“Wanderers” always sounds to me like people climbing the Everest or going to Tibet to play the monks or sailing the seas for years or running across the country Forrest Gump-wise to get over their Jennys or doing extreme sports or desiring to live “in a house, a very big house in the country” (Blur, Country House) or… Suddenly I’m drowning in a century-old cliché stemming from the journeys of those who, in the days of Romanticism, seemed to have no other way of escaping, of finding themselves (are those two things one and the same?), than wandering.
Turns out we’ve come a long way from that. Now we know better. We know you can travel from freedom (of spirit) to slavery or even make permanent movement your own prison, your own veil to keep you from yourself, like a Borgesian desert-labyrinth with no walls nor passages save the endless horizon, the dunes and the burning sun. Why, you can find a McDonald’s pretty much anywhere, wandering from same to same, and deem yourself king of infinite freedom. What’s more, you can trip inwards or outwards, cosmic distances, in the wink of an eye, and still find slight discomfort unbearable.
So, how does wander become wonder again? I’d say that’s the whole point. Movement is no longer the way; no more than complete stillness may be, in any case. I guess it’s how we wander that matters. Likewise, novelty is a trap, a horrible trap. “There are no new things upon the earth” (Plato, quoted by Shakespeare, quoted in turn by Borges), but new (or forgotten) ways of looking at them. You may travel to the seven? newly discovered earth-like planets and still be a stranger to yourself. Same old, same old. I’m only guessing here, but maybe it’s always been about doing what you’ve never done before, whatever may bother you or frighten you or… why not? disgust you. Maybe then wandering will become wondering again, and feeling thrilled… and frightened… And yes, stumbling upon eureka while riding on a bus in the rush hour, feeling completely annoyed after a meaningless day… until you spotted that, whatever it may have been, that was not quite usual, that which didn’t quite fit in your usual photographic composition, and you got home with your heart beating fast, trying hard not to forget a single detail of what might be your next shot at beauty.