Time Is Nothing (John Frusciante)

Chapter 12

"My lord, these are heavy," Cecilia discussed with herself while placing multiple packages of photographs on her living room floor.

Finally, after getting back from Oklahoma and realizing that the amount of her undeveloped film rolls was getting alarming, she had pulled herself together and taken them to Gus' studio in order to get them done. Ever since she started working as his assistant, she had always developed her own photos there as well, because, firstly, Gus let her do her photos there for free, and secondly, Gus always looked through the pictures and offered some constructive criticism, which Cecilia really appreciated. His feedback to her photography was always mostly positive and that worked as a huge motivator for her. Well, who wouldn't be excited to have Gus Van Sant describe their work as throughly captivating?

After preparing herself a hot cup of tea, Cecilia positioned herself on the floor right next to the photos, ready for the process of sorting and organizing the pictures. She always went through the photos that were merely work related first and set them aside, then moved on to her personal snapshots or projects. This time, the photos she was the most excited for, were the ones she had taken during the Peppers' shows. The idea of doing a project where she would photograph different shows and audiences to capture the emotions people get from their favourite music was still in her mind, so she wanted to see how these first initial shots had turned out. She had looked through a few of the photographs together with Gus back at the studio and he had loved them. He encouraged Cecilia to continue with shooting such events believing that they could end up getting great coverage in the press.

As she was going through the photos of the shows, the more she looked at them, the more she loved them. The photographs of the boys on stage were full of raw energy, yet also love and warmth, while the photos of the audience were just upfront crazy. Cecilia couldn't wait to show them to John and the rest of the guys.

"So cute," she then giggled to herself a while later, going through the rest of the pictures. She was looking at a photo of John with a silly face, sitting in a café. It was the photo she had taken of him on the first day they hung out together, right after he had bought her a new camera to replace the one they broke by accident.

Probably knew him for around 12 hours at the time, she thought to herself as she set the photo aside and moved on to the next ones: casual snaps of John, them together, Cecilia's birthday, photos from the trip to Oklahoma. And even the photos she had taken on Chris' birthday. Going through the funniest photos of a drunken Jessica, Cecilia remembered how she had removed the film roll from her broken camera before throwing it away, so it got developed with the others. The photographs from Chris' birthday were quite hilarious, but there was one photo that stood out from the others - a photo of John chatting with somebody and smiling. It was definitely taken before their first encounter in the presence of Anthony and Jessica, and Cecilia hadn't even realized it herself that she had photographed him amongst the crowd. Probably a few hours before meeting him, she thought to herself while looking at it and smiled. And during that exact moment, an idea formed in Cecilia's head.

She still hadn't figured out anything too useful regarding John's birthday, but now, going through these photographs, she felt like she was on to something. What if she took all the best and funniest photos of John and made a personal album with some cute notes for him? Would he like that? Or would it be too cheesy? After considering the idea for a few moments, she decided that it wasn't too cheesy and hoped that John would end up loving it. Even as they hadn't been together for too long, she knew that John was the type of person to appreciate the idea and meaning of a present more than anything.

*

Excited for John's birthday project, Cecilia set out to find the perfect photo album already the next day. She wondered through all of her favourite photography stores, but none of them seemed to have what she was looking for. Finally, as she stepped into some random corner book shop not far away from her apartment, she noticed a huge section of photo albums. And there it was. The most perfect photo album she had ever seen. It had black velvet covers with gold detailing and almost looked like it belonged to the 19th century. Cecilia absolutely fell in love with it and knew that this was the right one for John's photos.