Man-world Shackles & Vagabonds
"If you were completely released from the constraints of the 'architecture school' program, what would you do architecturally, artistically, bodily, lyrically, etc that would still have an impact on your environment. Describe a real or imagined place which might allow you to do this. Explore through images and text."
“What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.� - Jack Kerouac
If there is any one particular thing that I really wish I would have done when I was younger, it would have been that I had picked up any one of those “help wanted� signs at any one of the vendor booths at any one of the many travelling music festival tours I have been to. The idea of altering my perception of real life by leaving it all behind for the better part of a summer always fascinated me but I never had the nerve to go ahead with it. I like to imagine that it would have been all about new people, new places, no money, and surrounded by music. It would have been all about the experience and the stories and the vagabond lessons learned.
Nonetheless…
The road and the journey was not lost on me. I took a good handful of opportunities to travel about. Sometimes it was with a friend; but many times on my own. There is something spiritual and invigorating about driving long distances by yourself. The thoughts, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the wind, the air, the road, the sun, the moon….it all becomes much more your own then you could ever imagine. Once the idea sets in that you are free of what’s behind you, if even just for the temporary present, it becomes clear that you can really just take the moment to connect with whatever is around you. I was able to look closer, gaze longer, and smell harder than I ever remembered or even thought to do before. Man and nature was out there together in front of me and behind me. I was just grateful and humbled to be a part of it all.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rthunder/112782853/ Salt Flats Rest Stop
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeontherun/124366386/ Sunrise Over Salt Flats
So yeah, I think if I “…were completely released from the constraints of the 'architecture school' program�, I would love to again strip myself of the man-world shackles I’ve become accustomed to lately and take the time to really reconnect with the world that is seen through vagabond eyes.