WALK! Los Angeles With Me

Hello!

Well, it's late on Sunday night but I wanted to write a little to fill you in on how it's going.

I left again on Friday and it's been an amazing few days.

I've begun walking with people and some of those meetings have blown me away.

The more people I meet, the more people I realise I need to meet. How many realities there are within one Los Angeles reality. Together, we make up 'LA' but how disparate each part, each person can be. How difficult it is to continue living my own reality if I truly acknowledge the reality of others who share this city with me. Blinkeredness is a survival technique. It is useful. It is necessary. But also harmful and destructive.

Perhaps this project will teach me where to draw the line between openness and protective closedness. Rather than just drawing that line by rote or from fear or lethargy.

For now though I am investigating. And openness is what is necessary for that. Conclusions are inappropriate right now.

The glitches of the first run seem to be (fingers crossed) all ironed out and the project is beginning to take form in the way that I'd hoped and imagined it would all along.

I've decided to try to stay downtown for a few more days if I can find a place to sleep for those nights.

I've experienced and captured some really amazing moments but really all that has done is highlight how much more there is to find here and I'd like to stay longer to capture more of it.

More videos in the next day or two. Typepad says the server will be fixed soon so fast streaming is nigh. Either way, I have a plan B I'm going to check out for ultra quick video downloads so that viewing issues will be a thing of the past.

I'm exhausted so I'm off to bed.

Much more, very soon.

There is a fault with my Typepad blog account...

While I'm waiting for Typepad to fix it, I'm afraid the videos will load very slowly. :(

Let's hope they can fix it soon...

I've Had One Helluva Week...

It was hot.

The stroller broke.

I got allergic to my allergy medication.

I had some version of ‘Bless you’ said to me in three different languages by eight different strangers on one street block.

I was sneezing so much that one guy passed me on the 1st street bridge and shouted ‘Bless you!’ out his window. Fifteen minutes later he was facing the other direction, stopped at a light on Utah, and had to shout the same thing.

I’ve already learned so much about the capacity of people to be selfless here. I could do a whole project just on the differences between all the couches I’ve been sleeping on – or the beds people have been giving up for me so I can have a good nights rest.

Thank you Annie, Taz, Birgitte, Russell, Billy, Sarah. Your generosity is an education. But, erm, can I crash again sometime next week?

You see, I have to start again. Stuff happened. The drawing board has been reconsulted. I’ve learnt masses about LA, the project and myself and I’m going to have to go at this with that knowledge in tow.

Dan the Camera Rig Man is fixing the stroller. Hopefully by Tuesday. We used wood where we should have used metal because I wanted to cut costs. Either way I’ve paid for it.

I’m chomping at the bit to go back out there. One of the things I’ve realised is that this project is largely going to be a discovery of how little of what’s out there any one person can capture and convey. I’ve decided to make this an exercize in serendipity. I’m just going to make myself available in all the places I walk through and see what meets me halfway. Less of pointing my camera and more of stuff just colliding in front of it.

I had to come home on Friday but my intention is still the same. If not more focussed. I will walk the whole of LA without going home. Unless LA decides it doesn’t want me to. But I don’t see why it should. Perhaps that’s naivetee on my part but neither you nor I can tell if that’s so until I’ve whole heartedly tried.

I shall try to blog more regularly. I’m just ironing out creases in finding my rhythm.

Below are a few snippets of some stuff I did last Tuesday without the rig.

You will be a witness to my story of LA as I find it. It is an organic process – intertwined with me learning how to video and edit too.

Same as how I’m finding my feet with the whole project. The walking and the blogging. It’s rhythm will come in it’s own time also. I need to respect that.

Meanwhile I’ll keep feeding you stuff. Here and there. This and that. Anecdotes. Clips. Images.

And soon we can all walk together – if you want to. Lots of people have been saying they do.

Last Tuesday I met Vachelle. We walked around Bunker Hill and Skid Row. What follows is some stuff from that.

- Stay tuned. I’m not done yet.

Click Here to Watch “Vachelle and Vanage”

Vachelle walked from Florida to California in 1979, parallel with Route 40, paying his way by selling 'Vanage' the all-purpose cleaner from door to door. Texas alone took a month.

Click Here to Watch “Justin Veech”

To find out more about what Justin's talking about, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%e9rive
And yes, I know, I need to tie my hair back.

Click Here to Watch “Woman on Crutches”

Central City East, colloquially known as Skid Row, has, apparently, been officially renamed 'City of Hope'. I was videoing the sign of a mission there when I heard a soft female voice say from behind me that this was a very sad place to bring a video camera. I didn't have my mic set up so you'll have to listen hard I'm afraid.

Click Here to Watch “Walking Man”

Just experimenting with some of the footage I took.

- I had another one for you but for some reason it's not uploading. I'll post it later if I can.

OTHER STUFF:

The send off was awesome. Perfect and warm. Neil Hopper of http://walkinginla.com came to support the project and walk for a bit with me. Eric Garcetti, the City Council Member, came for three minutes on his way to San Diego and gave me a certificate from the City of LA for the project (it kinda felt like the Wizard of Oz giving me a scroll) and many of my friends came to give me three cheers and walk the first hour or so with me. Here are some pics. I'm in the process of trying to work out the html to get this to lay out straight and enlarge a little.

Bradley

Neil

Igor and Friend

Billy and Sarah

Marisa

Amber and Me

And erm... this is kind of a heads' up. Sarah lent me her tent so that I can set it up in people's gardens or living rooms if I stay at their house and need a little downtime to do some blogging...

AND LASTLY, SOME GOOGLISMS:

3am. Last week. Sleepless.
Contemplating my journey.

(http://googlism.com where you can get definitions of words based on site descriptions found in Google.)

Here is a selective list of my findings:

"Walking is so 1990's when speculation about the mysterious invention known only as 'it' or 'ginger' first began to run rampant"
"Walking is impaired following"
"Walking is usually associated with a disorder of the mind but may also be seen with reactions to drugs and/or medications and alcohol"
"Walking is another primitive sighting technique"
"Walking is not a crime"
"Walking is for suckers"

"Walking is continued until ambiguity is cleared off”

"Los Angeles is now"
"Los Angeles is hiring"
"Los Angeles is growing in"
"Los Angeles is a cesspool of graft and"
"Los Angeles is the future"
"Los Angeles is a pit"

"Discovery is the only road left"
"Discovery is seeing what everyone else has seen"
"Discovery is moving"
"Discovery is trying to query machines which I do not want to be"

Parented by Googlism, I fell straight to sleep.
Googlism is a fairytale.
Googlism is an oracle.
Googlism is home.