The pictorial documentation of my life began at a relatively young age. I couldn’t have been more than even or twelve years old when I got my first Polaroid instant camera and began getting photos of my life. In this one, I posed mid-song at the piano, not because I loved playing, but because I had on a new Reebok sweatshirt and thought I was THE SHIT. There’s a better photo of me facing the camera head on, but this one has the typewritten description that I typed myself – one of the first records of my own archiving efforts.
Back then, it was oddly not about me, this shot notwithstanding. I thought I was going to capture the key piece of evidence in some murder/crime mystery in the neighborhood, catching some seemingly insignificant clue that helped solve the case. Very much influenced by the soap operas that were my obsession at the time, I yearned for intrigue and excitement, something our sleepy and safe stretch of road failed to provide (the occasional night raid by teenagers who just wanted to jump in the pool and get quickly out was about the most excitement we ever had). Knowing what I know now about the shady shit that goes down in some suburbs, I’m grateful that the only intrigue we ever had was the imaginary stuff in my head – but what fun it was to live in such dramatic make-believe. And so I would set out each day to find some act I might put down on film and help crack the case.
Within the limited confines and inactivity of Pershing Road, all I managed to get was a neighbor stepping out gingerly to get the paper in his underwear, an electric-line worker in a lift and an orange hard hat, and several out of focus and over-exposed photos of plants. Fledgling failures. Dull as dirt.
But there was also me, easily the most exciting thing in the room, with or without documented proof of my existence. We always think we’re the most exciting thing in any room, even if we’d never openly admit it. Already obsessed with any effect or influence I might have had, my sweatshirt was deliberately designed to appear as entirely casual, and thus effortlessly cool, even if it had been planned and wished-for with deliberate care and consternation. Self-awareness was already an albatross, and I chained myself to it with an unbreakable covenant; a singular interest in oneself could be the sort of contagious vanity that demanded some scrap of love.
As we exited the 80’s, and my Reebok sweatshirt slipped out of style, I studied the poses, and the outfits, and I documented the changes as they happened… on my back, in my head, and outside in the world.
