bus and train and foot and still only just reach the crest of the wave where everyone else is headed soon, of course there is a sadness there. A fading sense of discovery. Where can we go to feel we have truly explored?
Perhaps our exploration is to dig deeper, to see what others pass by and therein find something new. Perhaps our wilderness has become an inward one. Or perhaps I am growing older, and talking myself out of another long journey.
I hope Graves does not mind me publishing words that are not rightly mine. We live to share just as surely as we live to explore. I’ll be checking out his book, Goodbye to a River.
Finished my first foray into filmmaking last week:
Living Plaza – Dallas, TX from Aaron Garcia on Vimeo.
It turned out alright–a strong story with some notable negligence in technique. Audio and time lapses could use some work, but as a first project, I’m pretty happy with it. Most issues can be resolved easily next time around.
It was interesting that people responded so positively (+2700 views), a testimony to the importance of story. Yes, you want professional technique, but technique without a story is still something intangible.
It didn’t hurt that the subject struck so close to home (pun intended). I’ve spent a good deal of time running from and returning to Dallas, so I tend to connect with stories of people who have decided for whatever reason, and for better or for worse, to call a place their home.
“Something special is going to happen,” Brady said. “I feel like we are on the verge of it now.”
“Yea?” I said, “Doesn’t everyone feel that way?”
“I don’t think so. Most people live day to day. I’ve been in friendships and relationships where the people around me didn’t want what I want.”
“What is that?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. That’s a pretty broad question-”
“I know.”
“-but I know I don’t want a life where I’m unhappy. I don’t want to wake in the morning and wish I was somewhere else,” he said. He was stern. “And I’m willing to risk comfort for that joy.”
A few months later, Brady was hired to design the dinner menu at Oddfellow’s in the Bishop Arts district of Dallas – the kind of work he dreamed about. I am fortunate to have him as a friend, and as a testimony that hard work and discipline, coupled with patience and a little good luck, can get you anywhere.
Here are a few photos of Brady from a last minute trip to New Orleans:
“Do you know a love poem in English?” Rahmat asked me one evening. We sat in the first of what seemed to be an endless array of cramped kabob shops casting unanswered light into the deep Kabul night. Here, Rahmat worked fifteen hour shifts everyday of the year except for Eid, when he returned to visit his family in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Though an Afghan, he came to Afghanistan for the first time eighteen months ago. “We are strangers here together,” he said when we first met, “you and I do not belong.” It was our principle bond.
He also loved the English language, but his long shifts left him little opportunity for study. I spent many a night helping him practice English while I ate. As we spoke, the streets gradually cleared and people hurried home to their families, fearful of whatever lawlessness might be unleashed in the growing dark. On this particular night, I considered the limited number of poems I committed to memory the past year.
“Okay, I’ve got one,” I said. “It is about love. But it’s also about overcoming.” He nodded excitedly and flattened a yellow strip of crumpled paper on the tabletop. I printed slowly and legibly as he craned his neck to see the words:
“Underneath an abject willow,
Lover sulk no more.
Act from thought should quickly follow,
What is thinking for?
Your unique and moping station
Proves you cold.
Stand up and fold
Your map of desolation.”
I asked Rahmat if he wanted the rest of the poem, but he said it was enough. I shrugged and slid the paper over to him. “That’s the important part anyway,” I said. He read it aloud.
“Fold your map of… desolation?” he asked.
“Desolation,” I said. “Do you know this word?”
Rahmat shook his head no.
“It’s very beautiful,” I said.
He nodded eagerly.
“It’s like destruction.” The word did not register on his face. “When everything is in ruins,” I said.
“Ah ruins, yes yes,” he said.
“And the map only leads to ruins.”
“Ruins, yes yes.”
“So the poet says, ‘Stand up! Forget all of that! Forget your map. Forget the ruins!”
Rahmat’s eyes glinted in the dimly lit shop. “Ruins!” he repeated.
The word lingered as another customer entered. Rahmat stood and served him, then returned and sat down.
“One time, in English class,” he said, smiling, “I learned a very short poem.” It was the only class he ever took, and considering that, he spoke well. “We were asked to write a poem. Everyone wrote in Dari or Pashto, but me, I wrote in English.” His smile widened. “I gave it to a girl.”
“What was it?” I asked.
His eyes turned upward as he searched for it. “It says, ‘Love is hard, love is sweet. With two people, love’s complete.”
I laughed, and a wounded look flashed across his face. “It’s good, it’s good,” I said quickly. And it was. It made my night, that poem. A little humor amidst the ruins on which I tended to focus too much anyway. The childlike rhythm bounced in my feet as I walked home. It was restoration, and the simplicity of it carried me through a menacing blackness, over gaping holes where there was no earth to be found.
