Beautiful Day Photography’s Weblog

Through a twist of fate earlier this year and through a connection with my boyfriend Robert, I have had the pleasure of meeting a young, bright, ambitious lady named Jessica Lehrman (www.jessicalehrman.com).  Not only does she bring positive energy wherever she goes, but she has added her talent and brilliance to my company and helped me get through an amazing transitional time in my life and career….buying out my business partner. SHE IS MY SAVIOR I swear! I felt overwhelmed earlier this year with the weight of responsibility and the process of having to switch over a business and ALL of its components and responsibilities onto MY shoulders alone and I had a CRAZY busy beginning of the year with MANY goals to achieve.  She has worked for me night and day, working with my crazy non-sensical schedule, and come to assist and shoot for me on all my weddings.   Recently, she has been published numerous times in the Santa Monica Mirror and she is soon to become their sole photographer at the age of 19. I see SO much of myself in her and at the same time she inspires me ALL the time. I am POSITIVE that this young lady will have a VERY successful career no matter how many life changes  and transformations she goes through…For those of you who HAVE a moment to read her entrance essay into Purchase University in NYC, PLEASE DO.  I feel that it embodies her personality PERFECTLY.  And JUST to show you how determined she is as an artist, she at first did NOT get accepted into the University because she didn’t have enough Science credits.  She called them and begged them to re-review her and to PLEASE read her essay.  After some strings being pulled, the powers that be read her essay and immediately called her to accept her into their School….must be a POWERFUL ESSAY…READ IT!

I.  Essay:  Describe a personal or historical event that has had an impact on your life:

On a Monday morning one day in October, 1997, blonde and pigtailed Hailey McNelis decided to wear two differently colored socks under her black Mary Jane’s and brought her proud little tush to Miles Elementary School.  Over the weekend her mind had visited, revisited, and gotten a weekend pass to an image that had apparently left quite an impression in that popularity-prioritizing little mind of hers. That image was of me. It was of me, wearing MY two differently colored socks on Friday morning under my own black Mary Jane’s.

Now, what was this girl thinking?! This was completely unacceptable. While Hailey was on the high road to being just like everyone else, I had set quite a different course for myself.  I had to be different. This was, jeez… important to me.  I’m an individual. I’m an artist.  How would I be identified now? As just another two-toned foot princess?  And not the queen?! This mixing-up-the-sock-colors thing was my idea! And not something designed for mass consumption! After careful consideration of the implications of Hailey’s theft – and consequent neutralizing – of my only form of dis-identification from the sweet and sticky pool of third grade Barbie look-alike’s, I must transform into something unstoppable, uncopyable, and even un-understandable by the other third graders.  I must become absolutely original. So, I became a hippie.

At the time, there were no hippies in third grade, there were no hippies in fourth grade, and I didn’t even see any hippies amongst the highly mature fifth grade population.  In fact, the only hippies I knew were college students, and that made this whole invention of self even more enticing to me.

This transformation wasn’t as difficult as it could’ve been for someone less fortunately endowed of a hippie nature. Having enjoyed the music of the Beatles since I was born, I had learned to read when my father put on “Baby’s In Black, And I’m Feeling Blue”, sat down next to me, and placed the sheet music to the song on my lap. As he moved his finger word by word along with the music, I had one of my first peak experiences of discovery.  I had also spent years enjoying the company of a teddy bear named Jerry, who wore an interesting purple collar and was also associated with music that we listened a lot to.  My parents were the perfect embodiment of all the positive ideals created in the sixties. So, I never really “became” a hippie, since I was born into a life of one.

Thereafter, I came to school, not only dressed like a gypsy, but with my hair a combination of frizz, braid, and beads, smelling like a combination of patchouli incense and the ambiance of a “Bleeker Street Café”.  This drive to be different brought me to a welcome identity that I truly loved. And, in no time, I began to really connect with the philosophical nature of the countercultural psychedelic utopia that was created around 1966. I enjoyed the intellectual explorations I was having with people 3 times my age.  I would opt to “do a sweat” rather than “hang at the mall”.  I became obsessed with that time and culture. I told people I was Jimi Hendrix reincarnated (except I had lost his guitar skill in the journey) and I used to cry while watching Woodstock on tape, because I “was born into the wrong generation”. I wanted more than anything to dance in fields of purple haze, to march in revolutionary protests, and to live in a culturally rich commune on some farm in some distant land away from 1990s 9 year olds. I wanted to be a face in the crowd of muddy people at some Dead concert, or a drummer that Ringo would fall in love with.   I was a flower child in a disconnected world of musically and culturally challenged kids getting off on Britney Spears and the Spice Girls.

