Home
Sometimes, it is difficult for me to relate to the students at Baruch College. Most of them commute from home, and those that do not usually come from no further than one hundred miles away. Most were born and raised in New York City; it is their home by nature rather than by choice.
I have lived in New York City for a little over three months now. Yet it feels like I have been here forever. It feels like I am home.
Home is where the heart is. This is something I believe unconditionally. I have consciously chosen my home, something very few people at Baruch have yet to do. People are often put off by the lack of regard I seem to have for the people and places I left behind in Miami. “Don’t you miss them?” they ask me, “Don’t you want to go back home to visit them?” Yes I miss them; however, going back to visit them does not equal going back home. I am home in New York City. I knew this from the second I stepped off the plane, throwing my one-way ticket in the trash. New York City is my chosen home. And it feels more like a home than Miami ever did.
I had originally planned to do my collage project on Japan, but that idea, like life itself, changed without any warning. Looking through my photographs, listening to the song in my video, I was suddenly filled with a sense of warmth. A sense of belonging. A sense of being home. And because I have chosen this home, I can accept and reject the parts of it that I wish to. Through my camera lens, and my own eyes, I can choose to see only the parts that fill me with a sense of happiness.
In Miami, everything I liked and did not like was already out in the open, shoved down my throat before I could protect myself from it. I know the city too well, one could say, and because of this I know that it is not the right home for me. There is no other place like New York City, and there is nowhere else that feels more right as my chosen home.
My photographs are not special. They show people and places that I see almost every day. Yet that in itself makes them special to me, because they are photographs of my home. I am showing you my home. Although we all live in New York City, my home is not the same as your home. Home is a subjective place, an imagined existence which can be built just as easily as it can crumble. Here is my home. Call it Manhattan, call it the Lower East Side, call it New York City, call it the East Village. Call it what you wish. It has no proper name; it is a feeling. A feeling of acceptance and belonging. A feeling of always knowing who I am and where I am going. A feeling of familiarity and love. A feeling that I am never alone.
The song playing in the background of my video is one that I have known for a long time. It is in Japanese, and I do not understand all of the lyrics. When I listen to music, I do not listen to the words. I listen to the intonation of the vocals, the notes themselves. I listen to the feeling. The feeling of this song is, to me, incredibly uplifting. It is inspiring and soothing at the same time. It provides the same feeling as my home. It is the song of my home. My reality. The final lyric of the song is “subete wa honmono da”. Everything is real. New York City is my real life. I am finally living. Everything before this feels like a dream world. A dream. I was comatose, unmoving, stuck in a life I had not chosen for myself. Three months ago, I began living. Once I found a home of my own.
collage project photo link: http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/3410/sarany.jpg
collage project video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oljgmPKSuJM
