Hanny Hakim is a young man in Texas with an unusual penchant for documenting elevators. Mr. Hakim’s YouTube channel is populated with hundreds of videos taken from his own point-of-view, whereupon he enters an elevator and spends a few moments explaining the elevator, its manufacturer, its history, and any other pertinent information he thinks the viewer would find worthwhile. Although I find his fact-gathering skills formidable and the subject matter somewhat interesting, I am absolutely enamored with his passion for collecting data. But, the obvious question remains – why elevators?

Although Mr. Hakim does not go into any depth as to why he has chosen elevators as his muse, I think it a very apt metaphor for life, and I believe the title of this post should shed a little light into why I feel this way. Elevators can only go one of two ways, up or down, and if they’re not moving it’s either because they’re getting ready to move, or because they’re broken. This can also be illustrated scientifically, as in very rudimentary physics where energy is described as being “potential” or “kinetic.” However one chooses to qualify the aforementioned, the point is it should therefore not seem too outlandish to anyone why Mr. Hakim finds the elevator to be interesting.

As for me, my “elevator” has been music. It’s the one thing in my life that has remained a constant for the past year and ten months, and it (conversely speaking with regard to the subject matter) keeps me grounded.  For instance, in my last post to this web log, I was not in a very good place. Before my personal musical renaissance, I would have simply wrote the day off as a bad one. Now? As things were crumbling around me, I thought of music. I thought of the way it moves, the way it sounds, the feeling I have in my extremities (not “that” extremity!) as it pulsates through my person. We should all try and find this for ourselves. This “thing” that makes us present. Meditation, for instance, is rooted in the “now,” and that’s precisely we people feel healed by it. Because it is in the moment that one fully understands what it means to be alive. I don’t want this to spiral into a string of clichés, so I will end this line of thought. But for anyone reading this, I know you understand because we have all experienced this at one time or another – most of us have no doubt experienced this in the moments after awakening from a good night’s sleep. These perfect moments.

For Mr. Hakim, it seems elevators and the documentation of said subject matter are his “perfect moments.” As we age, these things can change for us. We can find perfection in other pursuits, people, objects, etc. What it exactly that is for any of you is not for me to say, but for you to find. If I may, the only thing I would personally ask anyone would be to remain conscious on their quest, to concentrate on what exactly removes you from remembering that you are indeed concentrating. My work can be this way at times, but my music is forever a constant.

Find your elevator and be prepared to go up, down, and nowhere.

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