Inspiration is a funny thing. I’ve spent the last month lost in the haze of the World Cup. Before this, I haven’t seen a soccer game since I stayed home from work one day and found an English soccer match on television and watched it in a sick-daze. I hadn’t played soccer since that time in high school I pulled on the long socks and put on a tough face, but fell flat at actually running and kicking the ball. Soccer: one of those cool things I was never involved in, but, had one of the best uniforms around. I’m a bit passionate about anything with Adidas stripes.

Around the same time, I’d been lucky enough to be running around the streets of Miami with a few near-and-dears. During one of these jaunts, I was able to catch a showing of Exit Through the Gift Shop, the Banksy film that I’ve been wanting to see for months. Thankfully, it was worth the wait and had every part of my nervous system singing. City streets with far flung paint and sticky stickers everywhere. It reminded me of everything beautiful I could ever put together.

But, about inspiration. It’s good at weaving itself around and around until it suddenly takes hold of a story and a place and a time it had no business being a part of. I have been working on the first story series for Stereoport: a proto-future noir that is like an upgraded version of the city of my neon dreams. Enter soccer though. Enter art. It is now as if everything is glass shards and I am busy mosiacing them back together. Soccer boy in the laundromat, sleepy street artist at the foot of the bed, girl with too much hair dye and angry pairs of shorts, dj boy straddling a motorcycle like he was born on it. No one invited the previous pair to the party. They just showed up with foreign beers and spraypaint and forced their way in.

And as inspiration goes, you can’t just ask them to go home. So instead you get screaming and crying and the same rap records on repeat.

i bet if i give all my love,
then nothings gonna tear us apart*

Well then guys, we’ll see about that.

____
*thanks Drake