Street Views: The Black Creatures
A photographic diary of a short, musical adventure.
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The therapist says I have to make a stronger attempt to rehumanize myself. According to her, sitting indoors by myself all day isn’t what people were “meant to do.” She says that I need to have more than her and my wife’s numbers in my phone. She says sleeping all day isn’t a way to live. That I need to put myself “out there.” That it’s okay to exaggerate my qualifications on job applications and that despite all the bad going on outside my front door, there’s still a life worth living.
My therapist says a lot of things.
And she’s right about some of them. Everything is easier said than done though, especially when it comes to leaving the house for “social activities.” Thankfully, the act of taking a photo, culling and editing is fulfilling enough for me to try and listen to the doc. So with her words in my head, I decided to go on a mini adventure in the near-100 degree heat to take shots of a hip-hop duo performing off a busy intersection crammed full of vagrants, transients and drunk-for-breakfast folks.
Taking place on Fridays during the summer, the Friday Take Out series has featured high-quality musical acts performing downtown for the public. And for free! I just had to physically get there.
The plan was to take an 8-minute walk to the closest bus stop and grab a ride to the venue. In reality, the bus never showed up. Fearing I was going to be late, I walked even further away from my destination in order to find an electric Bird™ city scooter. And of course, it was running on the battery-powered equivalent of fumes. The scoot ran out of juice about a block away from the show so by the time I got there, I was hot and anxious about meeting people as I literally left a trail…