As natural as this transformation was for me, it also was an emotional challenge.  My “tribe” was not made up of 9 year olds, yet here I was stuck in a 9 year old body. The sixties tormented me, they scratched out my hopes of a happy future, since I could clearly see that the youthful generation of my era was not going to ever be into love and happiness while watching “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, and using too much antibacterial sanitizer. Was I destined to suffer the longing to participate in a generation of freedom and acceptance, while having to live a life imprisoned by superficial values and unsophisticated taste in music? Third grade was definitely a confusing time for me after that two-colored sock incident.

I became very fascinated with the human experience; I started having mutually stimulating conversations with the artsy college students my parents knew.  I embraced my own artistic side and became a painter – as well as a poet.  I took being a hippie to heart, and ended up actually becoming very popular in school.  Aside from being a cute 9 year old, I had a way of life, alternative beliefs, and strong opinions on everything. I lived out third grade as a wannabe starving artist hippie prematurely hormonal pre-teen.

Then fourth grade happened, and everything changed. My parents decided to buy an RV, we left Tucson, and the four of us traveled around the country for over a year.  What a trip!  Home schooled and happy, I lived the alternative American dream. But I was pretty much alone when it came to a peer group, other than my annoyingly sweet 6-year-old sister. I had no one to show my hippieness to, and the adults only cared about who I was, not who I looked like. I no longer needed to be different, since there were absolutely no other 9 year olds trekking through the narrow canyons of Zion National Park on Monday morning, or learning about alligators in a bayou swamp in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon. Gosh! There was no longer a culture I was counter to!

In fact, wherever we went, whoever we met, I was seen not as a hippie or a 3rd grader – or even as a wannabe – but as “my own person”.  People seemed to recognize something in me more authentic than even I knew was there.  And, eventually, I came to meet them from what they saw in me.

Halfway into our magical experiential learning road trip I had this epiphany: “Wherever you go, there you are”. It was simple enough, I know, but this idea really came to me as a surprise amidst my search for identity and meaning. You mean, I can’t escape who I am? My true self is my own poltergeist? Banging around in there, trying to get recognized?  Crazy! Blasphemy!

I realized no act was needed.  No reservations were required.  Who I was was the real deal, and more interesting than that haunting voice strategically whispering over the drowning soundtrack of the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane. I didn’t have to cling to my hippidom to be different because who I am is already like no one else, and – what a discovery – I LIKED who I was.  I didn’t need to push against that.

So, in a moment – a synaptic convergence – I caught up with myself and cozyed up to this new relationship.  I jettisoned the image and became Jessica, an artist, an activist, a person who is going to make a difference in the world of others, because she believes everyone should have a chance to discover who they are, and have a way to express that.

I have really grown a lot since third grade.  Not only am I two feet taller, but I filled out with ideals that keep me strong in who I am, and who I want to become. Now, I can wear two different colored socks, and know that everyone is unique, even if they’re wearing different colored socks, too.  I know that something as silly as socks, or skin color, or accent, or taste in music, won’t stop me from being the person inside that I am, and being curious and open to who everyone is.  I trust that who I am is amazing and loving, and creative and serving.  And even though I’ve ditched the whole hippie thing, I still hold many of the ideals from the sixties very near; I still dream of my man Jimi, and I’m still in the planning process of some sort of cultural revolution.

When I first donned those duo-toned socks at age 9, I was grasping for salvation from a life I feared would lack color.  Now those years have doubled and my life lacks anything but color. I can say, what a long strange trip it’s been, but I know this is just the beginning.  I look forward to the long and winding road ahead.