“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Reflecting. Detroit. 2025.
Captain’s Log, Stardate 2067.055
What an insane journey. Amazing. Happy to be back.
I’m not talking journey in the physical sense. It was more like what an extended, ayahuasca, mind-bending, vision quest might be like. Not horrifying, but intensely cerebral, emotional, spiritual, and dare I say, transcendental. No assistance from external effectors. All subjective perceptual innerspace.
DEC 2024. I’d gotten back from Miami. Vegas. Great trip. Met a lot of great people. But then got sick as a dog. COVID symptoms, but wasn’t. Went on for 3 weeks. Fatigue and body aches... So annoying. At one point, decided I would do for myself, what I do for my clients. Turn the brand strategy lens on myself. Level up my personal brand. With all the things I want to do now, it's necessary that people know who they have in front of them. I’d start with my website.
Little did I know it was going to take me on such a multiverse, rollercoaster, panavision, head-trip.
Roadside Cafe with China. Clove Smokes, Rice Fields, and Temples Motorcycle Adventure, Bali (2004) Photo by China Paradelo.
In one fevered delirium, between sweaty hibernations, it occurred to me I was entering my second half century of life, and I’d been a creative professional for 30 years. I’d picked up so many skills and abilities, jumped around industries, often getting some sort of recognition in each. So many vivid experiences. Friends and connections that wrap the globe a few times. It had been a minute since I thought about myself, or my life, like that. I was quickly overwhelmed. Wondered if that's how people might perceive me. Hmmm... An ex-girlfriend offered to organize my body of work into a website in 2004. It was already madness then.
Then it got worse. I thought... I'll just go through my photos and videos. Find some inspiration. Hah. I have tens of thousands of photos and videos since I graduated Brown and left to New York to go on the Rawkus adventure in 1995. Please note I have an uncanny ability to kind of "quantum jump" into photos. Not literally, but my imagination is quite rich and complex, and my mind records so much information, from heightened sensory input, that I can look at a photo and almost hallucinate the memory of a faint scent of late fall rosemary, from the neighbor’s garden, on the crisp, brisk air that day, feeling the inhaled coolness drying my nostrils. Seriously. So imagine 30 years. Was like 1989 again, and my cousin had the unlimited VHS rentals all summer special, at Video Vault, but all the films were about my life. All of a sudden I was fully back in 1995, then 2007, then 2024, then 2003, then 1999, all over the globe, then back in 2007 again, later that year, all in one afternoon. Was maybe like in Avengers, when Dr. Strange visited the 14,000,605 possible futures, in 5 minutes. Or in Game of Thrones when young, Bran Stark, becomes The Three-Eyed Raven, and all of everything knocks the pupils out of his eyes. Or like in The Matrix, when the deluge of data is downloaded into Neo’s head, after which he gloriously knew, Kung Fu.
Like all that, but all of a sudden I knew TIMØ RONAN, in an entirely, new way. I was all of them, and me, today, all at the same time. It really was this kind of Come to Jesus moment. Then it turned into this 30 YEARS OF FILM project. It’s already been an epic adventure of a personal project so far. Now is the fun part. I get to share the stories. I picked good ones for the first 30 moonshot moments from the last 30 years of illustrious life. There are images up for each photo essay now, as I type, but none are complete. I’ll announce final essay drops on my social media platforms.
People talk about Life is a Movie. My life’s been pure cinema. Gritty, independent film. Godard. Kids. Sweet Sweetback’s. Slingblade. Blessed.
Can't wait to see what grand adventures come of the next 50 years.
Energized.
Enjoy.