ARTIST SERIES: MIMI PRETEND
I started this project with Mimi when she visited me in Colorado's winter. To prepare for taking film photos for to her album, she sent me lyrics and concept behind it's making. The seed of a character named Mercy grew in Mimi's mind, emerging from a journal she found in a thrift store in LA. "At first it's just smalltown things. But then everything changes when she does decide to leave and the writing gets harder to read. This album invites interpretation, and I encourage you to recognize your own moments of devotion turned destructive, and your own reasons for staying or leaving."
"Always said leave our hometown." -Good Company, Mimi Pretend.
Our shoot was a road trip, and along the way we talked about her album's concept and the character of it, Mercy; who would carve herself out of the dark of abuse and leave behind what she thought was home. Her story would end with her spirit unbroken like the horses she loves. She'd wear mask and costume on the run of the roads she ran. Leaving from where she left, she'd find some way to her place that felt free. Out the window passed prairies dotted with snow and landscapes of different light of suns. We imagined Mercy in movies framed by the eye of heroes like cinematographer Robby Müller. We pictured Mercy trying to outrun the deceiving charms of a cowboy smile like Sam Shepard. Fighting off dark, Mimi wrote Mercy to grow as the roads wound her down and up.
Here is sweet Mimi, as Mercy. Wearing my clothes: My hat and the jacket of the man I'd soon be on the run from, too. It's true.
From Mimi here is one of Mercy's Journal entries for some July, in who knows what year in her fevered handwriting: "We've been staying at the Mountain Shadows Motel for a few weeks now. Wayne the manager and his wife are super nice. To pick up some extra money I've been cleaning the rooms and Ed goes and does his odd jobs. A lot of people staying here seem to be like us. Traveling in no particular direction. But Ed and I AREN'T LOST. Some of these people seem stuck in the wandering caught up in a wheel of time that keeps flipping back to the same spot you started. I hope we don't end up like that. Repeating the same stupid cycle all over again. That's why I left in the first place."
"My baby was born blue. It's alright because of all he went through. Come home with a pack of Golds and new tattoo." - Baby Blue, Mimi Pretend
Mimi's love for this journal written by Mercy reminds me of David Lynch and his character, Laura Palmer. We follow the steps of her tragic dance in Twin Peaks. Her undaunted tenacity and vitality in spite of being the victim of abuse. The town all loved her, but they all let her down. In keeping the record of these women's stories alive, we are not transcending truth but honoring it.
It's now summer and I've since left the place I thought was home: where Mimi visited me to take this series for her album. Looking back, only now have I stopped long enough to see my story in Mercy. Mimi is right to say we are all able to find ourselves in her.
For me too, I'm haunted by the idea of home; finding it and losing it. But what possesses me most is the romance of momentum and the traffic of misplaced love.
"Some horses can't be broken," - Horses, Mimi Pretend
Everything creates a specter. Mimi's beautiful songs are sung because Mercy distilled her story into writing. Immersed in Mercy's world, Mimi made her words flesh. We all generate artifacts. This wayward journal of hope amidst conflict, storm, and stress somehow changed enough hands to end up at a thrift store and then into Mimi's.
The idea of home is overrated anyway. Maybe it's because I can't afford and so have instead found my sense of belonging in departures and returns. Domestic past lives I have lived were spaces of alienation. I want to belong to the world and have fire in my feet; To watch the wheels turn and carve out a story deep into the earth's skin. Three parts inspired, one part mad.
I like to remind myself our human history, to keep intact perspective and ground to stand on. That living with livestock lead humanity to epidemics. Permanent settlements led us to contaminated water. Storing of food lead to rats. Food surplus led to inequality. Land ownership led to warfare. Property led to taxes. Wealth accumulation led to a ruling class. Inheritance led to generational wealth.
Anyway, nomadism is both a resistance strategy and a creative force. I think fluidity, non-conformity, and perpetual becoming keeps the dreaming alive longer than night. What stagnates, rots.
Once, my home was where these horses were. I miss you, Twice.
The dreamer afoot brings a necessary ingredient to any world's makeup. The carnival comes through to remind society that all rules are arbitrary.
"In the present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, probably only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from the becoming lost as serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. (S)he will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely upon him." - The Importance of Living, Lin Yutang (1937)
Maybe it's just the economy that has me thinking this way. Maybe auto and tourism sectors have influenced us properly to believe extracting from and carving into the earth using oil on highways is our only means of attaining freedom.
layered ektachrome is fucking dreamy as shit
My mind goes back again and again to Twin Peaks: The Return. Lynch's episode Gotta Light? The woodsman reciting:
"This is the water, and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within."
This is for all the people forced to travel; may they find belonging in the bones of their bodies and navigate internal geographies by what means one can. Some roads are fraught with turns and trenches with minds as mercurial and running on horsepower beyond capacity of their vessel's wheels. Lives like these are a different kind, a lived art; acting as conduits transmuting stories that run on longer and further. Have Mercy.
Love you, Mimi. Thank you for trusting me with making art for yours. And Mercy.
All these photos were shot on Nikon F3, using color film. Scanned as black and white for some and two negatives layered, for others.
This is post ZERO: The Fool. The free and first card at the start of my own journey releasing collaborations with other artists; the series from the rolls we shoot, with writings about, beyond, and beginnings of. Signing up and paying for a coffee's worth or so of price: to read and see the others to come. It helps the going get carried down the road. Thank you to anyone interested, and being another gem on the string of highway: Diamonds when we come and rubies when we go.
