I'm trying to be more careful how flowery I get in these, and I know that's one of my trademarks, but I just want to get my writing tighter. Apologies for how wooden and/or boring this may read.
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Everyone tells me I'm good at writing. It's kind of my thing. I'm the writer-boy. I have been since I was 12. But, despite the fact that I'm technically a twice-published author, I am very adamant that I haven't turned this talent into a skill. It's something that I have always just had potential in. I would like to get serious about it, and I have a pile of untouched step-by-step plans to do so, but the fact of the matter is that I haven't been. If it's my lane, I've been driving frustratingly under the speed limit.
Truth be told, writing has always felt somewhat unnatural to me, which is a big part of why it's interesting to me. Growing up, I was - in typical Ben Meier fashion - embarrassingly late to learn to read and write. I think I finally did it at age 6 (6 is young!). First impressions last, so I just figured that this sort of stuff was beyond me for a while until I was randomly deemed a wizard at it at age 12. Growing up, people told me that I was good at drawing. I thought drawing was for people not good at writing or arithmetic. Images seemed more vast and free than those things anyway, so I thought I was off the hook from formal systems, as much as a kid could think that. This was until, of course, people started telling me I was good at writing, which I ran with, mostly giving up drawing along the way (which I regret insofar as I'm not doing anything to get back into it). I ran with it all the way to college, not getting much done in the meantime. Despite this, it became a part of the bedrock of my identity as I exited my teens. If I was ever asked what I did in my free time, I mentioned it. Who could blame me, I guess. I'm describing myself as a child.
There's a post from about a year ago called "The Future" where I talk about hanging out with Natalie and Julian. In it, I was very sentimental, being psyched to be in a new city and all, which at the time felt fleeting, as if I was going to get over it in a few weeks. I did, sure, but that ended up being a legitimately life-changing day. The kind that burns slow. I had no idea until I thought about it months later. That's always how they are.
Despite the romance in the language of that post, it was kind of a wasted afternoon, the kind that ages beautifully. The weather was shitty by my standards, with the forest fires from the West Coast turning the sun red. The air was miserable, but that couldn't take away Natalie, Julian, and I's giddiness about being in the city with each other. It was the beginning of that whole mess, as you know. Another part of the reason Julian wanted to hang out with us was to effectively location scout for a movie he'll never actually make. Long story. He told me to bring my camera. Looking back, I'm not really sure why. He had his own and, at the time, wasn't super into using it. I think he just knew I had the nicer one.
He wanted me to shoot buildings as we were downtown. I shot whatever: signage, sidewalks, posters, police cars, the sky, anything to oil up the engine that my heart wasn't at all in using. I'm making myself sound really half-hearted. It's not like I hated doing it. But it was just like taking photos of family members up until the point where, ironically enough, I started shooting Natalie and Julian. I just didn't think about it.
This was the beginning of that whole mess, so there wasn't any of the weirdly world-famous bullshit that I think, looking back, we all sort of saw coming. We just hung out and got Slushees and pointed at places that we remembered something from. It was like the Grand Canyons
in an old postcard. It was sweet. We all sort of knew it at the time, but I don't think it really set in for me until I saw the pictures I took
I wouldn't know the bottom of how this actually feels until months later but it was like falling in love. I've only ever fallen in love with the idea of a person (you know who), which in my books doesn't really count, but for the sake of my argument, you get what I mean. I fell in love. Looking through the pictures I took, I became completely alive with possibility. The camera suddenly justified my relationship to the world. I was no longer just watching people for the sake of it. It could now be a part of a practice. Now, as I'll vaguely touch on later, I was aware this was dangerous. Nobody is ever just an observer. But, still, I was excited about making things for the first time since middle school, a time when every other day I was making videos or drawing or discovering books and records and what have you. I lost that excitement for so many years. I finally have it again, and for all the worry I feel about the state of my life, to have it again takes so much of it away. I'm making something again and it's for my own sake. Nobody is really telling me I'm great at it. I still love writing, but photography seemed to be the thing I was missing all these years. I need pictures as much as I need words it turns out. If my life has one great obsession, it's those two things.
