TRANSMISSION 006 - THE FOG

Hello. Its finally October which in all honesty is my favorite time of the year, and I don't think that's a surprise to anyone who has spent more than five minutes on this site. After my last transmission I figured we could all use something a little lighter, or at least a little foggier. The leaves are changing, everything is pumpkin spice (and everything nice) whether you want it to be or not, it's sweater weather, and the mornings out here have been getting really foggy lately. Like genuinely foggy, the kind where you can't see the house across the street. I haven't been sleeping lately, and just laying in bed with my thoughts was driving me crazy, crazier than I obviously already am. And so I walked outside the other morning around 5AM to go for a run and just kind of stood there for a minute when I noticed the fog, because the first thing that came to mind was Silent Hill, and I'm not even exaggerating when I say I was waiting to hear the radio static start up in my pocket. Corny I know, but if you're here reading this I feel like you understand me when I say that.

If you've played Silent Hill 2 you already know the fog is basically a character on its own, an entity of some sorts. It started out as a way to cover up how much the old consoles could actually load at once, but it turned into the entire feeling and aesthetic of the series. James wanders through that town for hours not knowing what's in front of him, and the whole time he thinks he's looking for Mary, but really the town is just dragging everything he's been hiding from himself out into the open. The monsters, the people he meets, the places he ends up, its all him. He's not lost in Silent Hill, he's lost in his own head and the fog is the physical manifestation of that. I've always loved that about the game, that the scariest thing in it isn't Pyramid Head, the nurses, the monsters, or even the jump scares, it's the stuff James won't admit to himself until he's forced to face it, to face himself.

The reason this has been on my mind so much is because lately I've felt like I'm walking around in my own fog, and I don't really know how else to describe it. I'm in my 20s, I'm in school, I'm working, I'm making lattes on weekends in a garage full of old sports cars, I have my own little things going on the side, and on paper it looks like I'm moving forward. But a lot of the time it feels like I'm just moving. Moving in what direction, or if I'm even in motion at all is my prison. Everyone around me always asks "so what's the plan after school?" and I give them some answer that sounds good enough so the conversation keeps going, but the truth is I don't know. I can see what's right in front of me, the next assignment, the next shift, the next bill, and anything past that is just gray. Despite the job offers, and all the connections and paths I'm making, is that really what I want? There's nights I'll be up at 3 in the morning just laying in bed staring at the ceiling thinking about it, whether I'm doing enough, whether I'm behind, whether everyone else got handed some kind of map that I never got. Its not even a sad feeling exactly, its more like being uneasy, like when you're in a game and the music changes and you know something is coming but you can't see it yet, it hasn't materialized. I think a lot of people my age feel this way, especially right now with how expensive everything is and how unstable everything feels, it's hard to plan a future when you can't even tell what the world is going to look like next year. It's very scary when you really think about it, isn't it?

Brings me back to my time bartending, and how humbling the job can be. When you work behind a bar you see people at literally every point of their lives. I'd have a guy celebrating a promotion with his friends on one end, and two seats down there'd be somebody sitting alone who clearly just had the worst day of their life, and neither of them had any idea about the other one. And the funny thing is from the outside everybody in that room looked like they had it together, everyone laughing and talking and ordering another round, but you talk to anybody for more than five minutes and you realize nobody has it figured out. Not one person. Everyone is just walking through their own fog and doing the best they can with whatever they can see in front of them. I still think about that a lot, and I don't know why but it makes me feel a lot less alone.

Photography isn't far off either, back when I would carry my camera everywhere, I took some pretty deep photos. Some of my favorite pictures I've ever taken used to be the ones where the background is totally blurred out and you can't tell what's going on behind the person at all, but whatever it is in focus is so clear and so sharp. However there is this one photo I took in Florence, Italy, and it is the polar opposite of that concept. I was standing under this huge dark archway, these massive stone columns on either side of me, an old lantern hanging dead center, and everything about it pulls your eye straight out into this bright courtyard with a giant wooden door, people walking by, and a little kid in a red shirt just standing out there in the light all by himself. There's nothing impressive about the photo itself, it misses a lot of the action and vibrance that most photographers chase, and the bright hallway takes up most of the viewer's attention, some may even look at the photo and move on. But the beauty is what's hidden in the dark shadows of that same photograph. The beauty of the architecture, the stone, the grain in the shadows that makes it look like a still from an old film, and at the very bottom of the frame, a mother crouched down in the dark, passionately picking up her son who lost his footing. It's such a quiet, tender moment that nobody walking past would have even noticed it. And every time I look at it I think about those two kids, one standing out in the open alone, and one who fell in the dark but had somebody right there to pick him up. I think I've been spending too much time trying to focus on the background of my life, the plan, the future, everything way out past that archway, when I should be focusing on what's right in front of me, in the crevices, hidden in the corners, and so have you, viewer.

Shot on Canon M50 Mark II

And I want to say something about that, because I think a lot of people my age are way too hard on themselves for not having that foresight. At this age it's okay to not know what your future looks like or what's next, it's honestly supposed to be that way. And the people around you who look like they have their whole life set and their future fully mapped out, I promise you most of them are just as lost as you are, they're just better at hiding it, and you're only seeing the outside of their fog. That's the part that hurts people the most I think, comparing what's going on inside your head to what somebody else is showing on the outside, and then looking down on yourself because of it. Indecisiveness gets treated like it's a bad thing, like you're weak or lazy or just can't make up your mind, but I see it completely differently. If you didn't care about your future you wouldn't be stressing over it, you'd just drift through life and take whatever comes. Being unsure means you actually care, it means you have a burning passion and genuine concern for where your life is going, to reach a sense of fulfillment, and it's kind of ironic but there's a strong sense of resolve in that. You can't decide because it matters to you. That's not the same as giving up, as long as you're still taking steps even when you can't see where they lead, that's the difference between being lost and being stuck.

There's a short poem by Piet Hein called A Psychological Tip that I always come back to when I myself am feeling stuck, and over the years I've made my own interpretation of it. When faced with the paralysis of choice, knowing you can't decide between two options, toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you, or leaves it up to chance, but because in that moment, whilst the coin is in the air and time slows down, you break a sweat, your eyes dilate, your blood feels warm, your skin turns cold. In that moment you know what your heart truly wants. And funny enough, Silent Hill 2 kind of works the same way. Your ending isn't decided by one big choice at the end, it's decided by all the little things you do along the way without even realizing it, how you treat yourself, who you stay close to, what you hold onto. James never sits down and decides what kind of person he's going to be, his heart was deciding the whole time and the fog just hid it from him. I think most of us already know what we want deep down, we're just scared to admit it until that coin is in the air. The heart wants what it wants, no matter how much your brain tries to fight it.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you're in the fog right now too, that's okay. You don't need to see the whole road to keep walking, you just need to see enough to take the next step, and then the next one after that. James didn't know where he was going either, but he kept going, and eventually the fog lifted and he had to face what was waiting for him at the end. That part is scary as hell but it's also the only way out. And if it helps at all, in the game the radio static means something is close by. I like to think that on here it means someone is close by too, that somebody else out there is walking through the same fog as you, just out of sight. That's kind of what i want this place to be for whoever finds it, a little bit of static to let you know you're not out there by yourself. Because, viewer, you are not alone, I will be here transmitting signals, waiting for you.

Sorry for getting a little poetic on you today, viewer, I'm gonna blame the weather for this one.

Keep walking, the fog doesn't last forever.

Until the static fades, THE RECEPTIONIST