The feeling is being up at dawn and being in a small budget, small town track and field arena. Fog hanging at the edges of the grass and on the track. The stacked bleachers stained pink with the morning light, before the sun breaks over tall mountains.
We’re at the bottom of everything.
Hills in the distance peppered with small homes hiding behind orange autumn trees, and the smell of something cooking vaguely hanging in the air. Like fast food McDonalds in the morning — the syrup and coffee scent that hangs in the air and mixes with a frying smell.
I feel like if you photographed it, you could get a sense that it’s early. But would it be to ominous? It’s about being in that moment. Finding solace in the solitary act of being in this place, with that moment, with those smells, in that light.
Maybe it’s experiential. Maybe you would have to be there to feel it. Maybe, in the future, someone would have us sit in VR goggles, in some sensory deprivation chamber. Soaking in saltwater, completely nude, while the smell of deep fried hash browns and sticky sweet breakfast is wafted in by someone in a lab coat.
Or maybe that’s why we have memories and words and ideas to communicate our thoughts. Maybe that’s why we evolved to make paintings, take photographs, take video and create music.
And maybe that’s why strangers should talk; because, sometimes, nothing else will do.