Tuesday July 18, 2006

In my entire life, have never seen a rainbow like tonight. Over the past few days I’ve traveled south down the Alaska Highway from Whitehorse. Today I turned back north heading towards Fort Simpson and the south end of the Mackenzie River. I stopped in Fort Liard around 6:20pm just before a tremendous thunderstorm rolled in.

I’m making pretty good time. I drive roughly 5-6 hrs per day, with frequent stops to take photographs or shoot film. The photography and filming transforms my 5 hr drive into an 8 hr day. Using a Sharpie marker I’ve scrawled the following mantra across my dashboard, “THE PURPOSE IS NOT TO DRIVE, THE PURPOSE IS TO SHOOT!” This makes it easier not to get caught up in the idea of a destination. It makes it easier for me to follow my intuition and take my time.

I recently read an interview in which photographer CR Stecyk is explaining how he gets lost in the process. “ I try to seep out past the edge of my awareness. On a good day I won’t even know when I’m doing it. It’s all getting lost in the process for me. The results and the end product don’t matter. I stalk mistakes. If I was trying, there would be no miracle in failure.” CR Stecyk – Juxtapoz: Art & Culture Magazine, July 2006
This is somewhat how I approach my work. Today as I’m driving along I come to an old wooden bridge with rusted steel guide rails. I pass over the bridge and drive on. About 5km down the road I decide to turn around and go back… there’s something there… I can feel it. I come back to the bridge, the light has shifted and is now perfect. I cross back over, set up the 8mm camera on the roof of the van with duct tape, and capture the bridge.

The beauty is this, had I set up the camera on the initial crossing, the light would not have been right. In this way, as Stecyk explains, I am stalking my mistakes, and in this space the universe becomes a collaborator. The idea keeps hitting me in the face. It’s all about navigating into those spaces where you can no longer see where you are, or what lies up ahead. That’s the space where the real miracles happen.

Yesterday I stopped at the Upper Liard hotsprings, rumored to have magical healing powers. The place was RV central, making me pretty sure I wouldn’t be going into the springs. I hiked up to the springs and sure enough there were about twenty RV’ers wading about. I was disappointed as I dipped my toes in the steaming water. This wasn’t my idea of a healing space. I was looking for silence. After giving up, I decided to continue further up the path. After about five minutes, I came to a second hot spring, nestled deep in the trees, completely empty. It seems all the RV’ers, in their excitement, had been pulled into the first pool. This second pool was the space I had been looking for. Here I had given up, let go of my expectations, and entered that space where I was lost. It was here in this space, that I sank into the deep bubbling water and let the meditative sound of the wind rustling in the leaves above wash over me.

Peace,d