Music is the closest thing I have to religion. It has given me direction and purpose when I’ve been lost and it’s the one thing that has been constant in life. People, places, and material things have all come and gone, but not music. I found early into my journey as an artist that I wanted to be a concert photographer, so I moved to Lawrence for the town’s historical music scene. The community welcomed me with open arms and by going to countless shows, I met people who have become my closest friends. I would even consider them family. I found my purpose in documenting Lawrence’s underground DIY culture, making photos and videos of this exciting, confusing, adventurous, and uncertain time in our lives. However, recently I haven’t been feeling connected to my people and surroundings.
Depersonalization is a symptom of depression that involves an individual feeling detached from their own thoughts, feelings, or body. People who exhibit this symptom often feel like they are observing themselves from a third-person point-of-view. Although I have struggled with depression for a majority of my life, this symptom of depersonalization has surfaced for the first time. I stand in crowded bars with my friends, my chosen family, and it feels like I’m not there. When engaging in conversations, I feel that all of my answers are predetermined and that I am giving answers people expect to hear. I feel disconnected from a community that I have built my life around for the past three years. It’s unsettling for me to experience this and it causes a lot of anguish.
I cope with my feelings through this project, using video to depict the experience of growing increasingly detached from reality. Using my background in music and my interest in experimental electronic noise music, I compose a soundtrack that represents how I feel during these moments of detachment. i want to make you feel something… isn’t just me telling the viewer that I want them to have an emotional reaction to the piece, it’s also a message I’m telling myself to create art that makes me feel something, anything, during this period of depersonalization so that I can connect myself back to reality. Whatever that emotion is, I want you to feel it, but I want to feel it too.
