Another of these lonely ambient mixes, and it sounds pretty much like this photo, or any of the photos used in the video below. This particular curator, who goes by the handle “nobody” in lower case purposely I’d surmise, is especially adept and choosing the photos. He also cites sources which I appreciate. It’s not just the right thing to do. It gives me a doorway to my own exploration. The intertoobz is a multiverse of worlds. It’s bigger than imagination, which can make it funny sometimes that so many people listen to or look at the exact same things as each other. There’s never been more fuel for individuality and expression, but the tribes still exist. Oh well, they can go on existing without me, as they already do, really.

This second image is so arresting. There’s a story there. There are a thousand stories within this one photograph. They’re swirling around me, grasping and clawing, trying to pull me in.

“This way. Come here. I just want to tell you something.”

“No wait! Please! Me!”

And so on. So many stories out there. Everyone has their own. Everyone has countless stories actually. They can choose just one, or several, or they can invent new ones to conceal the true stories. Not exactly lying. Camouflage maybe? Armor?

Perhaps their own stories are too common for them to admit to. Too boring. Or too sad. Lots of people want to escape their own stories. Rewrite their histories. Escapism. Denial. Grief. Everyone wants to create an alternate world where they are the hero of the tale. Being ordinary feels like a curse sometimes, doesn’t it? Being average is okay until it carries on too long and then it becomes tedious. It becomes purgatorial.

So what then? Rewrite an alternate past. And then a present, all in the hopes of rewriting the future before it can happen.

Are these the thoughts that keep you awake at 4am? Do you get nervous about that time, a couple hours before the alarm that will launch you into another painfully ordinary day? Or are you like me, having nearly killed myself in an attempt to be extraordinary, and now more than content to be invisible? Have you, like me, given up on being Superman so you can just be Clark Kent? Even though you’re certain that your Lois Lane and everyone else in your life would prefer a caped hero? Is this what haunts your wee hours?

Every photo, just a fragment of a second in time, has a thousand stories. They start with the story that the photographer was hoping to capture. They start with whatever he was feeling in that second. Then everyone else who sees that fragment of a second in the image has their own interpretation, based on their own past experience, and their own curiosity.

And everyone’s imagined story, unlike their true reality, has a villain, a heroine, and a hero. Or at least a protagonist/narrator that is some extension of the particular self that’s viewing. Some heroic figure. Some tragic figure. Some extraordinary figure. A potentially wonderful human being, so potentially wonderful that they might be superhuman, if only someone would recognized them as such. The McDonald’s there isn’t the center of the story. It’s the remote, liminal space on the way to some kind of fame or acclaim. That’s the one commonality of all the different stories and I’m certain of that. It’s not the end of the story. It’s probably not the beginning. It’s a place on the way. Just on the way.

We are all moving from one place to the next.

Selah.