Sole Searching: How a pair of shoes changed my life

"I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?" 

-Red  

The Shawshank Redemption

Remember the joy of Lego’s? Thousands upon thousands of pieces for your disposal. You, the eternal god of Lego creation, were the architect of mystical lands. It’s by far my favorite childhood toy. But there’s a curious thing about Lego’s. I don’t remember actually playing with them.  I built them, and designed some amazing ships and buildings, but I never wielded them as my action figures. What I did was set up grand tableaus. That’s where story came in. I had one dungeon island set that kept my attention for days upon days. I’d set up the opposing pirates, the treasure chests, the boats. And I would set them in a scene. And that was it; there they would lay frozen in time. For me, it wasn’t the action that I was interested in but the image. I had a certain look I was going for, a certain feeling that my tableau of Lego’s meant to evoke. I liked the control. I was meticulous in how the Lego’s were set but I never played games, I never assumed characters, I never acted out my world. I merely created the world and looked in from the outside. For it was the look of the world that felt real to me, not playing the scene out. 

Two days ago I bought a pair of shoes from the Goodwill in downtown Portland. This is a picture of a brand new shoe.

I bought them barely used for 40 dollars. Brand new they would have cost 325 dollars. I don’t mean to brag , but wait, no I’ll just brag for a little bit. 40 dollars! I am the newly crowned king of shoe thrifting! OK moving on. I love the shoes. It’s not that they are super comfortable or anything, they’re just…professional. I would walk to work with my eyes looking at my shoes the whole time. I loved hearing the click-clack-click-clack of the shoes hit the pavement. I looked like an adult. 

I’m not one of those Portland twentysomethings who is desperately clinging on to their youth. I know I’m young, but there is a yearning to be an adult and take on great responsibility. Not in the “start a family” way but “become a film director” way. And in the past five months since I’ve graduated there has been nothing that felt like I was validated as the epic man in search of profundity in his new life, abandoning his youthful ways for the life of the artist. So I got an urban apartment, big woop. I got a job at a premium cinema, who cares! Not even the internship with the NY based production company made me feel like a responsible, mature adult in the pursuit of his passion. It was the shoes.

The shoes I had before this pair were the ugliest puppies in the history of footwear. I had to have this specific pair for my job at the last theater I worked. Two weeks later I got a job at the Living Room Theaters. Every day I walked to work in those God forsaken shoes (that after 2 weeks were already falling apart).  I felt like a fraud. At the bottom of my outfit lay the true value of my life’s pursuit. I was worthless, how could such a slob be capable of any profound work of art? How could an artist fill those shoes? He has no aesthetic outlook for his own self, how could he have an aesthetic outlook in the world of celluloid? Under the surface of my wardrobe was the intellect and hard work of a young artist. The requisite reading and writing (I hope) is being done so that I may be a competent and skillful artist. But none of you know that, because my shoes didn’t reflect that.

Director Ingmar Bergman
looking so...Cinematic

Everything changed when I got the shoes, of course. My walk to work the first day was glorious. Here down the avenue was Ryan Graves, aspiring film director, intern for a production company in NYC. He may have the humble task of selling tickets in a box office, but it is the box office for the Living Room Theaters, the premiere art house cinema in all of Portland. Here was the man, the myth nay, the legend.

Obviously the shoes got me carried away, but you get the point. The shoes validated everything I was doing. All along I had the content of the artistic life, but now I had the image, and the image was everything for me. Like the Lego’s of my childhood, I had latched onto the image, and the shoes were the beginning of the successful image, and thankfully, I caught myself before going headlong into superficiality.

Because come on, they’re just a pair of shoes. In my childhood I was obsessed with the image. I didn’t play with my toys-I set them up so it looked like I did. For me, it was more entertaining to look the game rather than live the game. It was easier, I had more control because I was on the outside looking in. But I’m not a child anymore, I don’t have the luxury of looking from the outside in, that’s left to God alone. It’s time I stop obsessing with the image of success, and begin living the successful life that I desire.