Screaming in Unison

I always considered myself a bit of an introvert. From a young age, a large amount of my time was spent in my own room, either blasting music, playing guitar or video games. Once moved out of south Texas for graduate school and settled into the midwest, I certainly thrived in having my own space. Sure, for most of my time I did have a roommate (shout-out Tristan), but we lived in an outdated 4-bedroom house where we could go days without seeing each other. Once he graduated, I moved into my own little apartment off of Salem Street in Lafayette proper, I’d find my path a second time: I’d come out of a break-up that really set off some deep seated anxiety and had been going through some brutal panic attacks that summer of 2013, but I specifically remember the day I started to feel ok again. A sunny, surprisingly cool summer day, I biked over to the Mexican restaurant blocks away for a surprisingly decent burrito, before making the trek out to People’s Brewing Co. to do some reading, writing and day-drinking. One of the salad days of graduate school where everything felt right with the world and I remember thinking “this, right here, this is where I’m meant to dwell.” That year, I would meet my eventual partner of over 10 years and accelerate my journey through higher education that would lead me to Wisconsin, then Seattle, and eventually, here to the central coast.

Obviously, things drastically changed in my life. Being solidly middle-aged, starting over, and learning my way through a completely different context meant defaulting to the only way I knew how to cope with such drastic change: more isolation. Only this time, there was nothing or nobody to keep me tethered to the outside world. My mental health began to take a bad turn and I realized that the isolation I was submitting to was keeping me from forming a healthy life outside of myself. I did something I’d never really done before: reached out to a good friend to tell him what I was going through. Confessing that, I’d taken a turn for a bit and wasn’t feeling myself. Thankfully, he understood and talked me through what I was feeling. And as I began navigating these feelings and this awareness of the limits of my isolation, I started to see a different side of what I’d actually been doing without realizing it—building community.

A friend of mine (Joey) had posted online about an event he’d scheduled called “A Return To Tender” where he and three other middle-aged men talked about kindness and tenderness and just trying to be better dudes to themselves and the people in their lives. The event was at A Satellite of Love, a local thrift/art/plant/kitsch store literally blocks from my apartment. Something about the event called to me, so I grabbed my camera and made my way there. I’d made a decision not to drink as I’d recognized that I’d been drinking at social events as a way to curb my anxiety, so of course most of the night I felt aggressively uncomfortable—outside of Joey, I didn’t know anyone there, so I just had to stare at things and fiddle with my camera because I don’t know how to talk to strangers. But even with that awkwardness, it was an amazing event where people spoke openly and vulnerably about living through the horrors of our current social zeitgeist. Days later, a poetry reading at the same spot, so I knew I had to pop by for a few photos and to listen to indigenous poets read through their work—a sentence I never thought I’d type.

“Indigenous Voices” at Satellite of Love

Over spring break, my buddy Chachi asked me to help him out while filmed a project in nearby Arroyo Grande. My official title that weekend was “Production Coordinator”. When I asked him what the fuck that meant, he said “extra hands”: so that weekend I grabbed coffee for the crew, made runs to the store to stock up on drinks, snacks, caffeinated beverages of all kinds, call in and pick up catering orders for lunch, and help move or grab things on set as needed. And in all honesty, I had a blast doing it—a couple of the crew mentioned craving cold brew coffee, another was jonesing for a Red Bull, while another had her snack left out of the cooler, rendering it spoiled. After checking in with Chachi, I made another store run for bottled cold-brews, a four pack of Red Bull, and some replenished snacks and having multiple people genuinely thanking me for hooking them up really gave me a charge. I felt useful to people in a way I hadn’t for a long time and all throughout the shoot, I had my camera on hand to take photos of periodically of everyone working.

This past weekend I dropped by another event here in SLO called “Mistake Machine”. Spoken word, music, performance at a place called Mylr Gallery and Books, but this time I felt less awkward. I knew a couple of people there and that was enough for me to feel more comfortable moving around to take pictures and not feel like I was getting in someone’s way. At the end of the night, I bought a nice Midori Notebook at the shop and chatted to one of my friends there about possibly getting back into doing some more of my own performance in the form of spoken word, something I’d started doing while in Seattle but hadn’t had the chance to do since I’d moved.

In a former life, I was a musician who toured and recorded albums and all of that great stuff. Now, I don’t have much in the way music gear and even if I did, I don’t know if I have the bandwidth to start trying to find other musicians to start a band. But I miss performing. I miss being around likeminded people. I miss having conversations with people who just wanna make stuff and put it out there for people to see. Being around all of these filmmakers, makeup artists, cinematographers, writers, musicians, poets, set designers, painters...all of these artists has given me insight into what it is I need in order to start feeling like I belong somewhere. I need to be in community with people who are encouraging and who want to just make shit. And, frankly, I need to be making shit too. Because how else am I supposed to scream at and through the abyss? And if you see me out in these streets, say hi. Show me your shit.

Let’s scream together.

What we hold onto