follow whatever tiny pulse
Today is a special day. In the thick of Taurus season, sandwiched between my dad’s birthday (Earth Day!) and Marissa’s birthday, its is also a kind of dual anniversary. Its been one year since I completed my photo sobriety, and six months since I got my dog, Purl.
Around the time that I was ending my photo sobriety, I was moving through heartbreak (still am </3, aren’t we all, always), and in discussing with a neighbor, she said - you know, I wondered if something happened, if thats why you weren’t taking any photographs - as if there was some causality: no more love, no muse, no need to photograph - however subconscious.
I don’t know how true that felt — I had decided to start this project before the breakup — but I appreciated the connection, especially with how engaged love can make me feel with my creativity, and how suppressed my creativity felt with both heartbreak and without making photos. Correlation is not causation, etc.
In the six months since I’ve had Purl, I’ve taken approximately 1000 photos and videos of her on my phone. (Plus some sketches and photos I’ve taken on film).
There is something about new types of love, a muse, bringing previously unknown chaos into your life, that is visually stimulating. It's evident that Purl has made the world feel more photographable to me. She is just growing up so fast. I am ever observing her.
I had the thought the other today, I will never be able to capture all of her faces that I love so much - how her cheek gets compressed when she’s been resting, how sometimes her eyes are all black and beady when she is playing and crazed, how she looks at me when we are sitting far away from one another, like “is this okay? I’m just resting.”
I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to take her photo because I can’t stand the sight to go undocumented. There is a pulse to the observation. Something pressing that gets brought to life.
At the end of last year, I shared some reflections on the aftermath of my photo sobriety, and my thoughts about the break - what drove it, what transpired while I wasn’t making photographs - continue to swirl.
I wrote then: “I think the real work is cutting out the rest of the noise.”
In telling someone about my photo sobriety, they asked me if I was also going to stop “looking” - aka get off Instagram. Because even though I barely even share photos on there, the platform subconsciously informs my own image making, thinking about what kinds of images will illict certain reactions, how to frame an image for this specific social context. Continuing looking keeps me in this hold. This friend pointed out how problematic it is to have one’s images to intricately tied to a platform that makes so much profit off of our attention to ultimately sell users things. Like everyone else addicted to it, I have been able to pull myself out of there for moments, but always crawl back ready for more, driven by obsession, tricking myself that its something I need for my work, to stay connected.
I feel ready to let go of that looking. I fantasize about a life where I don’t look to a screen for answers to the empty ache in my heart or a bored brain. I wonder what will unlock if I can let go of it. Being on there has almost nothing to do with my aesthetic or artistic sensibilities anymore, even if it once did. Even though I used to spend hours combing through tweets to mine text for poems, I unceremoniously deleted my twitter account in January after the whole Elon “non-salute” salute. In the political context of the moment if felt like such a small thing that I could tangibly do. I don’t have to be in that space anymore, it didn’t feel like I’m giving something up.
I don’t want to spend time or observe in today’s social digital spheres. I don’t want to be there. There is no fruit to bear there- there is no pulse there anymore.
This feels like as good of a time as any to pull out. I love a symbolic date. I’m gonna let go of the last tether.
But I still need a place to post photos of Purl.