(Video link here.) In 2011 Walter Chang quit his job after saving up for a couple of years to travel around the world.
I trekked amazing landscapes, checked off the bucket list, hitchhiked, slept anywhere I could, and made countless friends. These are my memories.
His video, We Call this Home, is a fine reminder of the wonders occurring all over this vast world at any given moment (check out the list of specific locations we “visit”). In league with the music — Carousel – Let’s Go Home (Sound Remedy Remix) — Chang’s virtual journey is an invigorating meditation on home AND
how essential it can be to travel new paths, change, open to not-knowing, risk, a bigger view. We like his web page Why Travel?, where, among other things, he quotes Alan Watts:
“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”
For those of us who traveled a lot when we were young, HOME home can be full of wonders, as our internal landscape and focus changes. (Walking across 125th Street in Harlem IS like visiting another country; it is a serious crossroads of many cultures and a vast array of personal styles.)
Let’s Go Home (Carousel)
We used to say we won’t get older
It’ll be alright
We wait to change and then its over,
But it’ll be alright
All those years we used to know
All those dreams won’t goI won’t let it go
I’m taking control
I want you to know
You’re already homeWe could take this road, let’s go home
All those dreams we know
We could take this road on our own
All those dreams we know
All those dreams won’t go
It’ll be alrightWe’ve gotten strange we’ve gotten older
It’ll be alright
I miss the days when we were sober
But it’ll be alright
All those years
We used to know
All those dreams won’t go
