Yunnan ’17 (二)
originally posted on august 14, 2017
(cont.)
a friend and i joined forces with fifteen other people and together, we ventured into a mountain village at the top of yunnan armed with nothing but cameras and full hearts. our two weeks dedicated to making a short film - a pursuit admittedly not up my alleyway - were not only for inviting the world to share in the warmth of this loving community, but also for throwing ourselves into a corner of the world untouched by, well, modernness.
if there’s maybe one regret that ties together riding on the backs of pickup trucks, jamming out to the 2012 billboard charts, stuffing ourselves way too full of 老冰棍 (not even sure if that’s what it was called), being shanghaied into watching halloween 5 (i survived), sleeping in until it was basically time to sleep, becoming best buds with local boars, waiting 5 minutes for snapchat to work every time i used it, ambushing our mentors with stick-on tattoos, hosting potlucks boasting only the best convenience-store snacks, getting to know the most loving locals in our village, sitting through mom drama on wechat, or having way way way more fun than we should have had - it’s that i feel like i should have documented the whole thing a lot more thoroughly. you know, for the nostalgia and all that.
i didn’t know this before the trip, but looking back at my raw footage, i suddenly realized: living in moments and living for moments are near mutually exclusive. especially for those who photograph. these little instants in time are so short you either see them with your own eyes or you see them through a lens, and i guess that wherever you go, you’re going to have to make your pick between the two. evidently, i wasn’t using my camera as much as i should have, but personally, it’s okay, because i have all these snapshots stored away in my head.
this is derek’s fault for a reason - here’s how the camera saw it, however incomplete, arranged in chronology.
yup. utter total pure natural magic.
the end.
unrelated:
just got back to hong kong from kuala lumpur an hour ago. heading for bangkok in five hours. life is sweet. more coming soon (but obviously, you knew that).
with love,
derek