I see something happening in the world, and I want to share it. It's why, during 9/11, I wrote every few minutes what I saw happening. It's why I write about meeting Steve Wozniak or Bill Gates or Larry Page.
I think that as a poet, I am always concerned about history and baring witness to history. But so often, it's through the research that I do, the reading.
I started as a news photographer at the University Of Texas' Daily Texan.
But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.
My duty is that of a chronicler; and if I perform that conscientiously, the lessons which my observations suggest will need no pointing out.
One of the great challenges of being a modern historian is interviewing multiple people who were all there for something, some event. No one's version matches up 100% with other people's, even if it's three or four people on a conference call.
I wanted to write history rather than participate in it.
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.
We are the recorders and reporters of facts - not the judges of the behaviors we describe.
I see myself as a journalist reporting neglected stories about our past and trying to bring rigor, reason and intuition to the quest.
That's what happens in feature docs. The more time you spend, the more nuance emerges, the more a story evolves - but it's different than fiction, where you can reshoot something.
Writers are the history keepers.
I think writers are the history keepers, right? We're the ones who are bearing witness to what's going on in the world. And I feel like it's our job to put that down on paper, and put it out into the world, so that it can be remembered.
