(15-minute read)
I always enjoy knowing where my friends are and what they’re doing. Some of my richest conversations lately have been hour-plus telephone calls to catch up with folks that are close to me. I’m a fairly private person, but maybe y’all appreciate knowing where I am too. I want to share where I’ve been for the past two years, what I’m doing, and a few thoughts about the time we’re living in. Perhaps this could also create a space for community and exchange. For reasons detailed below, I’m exploring what it’s like to share with folks here rather than on Facebook or Instagram.
Many of you are about to graduate into a world that is neither pre- nor post-COVID-19, and I don’t think anyone will fault you for having more questions than answers. I can’t say I have any answers, but maybe we have some questions in common. A common pattern in recent graduates, especially from UNCSA, is that the first year is the hardest. I won’t begin to guess why. If you were cheated out of your commencement ceremony this year, expect a tough road ahead but know that a) it’s normal, b) it gets better, and c) you can reach out to me anytime to talk about it. If your college experience was similar to mine, you’ve just disconnected from an institution you love, and it might be time to reconnect with who you are.
Two years ago, I shared the news that I had done it! I was about to graduate from the UNC School of the Arts, move to San Francisco, start a new job, and, by the way, shape the future of immersive media. Below the surface, though, I felt more like I was pushing myself in a direction- ANY direction- rather than being called to my life’s purpose. I feared that I would somehow lose momentum (or even be marked as a failure) if I didn’t move to California right away and start a career in The Industry. That’s what we were trained to do, right? So I tried it. Here’s what happened.
Two weeks of a cross-country road trip with my beloved.
Crossing the Golden Gate bridge into San Francisco.
Moving in. Ideal housemates. Great neighborhood.
65° weather. California sun.
Orientation at my new job. First successful contract negotiation.
Seeing the sights.
Making new friends.
Enjoying a new city.
Reading a lot.
Learning a lot more from my job at a VR studio.
Sitting on a bucket in the basement every night to talk to Molly because it’s the only place in the apartment with privacy and good wi-fi connectivity.
A few months go by.
At least it started well.
What I read in books and headlines in my spare time, combined with my daily experience, slowly began to debunk the bay area dream that I had sold myself. San Francisco is a beautiful city with a rich history, and I’m grateful for my time there— but the bay area is also home to a strong flavor of income inequality brought about by many factors, including a ruthless technological gold rush. Whenever I asked an SF native about how the city has changed in their lifetime, they all seemed to have the same answer: a blank expression, a sigh, and some variation of “well, it’s certainly changed a lot.” Whatever Scott McKenzie was singing about in 1967 seemed to have fallen victim to a hostile takeover.
The culture I saw in Silicon Valley seemed only interested in instant maximum profit rather than widespread, sustainable prosperity. I recommend reading about the Theranos scandal and searching the term “vaporware” if you’re curious about the ethical shortcomings of the tech industry.
Speaking of ethical shortcomings, I’ve been to the Facebook headquarters twice. It’s an expansive mini-city in Menlo Park. The first visit came a month before graduating in 2018, right when Mark Zuckerberg had been called to very publicly testify before Congress. Since then, I’ve only grown more wary of the way that social media extracts every possible bit of data about you (even the fact that you clicked the link to read this) and sells it to advertisers… or political campaigns. It’s a real thing. I recommend watching The Great Hack or reading Jonathon Taplin’s “Move Fast and Break Things". Friends, I urge you to re-think your relationship with all of your social media accounts. Those “free” accounts extract data and profit from every tap and swipe, then sell it to advertisers who want to separate you from your money (or your vote). This realization was an important moment for me. There are better ways to own your online presence.
As I learned more about the city I chose for work, I looked around and saw that the relationship wasn’t working. I was trying to climb a ladder built by folks with far more money and far fewer scruples. I was already working a 45-hour week and leaning on my family just to stay afloat. I was disconnected by thousands of miles (and three hours) from those I love most.
I realized that I was shutting down emotionally, creatively, and spiritually.
I think I bottomed out around November 2018: it was a beautiful day except for the dense smoke floating on the breeze from the Paradise wildfires. I wondered whose home was in my nostrils.
A day or two before, I volunteered for a day in Chico to help a church that converted its gym into a shelter for folks displaced by the fire. Despite the heaviness of that day, I still look back at that moment as a reminder of human decency. We were all working to comfort strangers who had just lost everything. Two days later, I was back on the other end of the spectrum: ordering La Croix for the office on Instacart with a brand-new company iPad. It just didn’t feel right.
