Everything in its right place.

The cheerful melancholy of juxtaposition snatched in a stolen moment.

The triad of concepts that drive much of my creative interests in relation to people is:

Time
Identity
Memory

The last of these in particular interests me. Memory, with all its fragility, is so beautiful and chaotic. Like all other muscles, it can be trained and exercised and strengthened…but it also is a perpetual wild card as it haphazardly fires certain synapses over others in archiving a thousand moments into a black hole vault, and then seemingly arbitrarily prioritizing and snatching another single moment to preserve in a special always-accessible portion of your memory; ready to be pulled up. How does this work?

I am fascinated by the frustrating machinations of memory.

I shoot a lot, and film a lot, but less so than people might sometimes think. Or rather, I cull and curate brutally. I am both patient and ready for moments to happen, and try not to force them. I simply try to be present in a particular circumstance or happening and remain aware of what’s transpiring around me. And sometimes, when tiny moments are happening on the peripheries, I like to steal one of them from the sidelines. One.

Not a bunch. Maybe one. A part of a little moment that happens. Little moments that seem special at the time, and feel like they might be even more special at some point in the future.

Long into the future, there is a strong chance Rachel won’t remember who she was talking to. I don’t know, so I can’t help her remember. And I’m glad for that. There’s a cheerful, melancholic state of quiet mystery happening in this back room of a bakery; a stolen moment, and I love that. I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s a whole story to be wrested from reality, as our imagination fights for control with memory over what the story is. I love that.

She might be listening to her voicemails. Or she might be speaking with Thom Yorke. Or listening to a voicemail I might have left from 2013. I don’t know.

Enjoy the mystery.