On Being Interviewed
Monday, February 15th, 2010I’ve always felt a lot more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. I like directing, I like composing compositions, I like being behind the scenes. I like making people feel comfortable. So it was a surprise to me, when yesterday I found myself blathering like an idiot in front of a video camera about this and that and travel.
It was uncomfortable as hell.
When I have something to say I usually write it. I try and not waste my readers’ time by writing something just for the sake of having a post on any given day. I’ll go weeks without posting for that very reason. Yesterday in front of the camera I felt like I was a talking head, wasting time, not saying anything of substance. No details, only generalities. Not an in-depth conversation, just questions pointed. Not my usual jovial, rambling, circular way of telling stories, just me trying to think, and speak, in a linear way that is really frakking unfamiliar to me.
To be honest, I’m really tired of the topic of travel as a topic. I suppose that is only natural when getting immersed in a subject, when all waking hours are devoted to some aspect of a life’s secondary subject. I’m burned out.
Or maybe it’s like photography – years ago, way before digital when we were still using archaic film cameras, I stopped shooting. Not really because I didn’t like photography anymore, but because it had gotten to the point where anyone could shoot ok photographs. So why not change course (that’s when I became a painter) because I wasn’t really needed in the world as a photographer anymore? Even more-so now with digital format cameras.
Everyone travels now. Everyone shoots their own photographs. Now I’m connected through a social network of what seems like a gazillion members of the travel community who are travel bloggers first and whatever they are in their real lives second. Time for me to move on maybe, or at least think about changing course … or maybe just get back to my original intention and block it all out. Or maybe I just need to travel and get out my comfort zone, off of my laptop, leaving twitter behind.
On the other hand, I’m not tired of the subject of art. I’m not tired of being an artist. I was born to be one. So getting bored with it all or tired of it is not an issue. It’s not even possible. There’s always my next project to work on. My writing on this site started out being the observations of this one artist who travels. Artists are born with insatiable curiosity and observation skills. How better to use those characteristics than to continue to move on to new places, have experiences, internalize them and use them later in some self-analytical way? Travel also gives the opportunity to visit our creative roots, our artistic ancestry.
Even though most of the interview yesterday was a blathering blur, one of the questions I was asked was “How does travel change your art?” That one kind of stumped me, because I honed in on the word change. My reply, complete with a quizzical look and a tilt of the head, was that it doesn’t change my work. But what I didn’t think to add, or didn’t articulate because I was focusing on the word change, is that travel does influence my work, or maybe I should say that it does inspire my projects. I wonder how far I would have gotten into my latest project if I hadn’t been exposed to ancient Maya culture and their interest in the concept of time? Actually, probably pretty far, but the exposure took me even further.
This morning I feel the uncomfortable memory of the interview. It wasn’t written word. It’s not editable in a way that I would like to edit it. It’s imagery and speaking and choppy non-connected sentences. I will be surprised if anything good comes of it.
It is also … out of my hands.
