The clouds darken and my vision wains as I make my way forward.
Rain is coming, Night is falling, there is hope.
I make my way towards it now, the clouds become even darker.
A rather ominous tone presents itself to me as I look up at the sky.
I see it now. There is no way in and no way out.
The messages along the wall bare warnings.
None shall pass.
The one who walks alone, is a fool.
Enlightenment only comes to fruition when it is shared.
These messages mean nothing to me.
They will not stop me from leaving it behind.
I will run and find what I need.
I need no one, I need nothing.
The wind begins to blow
My vision begins to wain.
My mind isn't right, it'll never be right again.
A voice calls to me as I look at the gate.
It beckons to me and screams to be heard, and I must listen.
Rain begins to fall, night comes, hope is failing.
The sky seems to encompass my entire body.
I want to know what is behind the gate
What do these messages truly mean?
Are they there to warn us, or merely keep us out?
Can salvation be found in a place I don't know,
Or can it be found in a place I've always known?
The rain begins to pour, as a bolt of lightning streaks across the sky.
I look up and back again at the gate.
I do not feel the certain confidence that I once felt.
Evil lies beyond it, a force that I do not have the strength or courage to face.
All I want is to find peace.
I believed that peace lay beyond.
Peace is found within oneself
Running from fate solves nothing.
Facing destiny, facing reality is what makes someone who they are.
Facing destiny, facing reality is what I must do.
I cannot run from them if I expect to find happiness.
I must return if I have any chance of finding it at all.
I chose to do the graffiti wall on the out skirt of the campus because it's a very isolated place. I always thought that it would be a nice place to go to and gather your thoughts. Also, I viewed it as a place to escape when you just needed time to yourself, away from the campus, this seemed like it would be the perfect place to go.
I also thought that since everybody was doing a sort of standard form of artwork, and heading off campus to find their projects to write about, I thought it'd be a better idea to take a look at something that isn't full of glitz or glamour or the elegance of other modern art. I just wanted to look at graffiti.
Graffiti had fascinated me ever since I was a kid. It's something I never took part in, but it was something I was always interested in. There were so many people who did it, and they painted on the same canvas. A wall, sign, the street. It was (mostly) work that had a lot of passion in it as I remembered as a child. I didn't really know what it expressed or why it was there, but it seemed to me that the message behind the strange looking letters and the other ways the various pictures and colors were designed was purely up for interpretation. There was no clear meaning in the message of all these artists. There were so many ideas in one place that they all sort of just combined together to create this super art work with so many different colors, layers and techniques behind the work.
Imagine what would have happened had Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Caravaggio all painted something on the same canvas and how incredibly fascinating that would be? Three completely different styles blending together to make one gigantic and powerful super artwork. We wouldn't have all these clear ideas about what they meant, we'd just get lost in the painting and not have to think so much about what it means, because it would all be up to each person as an individual to decide what the meaning of the painting was. It wouldn't be told to us, because no one could really say for sure what it would be, or what it would represent. That's what makes graffiti fascinating to me. It's something that has no clear definition, which makes it all the more fun to analyze and think about because there is no right or wrong answer.
The inspiration for the story of this film I made came from the idea of the graffiti wall seeming like a good place to hide from the world, but I also came to a realization that facing fears and staring your demons in the face is the best way to attack a problem. Running away and isolating yourself from the world doesn't solve anything.
I then got the idea for someone to be taking a journey to the wall and trying to make their way through the gate to get away from the pressures of life, but then as I mentioned above realizing that that wasn't the answer to his or her problems.
I also really love the sky and trees and what not, which is why I focused a lot on those particular parts in the film. I think the combination of nature with graffiti blends very well, because the graffiti on the wall seems natural and it creates this atmosphere around you, and you're not really sure what it means, and the sky is the sky, man. It's just an incredibly fascinating thing to look at and examine. Same goes for trees, clouds, rain and how bright or dark the sky is to create the right mood for the film.
I really liked doing this project. I viewed it as something that was out of the norm and didn't focus on conventional art style and tried to focus on telling a story through nature and art. It was spiritually refreshing to shoot all the footage and come up with this story, and was a good stress reliever.
Art is subjective. Some might not view this as art. Some might say graffiti itself is amateur. But I consider it to be very interesting and very fun to examine. There is no reason, there is no why, there is just the images and what they create in your own mind. That is what makes them special.
