Looking at You.

I put up a new Here’s Looking at You video (HLAY).

The inspiration for these was initially trying to look at the camera as though it was the person I love most in this world, looking with deep love and warmth.

I don’t know why exactly. I guess I wanted to see what that looked like from me. I remember one time thinking as I gazed on my lovely wife how I would never gaze like that at my own reflection. Who would? I don’t mean out of some narcissistic place but just out of pure affection for who you are in the world. I think it’s kind of sad that we can’t do that. It doesn’t take a Zen Master to know that most things we don’t like in other people stem from some sense of deep self-loathing of our own. So I figure if you could truly look at yourself with honest love, it would mean that much more love for the world around us.

But it’s too vulnerable to see yourself in that way. I think. And too weird. I tried it once. I turned away from the medicine cabinet mirror, pictured Jaime and then turned back to the medicine cabinet mirror. I think I gagged when I made eye contact with myself. And then did a bit of a Gross Dance to shake it out of my system, turned and walked out of the bathroom.

That’s when I went for the camera. I looked into it as though I were looking into Jaime’s eyes. That’s the first video on the page. It was definitely easier than the medicine cabinet mirror experiment because there was some distance in time between me looking into the camera and then me looking at the resulting video. I managed to edit it at least.

After that, I went on to imagine the camera as other people in my life and the project grew from there. I can’t say that I go to look at the lovey video so much as I do to look at the one where I’m steamed (the second one on the page). That one makes me feel more comfortable because I usually feel like the world is looking at me like that in the first place, truly pissed.

There will be more to come as the HLAY spirit moves me.

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I also tried to get Willa’s perspective but don’t know that she really gets what I’m looking for.