AMERICA THEME - Axelle Emden Photography

AMERICA

It's a dream and a nightmare. Human, too human. It's a land of my heart and a light like no other in California. It's me studying abroad for a couple of months during the war against Irak under Bush II - Boston. It's a beautiful chaos between heaven and hell called Salton Sea. It's Didion's chronicles in a book, it's me and the road.

It's an instant photo book made of baby-travelers around California, everything black and white under a title stolen from Tom Waits - Walk Away.

It's the name of an album by Thirty Seconds to Mars, and them inviting us to define what kind of salad bowl this country is all about for you and me. It's a Night on Mars from my screen written by a child from the moon. It's home the first time I saw Venice. Heaven absolutely, everyday facing the sunset, alone staring at the ocean, again with high strangers laughing with me, on repeat with friends sharing the joy. Now. Here.

It's a city I miss everyday and hated instantly. They call it the one of angels. It's a daily travel book called Elle A - I decided L.A. was a woman. It's a Good Day spent with Matt downtown and the Guns n Roses in the BM heading to Malibu. It's another squared daily travel book, faded this time and I called it Milk, Keaton's fault and colors in my head from a desert hoping to save lost hippies and broken believers. America is highways and California stays the light, we're rolling on that 66 always on the road and Kathy takes me to another paradise.

ALL THINGS AMERICA

MOSTLY CALIFORNIA

LIGHTS AND DAYS

It's Janis and Kurt, Redford and Meryl, Oliver Stone, Michael Mann and Snowden, Fallon, Foxx, Smith.

It's been my field of studies for a few years while I was trying to understand democracy, liberalism and what is commonly called the « crisis of representation » . It's Rawls, Chicago, the fucking Patriot Act. It's New York when I was a kid and my grandma singing Sinatra in the Benz going really fast on what at home is called the « highway of sun ». It’s Washington papers and Guantanamo, it’s the Founding Fathers and Al Pacino, Scorsese and Thomas Crown, Andy, Axel Rose and Liv Tyler in a music video, Aerosmith, MTV. It's Jack White and Oprah, Letterman and Jay-Z, it's Ellen and Beth and Shane, Michael way before and 63 and Impeachment and hell is other people like Trump and it's so many wars and billions wasted in a none-sense supposed to be progress, globalization times, murdering my soul. You're never around and yet everywhere, California is you and me going crazy alone with a phone, just like you used to do. Are we condemned to become like people we love ? Homeland. It’s my grand-parents history, my country’s, wars and allies, then cold days and E.T.s. It's an endless land. A continent. And fucking good memories.