Rescued from Flickr, before that site decided to fold in upon itself; these are sketchbook pages from when I was in art school. So, in some cases, these are literally a quarter century old. Holy crap.
A Rose By Any Other Etc.
I was sitting in the airport when an announcement came over the speaker system, asking for Jack Cross to go to some gate or another. I heard it and thought, Jack Cross, what sort of a name is that? That’s not a real person, that’s a spy in a really bad thriller, and then I suddenly had this wave of empathy that was entirely unexpected.
Imagine, for a second, that your name was Jack Cross. Can you imagine the pressure you’d feel to live up to the images such a name conjures up? You’d feel as if it was your responsibility to at least have some kind of adventure on a regular basis, and preferably one that involved at least one person bleeding or at least sweating heavily at the end of it.
I’m only slightly exaggerating. “Jack Cross,” or a name like it, has a weird set of preconceptions built into it when you hear it. You hear it, or read it, and your brain starts to fill in blanks in a manner that very likely has nothing to do with whoever actually has that name. It’s not a bad thing, we all do it — but imagine being Jack Cross (or whoever), and knowing that. How would you feel if even you felt disappointed by the person you were, knowing that your name left everyone expecting more than you could deliver?
Moleskine Dreams
I always wanted to be someone with a moleskin notebook who sat in cafes and wrote deathless prose and brief snippets of beautiful poetry about the people around me. It’s not who I am, of course — I can barely string together sentences that make sense, and poetry is far beyond me — but there’s something about the idea that remains appealing.
For a couple of years at the end of the 20th century (And how weird it is to write that sentence and think, That’s right, I lived through the end of a century as if it was nothing special, Damon Albarn’s own poetry aside), I kept notebooks filled with writing. I wrote what was a diary, I guess, although I’m sure I thought of it as “a journal,” as if that was somehow more artistic and meaningful. In my defense, I had just finished art school and was still teaching there, so pretension was a comfortable second language.
Those notebooks were filled with everything internal in a way that I soon lost the ability to express. I remember very clearly a point in the early 2000s, when I was newly in San Francisco, taking public transport to work and feeling embarrassed about the intimacy and sincerity I displayed in those early notebooks, convinced that the knowing irony and unearned self-confidence I was wearing publicly as a writer at that point was inherently superior. I was finding success as a writer for the first time and in a world where I felt (secretly, quietly, not even daring admit it to myself) like a fraud who didn’t deserve to be read by anyone; the protective shell of irony felt like the only way to move forward. Anything else was not only too dangerous, it was naive and foolish.
Now, of course, I long for the ease of revelation of those notebooks, the fearlessness of just saying everything without shame or anxiety. The me that I was 20 years ago may not have been any more likely to write the poetry or documentary in notebooks and cafes than who I am today, but I feel certain that he’d be far less nervous about trying.
Line Up In Line Is All I Remember
All photos taken within a year or so of moving to Portland. I became interested in colors and lines, apparently.
(I’m not sure when or why I stopped taking photos like these; I don’t have any after 2010, but I’m unsure if that’s because I stopped taking them, or I stopped keeping them. Either way, it’s a habit I wish I hadn’t gotten out of. I like these investigations of my environments.)
