Creativity has been this elusive superpower that I have been trying to understand. For as long as I can remember, I have been a creative person. Although, I wouldn’t necessarily identify as creative, I was just simply a person who saw the world the way that I did. This may be way too specific for people around my age but if you ever watched Rocket Power, I always felt like I was Twister. The guy who was slightly on the outside, but always the person with the camera to capture the moment.
One of the first films that I ever created, and I really wish that I still had it, was a friend of mine decided to make a secret agent movie. The plot was simple, hop the fence on the side of my house, pick the lock to the sliding glass door (there wasn’t even a way to do this), and steal the floppy disk out of the computer. I can still remember the first scene, we had to do hop the fence multiple times because it had to be “just right.” And then there was this really awesome negative film effect that we put on the edit when we actually snuck in to steal the floppy disk, just like a security camera. In my mind, it deserved an Oscar.
I didn’t really consider myself a filmmaker at that age, it was just two friends making something because we were bored. But then I made another film when I was in 8th grade. It was my US history class and we had to do a project on a pivotal moment in history. For me, this was September 11th. My dad has been an airline pilot my whole life and I will never forget that day. I was in 5th grade and we got a phone call before most of the west coast was awake. It was a family friend from Virginia, also a pilot, to tell us to turn on the news. My mom and I sat on the bed as history unfolded. I didn’t quite understand the gravity of the situation but my mom had a look of fear and deep sadness. My dad wasn’t home at the time, he actually was just about to fly out of SFO on one of his normal trips, he was just getting pushed back from the gate and on the way to the runway. Not knowing the extent of what was happening, there was a concern for the Golden Gate Bridge. The plane, thankfully, never took off. He took it back to the gate as all flights ended up being grounded. I went to school, just hoping that I could see my dad walk up the ramp of the portable classroom I was in. I didn’t remember anything that was taught that day, just the window to the ramp. I couldn’t tell you how long it took but it eventually happened. There he was, and I felt this huge release.
So when it came to making a film about September 11th, it meant something to me. It meant something to me to communicate how I felt, how my mom felt, and how everybody felt that day. So I put together a film finding any picture that I could download, footage that I could find (thanks Limewire), and put a song to it. Editing was a lot more difficult back then but I made it work. It brought many to tears when they watched it. And I actually didn’t really know why, mostly because I had seen every second of the film multiple times. But I felt some sort of responsibility to communicate the things that I feel and share it with others because it might actually make a difference.
That theme has remained present in a lot of my work today. It is the never ending challenge of communicating what I am feeling in a moment, and hoping that the viewer will feel that emotion as well. I had this unofficial streak that every film I created made somebody cry. These were also happy tears, not just sad tears. But the more and more I began to create, the harder and harder it became. I would look at some of my work and wonder why it wasn’t having the same effect. Part of the reason was because I was creating work that didn’t have as much of my heart in it, it was just “another shoot.” That isn’t to say I wasn’t trying my absolute hardest, but more that my skillset had allowed me to almost do the work without thinking. But the danger in this type of situation is the loss of the soul of it.
There is this intangible thing about creativity that we often can’t explain, we can only feel.
We can make work that is objectively good but subjectively bad, and vice versa. So where does the difference lie? It is how it makes people feel. Any creative work takes a lot from the creator themselves. It isn’t just the long hours, it is about making the piece of work “just right” and an accurate reflection of the vision that lies in the mind. And the inspiration that the creator draws from, in their most impactful work, is usually something pretty powerful. So if I wanted to create better work, I had to search for what I cared about, not just what I could capture. For me, it has been, and will always be, the human story.
People have always been fascinating to me. We come from all different places, all different upbringings, all different struggles, and all different views of the world. And yet, we can find ourselves having a conversation with somebody, against all odds, and find something in common — connection. That connection is something that we FEEL. It is a story that somebody tells that sticks with us. It is a moment where we see somebody help another person from across the room. It is also the moment where we see somebody shed a tear on a bus. For me, these are the moments where I have always felt most connected to the world around me. The curiosity to know the story of everybody is something that inspires me to share them even more.
One of the most memorable moments for me was when I was in high school. We were tasked with taking photos for a project on anything that we wanted to do. I decided that I wanted to photograph homelessness. Santa Cruz always had a very large homeless population and I never really understood it. I always thought to myself that everybody should have a home, and I wondered why they didn’t. What brought them to that street corner? So I went downtown, camera in hand, and asked to take some portraits. Of course, that naturally led to having a conversation. One particular man was smoking a cigarette, had skin like leather, slim, and had long, grey hair. His eyes were kind, and I remember I asked him what he did before being where he was now. He told me that he used to work in a nuclear power plant as an engineer. He and his coworkers were forced to work extremely long work hours. They were so long and stressful that they started taking speed in order to just continue working. That led to an addiction that eventually placed him where he was that day.
I was speechless. To me, it wasn’t fair. I felt upset and wanted to do anything I could to help. But when I asked what he needed, he said, “Nothing at all! In fact, I don’t even wear a watch anymore because I don’t need to know what time it is. I’m finally free.” Even to this day it makes me smile to think about that moment. Just after we finished talking I took a portrait and it is forever one of my favorite shots I have taken. It’s a reminder that every person has a story, and I have this responsibility to share it with my soul. Tragically, the actual file is on a hard drive that died and can never be recovered. But I tell this story because, when I needed to find the soul behind my work again, the WHY I do what I do, I decided to do the project again, almost ten years later. And the result was an image that I look at whenever I need to be reminded of why I do what I do.
Creativity is this process that I am still learning. It is also a superpower that I think every person on the planet has. They just haven’t been taught how to access it. And while I will continue to share my learnings in hopes of guiding people to find their creativity, I know one thing to be certain — Creativity is something we FEEL.