My friends split. I am alone in Vegas.

I will stay a few days to just wander in a city I would never come to “on purpose”. The casino scene not my scene.

Yet I need to be anonymous and totally alone. Three weeks in a camper van with 5 people preceded by the Lucie Awards in Hollywood and my general lifestyle of often being with many has me seeking anonymity as a luxury, a treasure. I have zero plan except to have no plan.

The health club sounds nice, watch some movies I never saw, and just being a street photographer is all I seek. Why not just go home? Well even home will bring up obligations and I don’t want anything to think about.

I “disappear” like this every few years. Need to. Yet something I cannot imagine will happen.

Probably. Or not.

Don’t care.

19 thoughts on “My crew is gone.”

  1. It’s called a holiday David. Regular folks do it all the time. While what you do appears like a holiday to most of us, it must be exhausting. Chill.

    Me, I’m heading off the grid to Lasqueti Island for the weekend to recharge.

  2. Enjoy your down time in Vegas,David.
    Twenty years ago this week my wife and I got married in a rental Jeep Cherokee at the drive
    thru Little White Chapel.
    At 9:00 that morning arrived back at our hotel near Death Valley,after shooting the dunes
    at sunrise, to find my wife-to-be sitting in bed with the yellow pages open picking a venue.
    At that point,and in that circumstance, I had no viable exit strategy :)
    Twenty years on, still rates as the best use of a phone book I’ve come across.

  3. Alone again at last…!

    What a blessing that can be.

    Solitude… freedom… space… quiet… and with those, pure possibility. A meditation.

    Some people seem to need little of those things and are accustomed to lives normally filled with noise, other people, agendas, lists, programmed activities, goals.

    But there are people who crave aloneness, and with it the real freedom of aimlessness, in huge quantities, the way others crave food, money, power, cigarets, sex, drugs, recognition, sensory stimulation, human warmth.

    A road trip with others along is an ongoing set of negotiations, compromises, accommodations. People may confuse obstreperous, eccentric, radical, or exuberant behavior in such circumstances as being “free,” but you’ve always got people and situations reminding you of who you’re supposed to be, who you were, who they want you to continue to be.

    The road trip that may become a real vision quest seems to me best undertaken alone.

  4. I remember a picture, shadows on a wall.. similar words that came after a very intense time of shooting first, followed by three months of equally intense editing and sequencing and tweaking, to give birth to the baby..

    I had just left you and Bryan here:

    http://instagram.com/p/I2XJbrA1VU/

    Remember?

    “staccare la spina”.. unplug.. and heaven helps what you will come up next ;)

  5. Enjoy and rest… everybody needs to be alone and with no plans sometimes…
    I´m a little sad because it´s over this first part of the Road Trip… It was great to follow you and the rest of the crew!
    Cheers form Spain.

  6. David and crew,
    Thank you for sharing your lives honestly. I thought it would be interesting to follow along on this trip. I was not prepared, however, for the effect it would have on my life. I’m now processing some major internal shifts and changes as a result. Two major things occured; a terrible awareness that most of my shooting doesn’t include people BECAUSE I am not connecting deeply enough with others, and I am NOT being honest in my “mirroring” of self (thanks Panos for that!).
    I owe you a deep debt of gratitude, and hope tht we can cross paths someday.
    Steve

  7. It’s good not to care about the outcome… Just be.
    Now I suppose this is where the Leica S2 splits as well and the iPhone and GX1 becomes the Vegas street kings…

  8. SIDNEY

    well put…and totally right on…and yet the group trip does yield its own reward..as does Burn which is a very similar experience…i do Burn, i do my own books….not conflictive in the long run…we learn things we do things both ways…

    again, thank you Sidney for being so helpful to us on this trip…it was really quite funny and yet so so helpful when we were literally getting weather conditions from you right from comments here…

    high fives, and gratitude

    cheers, david

  9. PAUL

    oh yes, just be is right….turning in a rental car does not mean the “trip” is over…that is analytical thinking…my project is not over at all..only beginning….i am firmly hanging on to the Leica S2…when i am finished with Family Drive , then it will be time to give it up….again, the very best thing i could ever offer any one i mentor is not to get caught into the trap of thinking so narrowly right at the time when magic needs to happen….it is not what you think but how you think it…process is all about being open….and the details of the technicalities do not matter….once you can escape this gravity of process then you can fly…doesn’t mean you will always be in the air, but it does mean you can fly at least sometimes…sometimes for anything that is an attempt at greatness is the very best one can do…..otherwise you will not be able to get off the ground at all…a little bit of ecstasy is better that a whole lot of efficiency….

    when the book comes out nobody is going to remember any of this “process” except those (maybe you ) who were really really paying attention…this whole online revelation of process bit will really only be absorbed by very few…i know that…this is not a mass distro kind of thing..nor is my personal mentoring…nor are my books…nor my prints….

    cheers, david

  10. MARK TOMALTY

    great story…the ultimate serendipity story….thanks for sharing…in a totally different way i have discovered some things here in Vegas that have totally surprised me….i like surprises

  11. EVA

    oh yes!! a very similar experience which i had all but forgotten about….i think i spent three days in the Milan airport hotel….proves again as always things never go in a straight line…at least not for me…i wish often for an easier way, but surely not to be…art for sure does come out of chaos…dammit!!

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