About

The Full Story

I’ve always had a tendency to collect things, whether it be dead bugs or antique boxes. There is one thing, however, that I’ve been collecting for as long as I can remember without ever really realizing it until recently. These things hold a very specific meaning that I haven’t quite been able to put into words, but I have been able to associate them with a feeling. 
As I’ve grown, I’ve developed some level of understanding of what it is, and what specifically brings it about. This summer, I had an experience that captures it more than any other single experience I’ve had. I went camping with my uncle in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We were truly off the map, and I was thrilled about it. I think I’ve always had an urge to be in nature, and this was the first time that I felt truly immersed in it. We were staying in a cabin, next to a little lake named cherry, after its deep red-black water. I would go swimming in the lake during the day, and I wouldn’t be able to see my feet. One day, I swam out to this log that was floating in the water, and I tried to drag it, but I couldn’t. It was then that I was struck by just how massive this tree must be. Its smooth surface dissolved into the shadows, and it was heavy even in the water. The trees surrounding the lake were taller than the camp lodge that was tucked away among them, and I realized this log probably touched the bottom of the lake. I was both averse to and intrigued by how far down that probably was. Later, I canoed out into the middle of the lake and lay down in the bottom of the boat, looking at the Milky Way. The water was glossy, and harmless, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what lurked just beneath the thin metal. The loon calls, which I found delightful during the day, sent goosebumps crawling up and down my arms. 
It was the feeling of calm before the storm, or the way that your legs go limp when you see something you’re afraid of. I’ve never felt more simultaneously peaceful and uneasy. It’s quiet chaos, and romanticized solitude. Of the things that I’ve collected that invoke this feeling, there’s a book that helped me understand and come to terms with my sexuality. It told me that there’s going to be times when I’ll feel alone because of it, but it also told me how beautiful it is that I’m not like the people who will make me feel alone. There’s also a small card with a sailboat on it that says, “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, I haven’t had the words.” My mom couldn’t understand why I would want to put something like that up on my bulletin board. She said it was sad, but I thought it was sweet. The things that I collect are meaningful, so I’ve become attached to this feeling, but what is it? Something like fearing the unknown, but also craving it. It explains to me the fact that I am a puzzle piece that fits into this reality that is too big for me to comprehend. Small, but necessary. 
My goal throughout this semester was to figure out how to explain this in simpler terms. For my first experiment, I wanted to do a short fiction about talking trees. I like to think about what trees could tell us if they could talk. A tree that stands in the same park for hundreds of years must be full of gossip, and there’s something spiritual about it. If there was an all-knowing being, it would have to be a tree, because what is as long-lived and inconspicuous as trees? But from there, the “terms” become much more complicated. A short story is simple, and the meaning behind it is up to interpretation. Bringing up spirituality was not going to invoke enough of a reaction in the audience to make them read into it, and they would have to if they were going to see it as anything terribly significant. 
I moved on to something that couldn’t be interpreted. I thought I would tell it like it is through a podcast about music. It was to be made up of clips of genuine conversation, centered around spirituality in listening. I ended up being back to where I started. I couldn’t explain it in words in the first place, and here I was, trying to invoke the feeling by bringing up a topic only loosely related to it, with words. That’s when I realized, the more vague something is, the more potential it has to become personal, and the basis for all of my project is, for me, the most personal thing I can think of. 
I moved in the opposite direction, but I was scared. Words are always easier to analyze, and I dropped them almost completely. I had the idea because I was looking at this painting by Laurel Holloman called “Sand and Fog,” and I felt it. The painting is hazy, and blurry. It’s a depiction of a beach, but without the title, it could be anything. I liked that, it depicted familiarity within the unknown like nothing else I had read or seen. This is why I chose to fully realize my most recent experiment, because the entire semester was the process that led up to it. If I had done one of my earlier experiments, it would have been like turning in a rough draft. 
In these three paintings, there’s the quiet chaos of empty threats. There’s a lot of potential for destruction, but there’s an intentional lack of any evidence of such. Along with this, the perspective zooms in. The audience views the first painting from a third person perspective, and then in the last painting, they view it in a first person perspective. This makes it more personal. The poetry that goes along with each painting portrays the feeling of romanticism, like the chaos is part of you. Like, however uneasy it makes you, you belong here. That is what the feeling is.