Original Maxes: Red, White, and Black

Photographer, Creative Director: Max Tindall

Dear emie,

Warm weather always confuses me. It makes me assume that there is reason enough to bare my arms to the air, skin exposed and truths unveiled. But there are two parts of me; the microscopic seed of a soul planted at the end of my sternum, hanging on like a pendant to a necklace, and then there are the layers of skin, flesh, bone, and blood that come together to border it. You would think that this fragile pendant would make me the most vulnerable, but rather, it is the physical exterior that has always struggled to get close to others.

It’s poetic, really. It’s poetic how I’ve tried to open myself up to an audience, to connection, to relationship, to other people in the physical world, but its so easy for me to write my heart out on a paper for the world to read. I haven’t had the courage to speak up, so instead I try to make myself into something written; something black, white, and is re(a)d all over. So although there is part of me that wants to live in the sun, the other part of me settles with a 3 piece suit, a mask, and a scarf that bleeds from the neck down to where that little pendant hangs.