20221026
CHASING CHAMBERLAIN
Named after my favorite sculptor, John Chamberlain, CHASING CHAMBERLAIN, has been in the works for over a year – each song paired with imagery I’ve collected over the years. A deeply personal story that I’ve been reluctant to share in full, CHASING CHAMBERLAIN runs through the range of emotions experienced in family, youth, and maturity. Visiting home for the first time in 3 years, this trip has given me the mindspace to process these thoughts. A heavily emotional experience not without fleeting liberation and joy, this progression of songs encapsulates the emotional journey I’ve been on from past to present.
10 songs, progressing from childhood to adulthood – visuals beginning with the car that saved our lives and ending with one of my favorite pieces from Chamberlain. Hope emerges from loss and destruction with IN LOVING MEMORY and THE GREAT GIG IN THE SKY, progressing into an isolated maturation from RETROGRADE to ETUDE NO 2 and DANCE FOR ME WALLIS. The yearn for abundance and perfection catapults HEAVEN into an emotionally spectral state, accelerating into a lucid escape in HEAVENS ARENA. A euphoric comedown descends in CONTROL ME, with a loss of identity distilled through reverberation in AT THE PARTY. However, emptiness births an introspective clarity, resetting humanness in WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HEART. Like Chamberlain’s work, life pieces itself back together as we return to a pure and innocent state, feeling and learning our way through life.
When my parents immigrated to America with $40 – my dad spent half of it on a used Dodge. Years of hard work later, they were able to afford a Mercedes-Benz. Heading home from my mother’s final US citizenship interview, our car was struck head-on by a semi-truck. A near-fatal accident – the car totaled beyond recognition. The quintessential image of American success, scattered into pieces of metal and glass dreams.
That car was a metaphor for what my parents’ generation dreamed of – paving a way to protect and support my brother and me. How ironic how their perceived dreams were met with destruction, while those sacrifices allowed me to deconstruct and reconstruct a life for myself – a life met with its own challenging cycle of finding and losing oneself.
17 years after my family’s car accident, I moved to New York and was able to see John Chamberlain’s work for the first time. I returned to the city and began taking photos of crumpled cars. Like Chamberlain’s work, there was a semblance of life emerging from destruction.
