escape.

I have always believed that moving—p h y s i c a l l y moving—is my greatest escape from myself. I live for the process of driving over state lines or waiting at baggage claims or flagging down the next cab or scrounging up enough loose change to pay for the next train ride because these are the things that keep me in m o t i o n, these are the things which keep my brain occupied.

The past few years have provided me with so many warmly welcoming cities, so many early morning flights, so many hello’s and goodbye’s – from New York City, to Boston, to Atlanta, to Chicago, to Nashville and beyond. And sometimes I forget that there’s a whole world that’s been sitting at my fingertips all along, just waiting to be my escape route at a still and steady pace.

The world of film and movies (and television in general) has never been a place I’ve found a home in. The idea of physically shutting down and remaining in one place of focus for an extended period of time is not something I’ve ever considered to be an escape.  

But, for me, the idea of traveling means only pushing into the future, experiencing new places and people for the very first time. Films have the ability to take me back to past experiences, past feelings, past heartbreak.

(Maybe that’s why I never let them in.)

distance over depth

(So I boarded the plane.)

Christmas break after my first semester of college meant trembling with fear when I received the flight confirmation via email, not knowing what the hell I was getting myself into when I agreed to let your mother buy my plane ticket because it's all you asked for as a gift. It meant packing up everything I owned that would keep me warm, stepping onto that flight to Nashville with an open yet completely unsure mind but vowing to be fearless and free.

Tennessee was eerie and cold and I never felt like I was sitting comfortably. Your hands didn’t feel the same, we didn’t laugh like we used to. You weren’t sober anymore; you no longer gave me the parts of yourself that I so longed for. You couldn't.

But there were those handful of moments—when you got defensive in the grocery store because of the way another boy looked at me, and how all of your family on your dad’s side knew every detail of my life because of the stories you told them. There was that day in downtown Franklin when we walked through the antique shops and hiked up the mountain in Pinkerton, then walked down the train tracks to the creek where a stranger took pictures of us. I remember when we drove to your cousin’s apartment in Nashville that overlooked the skyline, hopped the fence so we could walk along the river, snuck into the Renaissance hotel and took the elevator to the 25th floor so we could see the city, drove up to that peak and star-gazed.

But this happened two years ago. And trying to remember some of the good things has been clouded by all of the time that has passed, all the life that's been lived. According to "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin would say that these memories are lacking an element: their presence in time and space, their unique existence at the place where they happened to be. And it's true. From a distance, the "good" times don't hold as much meaning anymore.

  Remember when you caught me crying in the back of the pizza joint where you work because I realized things just didn’t feel the same as they did before? And when we drove through the mountains the last morning and things seemed almost okay for a couple of minutes? How you gave me the ring when we got to the airport but it was too late? Remember when I kissed you goodbye and walked through security without turning back?

depth over distance

We can get into our cars and drive through the night, crossing as many state lines as our pockets will allow. We can sit in our beds in the middle of our dark rooms and spontaneously purchase a plane ticket to anywhere in the world at four o’clock in the morning. We can hop on a bus, a train, a ferryboat. We can decide that in the grand scheme of things, we aren’t happy with who we are, and we can convince ourselves that miraculously, a change of scenery will change us.

But it won’t.

With the reputation that Hawaii holds, it might as well be considered one of the Seven Wonders. Ask a handful of randomly selected people where they’d like to travel in the United States and there’s a pretty big chance that Maui will make the cut. The island is a tropical paradise, known for it’s beauty and serenity, for it’s mountains and valleys, for it’s snorkeling and surfing, for it’s history. One might travel far and w  i  d  e to experience it’s cleansing. One might convince himself that Maui can fix him.

But I think we forget that we are still ourselves. We still have our baggage, our faults, our addictions, no matter our geographic location. We are not characters in a video game. We will not reach a magical checkpoint in our ventures from place to place that eliminates our shortcomings. No star on the map will do it. No toll we pay will do it. No terminal we walk through will do it.

I think about my upcoming trip to Seattle. Then I realize it’s where Kurt Cobain committed suicide. I long for the streets of Paris, and then I think about how Nadja ended up in a psych ward there. I think about the shores of Maui and realize that right now, someone’s mother is suffering an alcohol addiction amidst its paradise. And I realize that it’s about who we are, not where we are. Our issues and personal downfalls won’t pass until we fight them internally. New scenery might distract us for a while, but it won’t permanently change who we are.