I’m not sure what would have happened without the intense encouragement of my family and friends. Eventually, I began trending upwards. I remembered that I was the hero of my own story and that I had agency in my own life. With any luck, I thought I might also have agency in solving the problems that I saw around me.
What to do with my renewed sense of purpose? I was and still am a huge subscriber to the belief that immersive media like virtual reality (VR) has tremendous potential for helping and healing the world. I started to focus on that potential, though with only the vaguest notion about what it could be. I began waking up at 5:30 just to write and send emails for an hour to anyone in North Carolina who might feel the same way. If you’re one of the people I spoke to during that time, please know that you helped me on a far deeper level than just kicking around ideas.
As I began assessing where I could do the most good given my situation, I discovered The Opportunity Atlas. In summary, the Atlas classifies areas across the United States based on the odds that people born into poverty will escape poverty. The Atlas ranges from red to green. If the map is green, you have a good shot. If the map is red, the odds are against you. I saw the most red in an arc stretching down from Virginia, into Florida, and over to Arkansas. The data was staring me in the face, re-framing my homesickness for the South in a surprising way.
I wanted to refocus my enthusiasm for VR into some kind of social innovation, and it looked like the largest benefit could be for the South. I surprised a lot of my co-workers when I said I was moving to North Carolina because there would be more opportunity for me. I felt a unique sense of ownership, authenticity, and possibility as a Southerner who could choose to help co-author the future of his home region.
As we’ve all probably seen, the label of “Southern” has been tarnished since falling on the losing side of a war fought over slavery, if not before. In mainstream media depictions, “Southern” is still commonly taken to signify dullness, humidity, and slow movement. Nobody in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco ever seemed to know what to say when I told them I was from North Carolina. Despite their confusion, I take full ownership of being a Southerner: all the history, all that is flawed, and (most inspiring to me) all that is good.
There have been plenty of words said about the problems in the South that are more informed and eloquent than I can probably manage. Suffice it to say that the South is having a moment, and has been for a while. Southerners have long been ready for a new narrative. Young folks of every type and background are ready to expand our imaginations beyond previous years’ leadership. I am one of them.
If you’re also a Southerner ready for a new narrative, I recommend starting here.
Socio-politico-economics aside, I love being outside in the South; from the Smoky Mountains to the Everglades, this area offers a particularly beautiful landscape without the threat of earthquakes and wildfires. To be sure, hurricane season is a toss-up and almost guaranteed heartache for our neighbors in the Gulf, but nowhere has my heart quite like the greenery of a Piedmont forest. Even as I write this, I can look out the window at more trees than I would have seen after an hour’s drive in California. In an age where working from home has taken a sharp upturn, I’m less and less convinced that I have any good reason to become an East Coast transplant in a major West Coast city. Maybe you’re re-thinking that move out to California too. Feel free to reach out if you want to talk to someone who decided against staying. And to friends in California, please don’t think I’m bashing your home- I love to visit y’all. I just love coming home, too.
Lately, I’ve taken a special interest in the way that Southerners are (or aren’t) balancing past and progress. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is sure to create some interesting combinations for any kid connected to the regional culture of the South and the global culture of the internet: shag dancing and Fortnite emotes. Bluegrass and Billie Eilish. Shawarma and fried chicken. J.K. Rowling and Flannery O’Connor. Queer Eye and The Andy Griffith Show. We’re passing through quite an interesting cultural sieve.
I’m hopeful that there’s a way to claim the unique and positive aspects of Southern culture while refusing to carry forward legacies of hate and intolerance. The path to a new South, however, appears to wind through many necessary and uncomfortable conversations that still need to happen about power, privilege, race, and beyond. I’m ready to stop seeing confederate flags, but I would be very sad if our unique drawl got lost in the neutral dialect of the digital age.
As I went all-in on my move to North Carolina, a dear friend reminded me about Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. For years, I heard about the book from actor and writer friends with an almost mystic reverence. I decided that it was time for me to go through its ten-week process of writing, reflecting, and creative recovery. I gave a copy to my mom when I started, and she was my partner in crossing the finish line. Love you mom.
I started to open up again. Shortly after, I was blessed with what could only be described as several perfect opportunities with perfect timing. Freelance work with great people got me on my feet and helped me rebuild my résumé. If you think “blessed” maybe isn’t the right word, consider this: I was hired for the first of many freelance jobs at a creative agency after cold-walking off the street, résumé in hand, and passing through a badge-access door with the help of a stranger. At very least, whatever was happening could be called synchronicity.
