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| My stuff in September 2014 |
I lived there all summer. It's an old building, 1850's or so. There's no heat, electricity, or running water. In its inception, it was built as a manufacturing facility for horse-drawn carriages. Later on, it had been used for many other things, such as repairing automobile glass. Somehow, it became the property of the owner of a local book store. I broke into it as a child and made it my home to escape my abusive family. In the house where I grew up in New Haven, there was a building across the street from it. This building was red, and looked like a barn. One day, I decided that I would seek a safer place to spend my time.
Getting In
So I explored my options. If you see the embedded Google map below, you'll notice that there are balconies along the windows. There's a way to climb the tree in the front. You can climb it and get into the window on the balcony. That's how I made my entrance.
I remember the summer I entered the barn. It was 1997 and I was a junior in high school. After I looked around, I realized that this was my new home. So I got all my belongings from across the street. I put them all into a wheelbarrow or wagon of some sort and carted many of the items I had been scavenging from the electronics sections of Salvation Army stores in the area, and hauled it all into the second floor using a milk crate hooked up to a rope. I repeated the process until I needed to stop because day was about to break.
Bringing in Belongings
It was difficult, in a certain sense, because I needed to put the items into the milk crate, which was attached to the rope. Then climb in from the overgrown trees in the front of the building onto the balcony. Reconvene with the rope and pull it up through the window. Lower the rope with the empty milk crate. Go back to the window with the overgrown tree. And repeat the process all over again.
If it sounds like a lot of work, that's because it was. And I did it because I truly had nothing better to do between 9pm and 4 in the morning. I'm surprised the local law enforcement didn't see me or ask questions, because there was nothing else going on that night. Just me, pushing outdated light projectors from Yale Media Lab which had been discarded and subsequently hauled just a few blocks down the street into a safe place; a red barn-looking building which was nothing shy of overlooked in its neighborhood.
I spoke to a few of my neighbors that summer. I had one conversation with a Jehovah's Witness who is also one of the best skateboarders that I know. He was working on his boat one afternoon and to be quite honest, I was drunk and vagrantly wandering about the neighborhood. He told me that everyone in the neighborhood stayed the fuck away from that building because they thought it was haunted. And if not haunted, it probably had dead bodies in it. I said, no. There are no dead bodies in there but it does smell like possum pee. Which is not a pleasant smell.
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| My old bedroom across the street in 2000 |
Childhood Home
I grew up in the house across the street, in the attic of the house across the street from the barn. The walls were sloped and spray painted. The windows faced across the street and I could see the place when I would sit on the rooftop and look out at the barn. Used to think about what might be in there, and who owned it. There were accidents and shootings at night.
My father was awful to me. He used to beat me as a child. I don't remember much of it. I do remember falling down the stairs because he kicked me down them. I remember hiding the bruises, thinking they were my fault. I remember severely disliking him for it.
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Roughing It
This was my home during the summer of 2014. It had a guitar I got from my friend. It says "New Haven" inside of it. There's a blanket which kind of smells. I arranged all of the random debris and wooden parts so that the ledge the bed is perched on appears to be surrounded by cabinets and windows. There are big windows facing east right next to it. I also set up my hammock. The light comes blasting in the morning. There's a fan from a nearby building on Whalley Ave which runs incessantly. It ruins the auditory atmosphere, so I'm lucky if I still have batteries to wear headphones.
Productivity
During the same period of time, I also had been invited to produce a
commercial for Yale University Properties, to air on the Tennis Channel. I obtained this work through Twitter. Nhv.Org had been gaining in traction and popularity through social media. A few direct messages to whomever was directing the @ShopsAtYale account led to the most awesome opportunity of my life this far: producing a TV commercial for Yale.
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| Barn, July 2014 |
I produced the commercial for a whopping $1500, which I'm not disappointed in at all; however it does explain why the commercial is only what it was, and I hope it's not to describe me as a filmmaker of cheap commercials for world-class universities. Although that's kind of how I got my start. The fact is, they weren't going to do it if it weren't for cheap. They would have done without it completely if it were going to have cost $15k or something reasonable. Then again, they also hired the semi-homeless guy who was living down the street in the vacant building. I wonder how I pulled that off?
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| Bedroom, Circa 2004 |
I remember being just a kid and dreaming of this stuff. I've been using bungee cords and clothespins to hold notes of paper literally for as long as I can remember. I never throw anything away, but I hardly take on material possessions unless I feel that they absolutely must belong to me. I often think, if I told my 16-year old self that me at 34 would be where I am, I'm not sure how I would feel. In some ways, I think that I would have liked to experience this success when I was younger. Perhaps 20 or 24. But I often think that if my 24-year old self were to know about me now, he would be super fucking proud of my accomplishments.
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| Da barn |
And I certainly hope so. Living at the barn had its nuances. I had many run-ins with squirrels. A few with raccoons. The barn's main entrance is a garage door. And there's generally a truck parked out in front of it.
