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Dressing room / General / Leather jackets and the romantic future
Latest Post: April 5, 2010 at 1:19 AM
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Don't show me this again.
Robin Layter says: (Follow this user)
19 followers

I often picture myself in a leather jacket. By "often" I mean on occasion. I try to tame vanity. Often unsuccessfully. Anyway, the me I picture in said leather jacket is not me at all. He is older and very blurry and almost always standing along a deserted highway and looking at the camera. Apparently the future me lives in a post-apocalyptic desert alá Mad Maxx. 

I pass store windows filled to the very glass with leather jackets and I sigh inwardly. I am fully aware that I am not ready to don that jacket. It's not me yet just like it's not yet me to have a beard and the occasional mustache is only ever just that, occasional (and almost always for kicks). And the sigh is only inward because I am content to wait. I know there will be a time for a great big Hemingway-beard and there will also be that magical day on which I purchase that perfect leather jacket. (Though in my dreams it is usually draped on my shoulders by an angel with peach-colored skin (is that a desirable color for skin (can I put parenthesis inside parenthesis?)))

If you doubt that I have a point, you're not very far off. Only this, that we sometimes try to picture ourselves far down the line but no matter what, that image we create can only ever be a still photograph. Or possibly if it is moving film, there can be no sound.  I hold the image of me in a leather jacket in my hand and just as easily as I can tear it to pieces I can also put it on a pedestal. I might become that leather jacketed man but I'll never become that image.

We (I shouldn't generalize) I tend to keep cozy the promise of a full future. But this romanticized future is a dangerous boon. It is not the man in the still photograph that I want to become, but the man becoming that man. I don't want to be given a future, I want to earn it.

It's not the goal that is the prize, not the leather jacket and the man wearing it, but rather the experiences and journey and life that must be lived before it is time. Which is why I think this image keeps coming back to me, because when I see that angel with a peach-colored face I'll have proof of the journey.

(By the way, I can never decide between brown and black)

 

March 25, 2010 at 7:37 PM
Althea Leigh Hicks says: (Follow this user)
6 followers

When i picture my future self my hair is longer (and tamer) i'm wearing a long, flowy skirt (because by then i would have overcome my "teenage-feminist phase of rebelling against skirts") and i'm a good 6 inches taller. I have a much larger CD collection, and i'm wearing lipstick (the real grown-up kind, not the SPF 15 chap-stick i currently wear). i'm standing in the middle of a golf course very early in the morning (the one i own, and run around every morning, and rent out to carnivals).

Some aspects of this image are unrealistic, for instance, according to everyone i've ever had this conversation with, there's very little chance that i'll grow 6 more inches, yet it's difficult to picture a future me where i'm not taller. And i do realize that in order to make any sort of profit off of owning a golf course, i will have to let people golf there.

In reviewing this image, i realized that you are absolutely right about the "it can only be a still photograph" thing. It's a goal, a thought, a dream even, but what's the point if we don't also appreciate the experiences on the way there. I will eventually accept skirts into my wardrobe, just as you will eventually grow your beard, but those things can wait, for now lets just focus on earning that image, with as much fun thrown in there as possible.

(Black, brown can clash with the wrong jeans or something, black looks much cooler anyway (and the hell with proper punctuation, if we want to use a parenthesis in a parenthesis, then i don't see anyone who can stop us.))

 

April 3, 2010 at 1:18 AM
Michel de Graph says: (Follow this user)
10 followers

I wonder if the clapping of the crowd when receiving the Oscars, which is in so many people's dreams, is silent?  I wonder if winning  a race, or the beauty queen is silent or can they hear the roars of the crowd? The people imagining themselves driving in the car waving to the crowd, do they hear the roars? Do you Althea hear the 9-iron hit the golf ball?

I imagine there can be a sound, but maybe it is a simple 1-tone sound, but the moment sound appears it is only a matter of how elaborate that image is.
I would like to share my own image but I really don't have one. I don't think that much about the future,

Althea, if you are alone on the golf course, how do you know you've grown 6-inches? Maybe it's just trick photography like they do to make Tom Cruise or Sylvester Stallone look tall?

(((( Black, and yes for parenthesis. ))))

 

April 3, 2010 at 9:08 PM
Althea Leigh Hicks says: (Follow this user)
6 followers

Michel,
just to clarify, i don't play golf. I've hit a few balls now and then with my dad, but i honestly find the sport rather boring. My desire to own a golf course stems from the carnivals held at the golf course near my house, i always thought golf courses could be used for so many different things, not just golfing.  They're perfect for running, riding my bike, and taking walks on. Three of my favorite things to do. I realize that i might as well just buy a large piece of land, but a golf course just seems nicer.

I was thinking about the sound thing also, but i just couldn't fit it into my first response. It's kind of strange how we can see images in our mind so well, but sound is different. Sometimes i'll try to imagine someone's voice, but it just doesn't seem to work out very well. i wonder why it's so much easier to fake the sensation of sight than it is to fake other senses.

I know i've grown 6-inches taller because it's my image. I made it that way. I think i imagine myself 6 inches taller because i still feel like a child at the height i am now. I don't feel like an adult, so it's almost automatic to think  that when i am an adult i will be taller.

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April 3, 2010 at 11:09 PM
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