When I shared my big ideas about VR social innovation with a former professor, I was surprised by an almost instant offer to begin the work I wanted to do at my alma mater. I wrote my own job description and in a matter of days started preparing a dozen VR headsets for trips to libraries, schools, and community centers.
If you’ve heard me talk about “Appleseed”, it boils down to this: nobody has really taken the time to ask a large group of non-VR users how VR might help them. I wasn’t trying to be some kind of savior. I decided that the best thing I could do is gather up some VR headsets, take them to people who wouldn’t be able to use them otherwise, and listen closely. I learned that one term for this kind of work is “tech ethnography”, situated within the field of anthropology, and I drew inspiration from Brigitte Jordan’s work at Xerox PARC. I wanted to learn something important about how to apply VR in an uncommon way. When the work began, the results were surprising.
I was surprised by a woman in her seventies using a VR headset and a walker at the same time. I was surprised by a middle-school student with an attention deficit gaining instant focus in virtual reality. I was also surprised when I learned that there are all sorts of federal regulations for research that I hadn’t learned about in film school (search “Institutional Review Board”). While I wasn’t doing anything flagrantly wrong, I also didn’t have anyone verifying that I was doing things correctly. I had to stop.
I was grateful to have at least started that work, but humbled with the knowledge that I was going to need to learn an entirely new handbook if I wanted to add anthropology to my skillset. I started to ask questions about my next steps. Where could I find an Institutional Review Board? Would they have any interest in a research project headed by an artist?
Zora Neale Hurston wrote “There are years that ask questions and years that answer”. For me, 2019 felt like a year that asked many, many questions. To pay rent while figuring out the long game, I stepped closer to freelance work. I started to hope that 2020 would have some answers. In a series of fortunate events, I was also chosen to join a residency at the UNCSA Media + Emerging Technology Laboratory.
Then reports started surfacing about a novel coronavirus.
Wherever you are, you’re living your own version of this awful situation. This has been a time of collective grief for an imagined future that is no longer possible. I suppose that I have the privilege of being able to focus on the positive aspects of “Apocalyptic Hope”: for starters, we can throw out the notion that people are incapable of changing their habits for the better. Millions and millions altered their lifestyles within days for the greater good with social distancing, masks, gloves, and working from home. We have seen coming-together and collective care for one another on a massive scale despite instances of failed leadership. That’s not nothing.
As we grieve the future we once wanted, this is a time to assess what we want now. I recommend listening to this conversation between two dear friends as they reframe this time as an opportunity to shift our focus from output to being who we really are.
To temper my hopeful messaging, I also want to offer caution. As explored in this article, those who held the most power before this pandemic will leverage every resource to return the world to a status quo that served them well. We can’t forget the ways that the old system began to fail billions of people at the first sign of trouble. To me, this pandemic hammered the final nail into the coffin of pre-COVID normalcy. The world economy has received a major shock. The game has changed.
Many, many of my friends in the arts are somewhere in the process of unemployment. The leadership in Broadway and Hollywood haven’t yet seemed to determine what’s next. The future of art-making is uncertain except for the fact that it will go on in some form. Lately I’ve thought about the WPA during the Great Depression, which “built the world that generations experienced after World War II”. It’s not accurate to say that model would work today, but maybe we can learn from that model as we collectively determine what’s next.
I challenge any creative person to go deep within and consider that we are living through a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Whether you’re a cinematographer, dancer, writer, wig-maker, painter, performance artist, actor, game designer, musician, sculptor, poet, or basket-weaver, we all have the sacred duty of manifesting our thoughts and impulses into fixed expressions for others to enjoy. Everything we create has the potential to introduce a new possible future into the minds of the audience. If we live that truth together, we have the opportunity to invite a world much closer to the one we never seem to see on the news. Graduates, don’t let the job market determine your worth. You’re about to bring a very fresh perspective and energy into a world that’s having a very hard time saying “we’re going to do things the way we’ve always done them.”
We’ve been in a collective social logjam for years with much said about what’s wrong and who’s to blame. I believe that the first step to creating a better situation is to imagine an alternative. After the deep grieving process of this worldwide tragedy, alternative futures are going to be in high demand. In this time of liberation from a future that no longer exists, let’s create the version that we’ve wanted to see. And let’s not forget to imagine the steps we must take to make it so.
I’ve spent a few mornings now typing away at my kitchen table in Winston-Salem, trying to make meaning out of the past two years and share it all with you. Hopefully something you read helped you, or at very least made you think. If so, don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello.
Keep a social distance and wash your hands, y’all. Reopened doesn’t mean safe.
Respect & gratitude.
-Trent