The Urban Jungle

I haven't kept up this blog as much lately, I'm sure that will come and go. In my travels I am almost positive that I will have interesting stories to tell almost daily. Here in a city that's strangeness i'm used to, everything seems typical to me. I was reminded however that my life is not typical and that I do have amazing adventures all the time. So i'm going to try to get into the habit of telling them here.

Two or so weeks ago while heading into a cemetery, I was stopped by a man with a gun. At first I wasn't sure what he wanted, I didn't see the gun and couldn't understand his ramblings. I'm used to running into drug addled zombies in Atlanta. I thought this was no different, although I must admit I felt uneasy and had for a block or so and had been chanting silently as a result. When I noticed the gun and it occurred to me what was going on, I must have looked dumbfounded. It was after all 3pm on a Sunday. Cars going by, people out and about. Not then though, as I looked around, no one came to my aid, no one was in sight. They of course took everything, my fancy phone, my trusty electronic eye and my wallet.

As I wondered away wanting only to get out of there and get home I stopped at a car garage, I looked at the men and told them I had just been mugged and they said they couldn't help me. At this point I realized I had wondered into a section of town were no one wanted to be a target, so no one wanted to get involved. So I walked home and only then called the police.

Of course through out this whole event, I was thinking of my trip and what I would do if something like that happened to me far away from home, far away from people. It caused me to think about this urban jungle I live in and how in many ways it has prepared me for this journey. I mean Atlanta is the 3rd most violent city and I am walking around it all the time. Looking at all this the bears don't freak me out as much as the thugs.

I am glad that I was unharmed and the love and support I got from those around me was amazing. I mean its about two weeks and I have almost replaced all my equipment with the love and support of family and friends. The Photo-Monk project is still on schedule and still going to happen.

So I guess I do have adventures to right about after all. Most of them are even uplifting!

Be Safe

The Photo-Monk

ravenous

The hardest part about being an artist for me is keeping a hold of my original passion for any project that I am working on and seeing it though to the end. It isn't that I loose interest in projects its more that artistic vision sometimes clashes with material reality. The result is most often this feeling of banging my head against a wall.

What makes an artist an artist is that they see the world in a different way or they can communicate the way we all see the world in a way that makes sense. Both has within them a beauty and a curse. If you see the world differently then you end up spending a lot of time explaining or defending your art. If you show what we all are thinking then this can give rise to anger and ridicule because people don't like to feel exposed.

I have faced all of this over the years, yet here I am ready to take on yet another crazy project that has the potential to be amazing or disastrous. The question that most people ask is why I would even want to do such a thing as walk across the country. When I answer them my passions rise and the artist takes over. By the end of it they are on my side cheering me on. It is this ravenous artistic passion that attracts people to the artist and his crazy ideas. It is this same passion that will carry an artist through to the end of a project even if it seems doomed, impossible or ineffective.

I look at artists as being holy men and holy men as the interpreters of art. Both see and feel things that not everyone takes the time to. Both get swept away with inspiration that seems fanatical and perhaps even insane to some. Both would gladly live without rather than give up what they feel gives them life. Both feel like the world must one day understand or perish in there own ignorance. Both the holy man and the artist give us hope, show us god, reveal our own divinity and unmask for us our vulnerable humanness. We tremble before both wondering how they could possibly live the way they do, for the reasons they do. Yet, in our time of need when we are groping in the dark trying to understand the universe around us we turn to them.

All of these ideas are behind the Photo-Monk Project, for in this life of mine, I have walked on both paths. That of an artist and a spiritual seeker. I have faced every trial imaginable and yet still want to walk across the country. I want to walk alone as a monk, documenting the journey as an artist. I can not think of a more insane and beautiful gesture to celebrate my love for life and all other sentient beings.

I do realize like many artists and holy men, I stand a good chance of going completely insane on this journey. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. It seems to me that many of our problems exist within the mind so leaving it from time to time can be very helpful.

Regardless, everyday it gets more and more clear that I am actually going to do this. I am going to walk across the country, or at least start, on a photographic pilgrimage. My own artistic experiment in human kindness. That both excites me and overwhelms me. It fills me with that very passion that I've been talking about. It doesn't even matter if anyone else cares or gets it. I care, I get it, I care about you and your story. I get your struggle.

I'll see ya on the road !!!

Caleb Storms

The Photo-Monk

photo-monk.com