Looking Through Glass
I’ve made several journeys in my life (in fact if you haven’t been keeping up I’m still on one) and even more recently have decided to do something about all the massive documentation I have recording them.
Now most people have trouble letting go of the sentimental, and others take it to the extreme and hoard everything “just in case.” I’m far from the pack-rat type, but I do tend to hold onto every little business card, receipt, and photograph I’ve ever taken, and though they may be in neatly labeled boxes or bags, the fact remains that I have hundreds of photographs, ticket stubs, video clips, maps, and other paraphernalia that’s usually just sitting in an old shoebox underneath my bed, waiting to be turned into memorabilia.
Somewhere along the college line I decided to do just that. Freshman year was encapsulated in a 15 minute snapshot video of my life, Sophomore year an epic decoupage calendar project, Junior year a hefty scrapbook, and this year? This year I’ve got too much stuff to just make one of anything. And I’m looking back at all the tonnes of raw material I’ve got in the backlog beckoning me to make it something viewable, sharable, something to evoke my strongest and fondest memories.
Hence all the two-minute videos I’ve been making. Surely they’re not the most original projects I’ve ever made, but I’m not making them to be hyperoriginal works of genius. I’m throwing together scraps when I’ve got the time into something that makes some sense instead of leaving everything sitting in a folder on my hard drive waiting until catastrophe strikes (god forbid). Well, as you may have surmised, I’ve got yet another one.
Looking Through Glass from Leigh Cooper on Vimeo.
This one is taken from the photos, letters, maps, music, and video that transpired over the two-day, 1,600 mile road trip Jeff and I took in May from Los Angeles to Houston. While the 16 hours we spent in a car passed as slowly and painfully as kidney stones, the feeling of elation at putting miles of pavement between the metropolis we fled from and the destination we booked to never really wore off. Even now I look back on the many times I’ve done that drive fondly. It is a beautiful drive to see with your own two eyes, or indeed through whatever glass you may choose: camera, windshield, or even just a pair of sunglasses.
I’ve been watching a lot of Australian road movies in my cinema class here, which is probably what prompted me to go back to the mythos of the many motorways to California I’ve experienced in my own lifetime. Sure the ideology of road tripping is different for every country, but there is something unmistakably alluring about the freedom of a country road, the openness of the interstate, and the rush that comes from making good time and watching borders pass right under your eyes, completely unhindered. The feeling only last for that short while you’re on the road, that brief period when all bets are off and all rules are redefined to a more primordial and liminal state. In some ways, it is the desire to rediscover this feeling that leads me to travel as much as I do, to experience that twenty-first century manifest destiny, the balance between “we control our own destiny” and “anything can happen.”