runnin' on empty

one of my best, closest friends, kat, was in town for a couple of days. for a few hours on one of those days, we met up with my oldest friend (we've known each other since we were five), lauren, a mutual friend whom we both went to high school with. it's funny what the years do. there are grey hairs and pudgier bellies. grad school, doctoral dissertations, disillusionment with academia. marriage, singularity, and a return to the default state of being in a relationship. now we're different, now we're the same. i noticed i'm less prone to the sugary sweetness of sentimentality these days. i have less words to fill the spaces, but take comfort in the knowledge that silence can fill them too.

a conversation kat and i had in a bar over vodka/soda: i'm more prone to confusion now than i ever was when i was seventeen. kat says she thinks it's because it was around that time that she first felt she really knew anything, and so she was more sure of that knowing. possibly. i can neither affirm or deny, mostly because it's complicated and, again, confusing.

i find myself in a position where i'm alternately filled with restlessness, anger, adoration, obsession, and exhaustion. mostly, i want answers. i want clarity. i need these things from both myself and others, but a lot of the time, i feel like no one's listening. i don't know how to change that.

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on a note which is less... muddled, but likely pretty muddied (given the weather at the time), all points west was last weekend. the experience was pretty fantastic, as all of my festival experiences have been thus far, but it was a lot of work, even though reni (the writer) and i (the photographer) had decided to try and keep it as chill as possible. there was rain and mud and cold and hot. it was a physically taxing experience.

i got some really great photos, and i got to see some really great bands. jay-z waved at me just before a security guard shoved his hand in front of my lens. we ran into adrian grenier once outside his band's trailer, and then again in the grey goose (complimentary, of course) tent. we shared a table with cool keith in said tent. i got a paparazzi shot of ice-t from across the room. i pissed off mtv's john norris when i took his photo. i got to take photos of my favorite band to take photos of: crystal castles. i got to see two of my favoritefavorite bands ever.

i don't have all of the photos edited yet, but here are some highlights:


matt berninger of the national.


dancing in the mud.



karen o of the yeah yeah yeahs.

more dancing in the mud.


mr. jay-z. that last one is the shot i got of him waving at me.


alice glass of crystal castles.

yeah, he definitely wasn't thrilled about my little photo op.


more later.