Dear Reader,
I have always been drawn to stories.
The big ones, certainly, but perhaps even more to the small ones. The history tucked inside an old building. The photograph that makes you wonder what happened just before the shutter clicked. The person who remembers something everyone else has forgotten.
For most of my life, I’ve found some way to tell them.
Sometimes I’m behind the camera, capturing the story as it unfolds. Other times I’m in front of it, acting or hosting and becoming part of the story myself. I write. I photograph. I film. I wander.
And somewhere along the way, I realized that all of these things come from the same place.
Curiosity.
I want to know what happened here. Who lived in that house? Where does that road go? What did this place look like fifty years ago? What does that person remember? Why do we keep certain things and let others disappear?
I have also learned that the best stories rarely announce themselves as important.
They hide in ordinary places.
In old photographs and familiar streets. In conversations around a table. In traditions we repeat without remembering exactly when they began. In the things we inherit and the things we choose to keep. In an early Saturday morning spent searching through other people’s forgotten treasures.
Sometimes you have to go looking for a story.
Other times, you simply have to pay attention.
I think that is what I want this place to be about.
Paying attention.
For years, I’ve had some version of a website. Like most things on the internet, it has changed as I have changed. There have been different versions of me represented here, each trying to figure out exactly what this space was supposed to be.
Maybe I was asking the wrong question.
Maybe a place like this doesn’t need to be about one thing.
Maybe it can simply be a collection of the things I find worth remembering.
So, consider this a beginning.
There will be photographs and films here. Essays and observations. History and travel. Stories about places and people. There will probably be detours, because I have always believed the long way home is usually more interesting anyway.
I don’t know exactly what this will become. I actually like it better that way.
What I do know is that I want to notice more. I want to remain curious. I want to document the things we so easily convince ourselves we’ll remember forever. I want to ask questions while there are still people around who know the answers.
And when I find a story worth telling, I want to tell it well.
So, dear reader, wherever you happen to have found me, welcome.
There are stories everywhere.
Let’s see what we can find.
Michael Tolbert 