One

I've never talked about playing music in this format because I was always afraid to share that part of me. It's one thing to hide behind a camera/computer. It's quite another to sit in front of the lens and perform. The perfectionist that I am, I've never been able to fully embrace the mistakes, intonation and the sad fact that I don't look like a rock star.

Almost five years into playing guitar (basically coinciding with the time I left LA for Taipei), I no longer care. I mean I do. But I don't care enough to not post this.

Because it's a big part of who I am and I'm no longer segregating the non-photography parts of me away from the photography parts of me. I am one single person. A whole person. Not just a photographer. Far from it. I'm a multi-faceted complex individual. If you think my thoughts were limited to making pictures you couldn't be farther from the truth. The level of care that I take in my images overflows into every other facet of my life. The Charles LUCIMA that you have come to know on Instagram who is behind those pretty pictures, I'm that person all the time but in everything that I do. It's what makes me tick. I have an ever-curious mind that doesn't stop asking "what if..." questions just because it's not related to photography. If anything, my curiosity for photography comes from other ventures, interests and ideas. The part of me that is bound to imagery is a cross-section of a much deeper and substantial whole.

This is why I've always talked to my own marketing team about merging these different people. There's Charles LUCIMA the photographer/retoucher and now AI whatever you wanna call it. Then there's Charles LUCIMA the producer, and Charles LUCIMA the investor/venture capitalist, and Charles LUCIMA the musician (keyboard, vocals, guitar)... I get that people don't like wrapping their heads around all these different roles but the truth is you can't cut a person up into bite size pieces just so others can digest what you have to offer. It doesn't make sense unless you're simply trying to sell one side of you. But I've tried that. I am a cube that is tired of constantly rotating myself directly to you so that I appear like a square. I am not a square. I am not one-dimensional. Allow me to introduce you to my z-axis (depth).

It's why I created this second Instagram account. Aside from the fact that my first Instagram account is on the verge of being banned forever (had a bad dream about that yeesterday), but this new account with the significantly smaller (but more important) following is one that I'd like to truly cultivate and open up to. It is totally experimental but I want to actually engage with the audience levels that are not limited to imagery.

So goes nothing. I have no idea if it will or won't work, if it will last or not. All I know is I'm tired of just being one thing to you all. I'm not what you think I am. I'm both more and less than you think I am. Hopefully you'll accept me the way that I'm learning to accept myself.

PS. It was not by design but this song is One by Ed Sheeran. Serendipitous I guess. I learned this song back in January of 2020. It's been a minute since I've played this song, partly because DADGAD tuning is a chore and because I often forget how to play older songs in my repertoire.