Possums
I remember one night coming home and seeing a possum and what looked like a mouse. I thought the possum was trying to eat the mouse, as it ran away under the bottom of the staircase. This was in total darkness and I saw it all through my headlamp. I told the possum, "you can't eat the mouse! we don't eat each other here. those are the rules." but the mouse was actually a baby possum, and I startled it. So I had to stand there and wait for the momma possum to gain the courage and the strength to walk back over to the baby, whom it abandoned when it was startled by me as I entered the normally vacant structure. Caught it completely off guard and waited until the possum got out from underneath the staircase, crawled back over to its pup (or whatever you want to call it) which allowed me to walk safely up the stairs that night, without disrupting their whole thing. I set up the front of a dresser drawer in the space below the first step in the staircase, which the possums would have to knock over in order to get inside the building. That let me know that there were animals in there, or had been recently. I would notice that tipped over, as well as tennis balls and other playthings strewn about the bottom floor of the barn. They stayed away from my stuff in the attic, mostly. I was never sure whether it were the possums or the raccoons but for obvious reasons, I had an obligation to not leave a mess. I was smart about how I handled the situation, and I was never afraid.
In fact, I used to think possums were ugly until I saw this one in a tree over by Group W Bench. Around the same time that all of this stuff was happening at the barn, a possum appeared in a tree in front of their shop. I found out because I follow one of the shopkeepers on Instagram. So I promptly went down there and
documented the possum, as part of an "Urban Wildlife" feature.
Raccoons
I never would have thought that I would ever be here, but then again, here I am. In youth, I came here as a sanctuary, where I was safe from the pain that I endured from being around my family. Nobody knew where I was. Nobody seemed to care. And I found myself here, amidst the random books and the ambient sounds of the city from a building that looked like a barn, but was actually an Industrial Revolution-era manufacturing facility.
There were times in the late afternoon where the raccoons were lingering on the first floor. Just for the record: Raccoons are not to be fucked with. They're like cats, in the sense that if you go near them and they hiss, you need to back the fuck up and leave them the fuck alone. Especially if you're living with them in the same building. I would not even attempt to walk by the fuckers in the afternoon if they were exploring the first floor by the garage door. Usually they got in when I left the door open. That's something I became aware of and stopped doing. In the instance that I needed to leave, but couldn't use the first floor exit, I ran a rope out of the barn and climbed down it. This was kind of difficult to do, but it was extremely hard to get back in the same way. At 34 years of age, I could do both. With some degree of physical exertion, but with confidence because you need confidence when you're hanging onto a rope and you're about to climb into a window on the third floor of a building (why? because there are raccoons on the first floor and you're not fuckin' with them).
Inside the barn, I found peace and serenity. I also found my old writings from high school. I reconnected with myself and wasn't afraid to be alone. I found solitude gratifying, after the tragedy of the previous year. I found peace and solace in the mornings, waking up alone. But the problem is that I still needed a place to shower, and that was becoming an issue as the seasons got warmer.
I met someone who lived down the street. She had a sun room where I could work and edit videos. She let me stay there, so I could be there as much as I wanted, but I needed to be careful because I was in no place to be in or start a relationship. Therefore use of the sunroom and the house itself, which she graciously opened up to me, made my summer possible. It's no secret how I was able to stay looking clean and work on video; the mac mini I edit my videos all summer on were in need of a screen to connect to. This worked.
There were many mornings I would also wake up at the barn. In particular, I liked staying there so I could get super drunk by myself and cry. I know it sounds stupid, and that's because it is, which is also why at certain points I needed to stay away from the place. I was afraid because I wasn't sure what I was going to do to myself, not knowing what my future was going to be like; after pretty much losing everything I ever cared about and going back to the place where I used to be when I was 17, hurt and abused by my dad, looking for some place; any place that was safe where I could be not in danger and free to explore and roam around. It piqued my interest in urban exploration but living there goes one step beyond. Nobody besides me has ever tried to live there, except for Leland, who is the inspiration for the character "Chad" in Phiction. And after working as a PV installer in my 20's I never would have imagined that I would be in a situation where the barn would ever become necessary as a place to live. I'm glad that it's over, because where I ended up is just as quirky. Ultimately I believe that our lives play out in mysterious ways, and that everything happens for a reason.
And so this is how I would leave the barn in the late afternoon if the Raccoons were on the first floor. I connected a rope to the top of a ladder which was fastened to the structure of the building. The rope had been approved by OSHA but I don't think they were ever intending on it being used for this purpose. I would throw the rope out the window and climb down it when I needed to get out and I couldn't leave from the garage door on the side (see aforementioned paragraph about wild animals and how to deal with them).
There were also times when I would climb back up the rope into the 3rd floor. This was often done by removing my backpack and tying the bottom of the rope to the backpack and then lifting up the backpack by pulling on the rope. Because I can't climb
up with a backpack on.
Perhaps you'd like to know more about how I ended up homeless or why life is so weird. Maybe you're reading this because you want to know the same thing that I'm wondering: why do I know you?
I've never made the full connection between writing and filmmaking. Usually most of the stuff that I've produced, in terms of film, has either been paid for by a client or entirely unplanned. I used to see all my friends with the potential to be great subjects of films but I'm still dialing in the method by which I can make that possible, by understanding the mentality behind people; we are subject to the awareness of the camera. I hope in my lifetime to conquer and comprehend.
I was involved in a car accident when I was 19 years old. I had already known that I wanted to produce media in life, but it wasn't until then when things started to change for me, perspectively. I began to think about the world in a very different way. I started to think that each and every moment was a rare opportunity to experience it. And I didn't quite feel this way before that accident. It wasn't until after that occurred that I began filming everything. This was before phones had decent cameras. I carried around a DCR-HC30 everywhere and filmed stuff like my friends at the skatepark.
