The CAYC Photo — A Work of Phenomenology
In 1983, I had a photograph taken of me. I was 18 and I saw the future. Importantly, for the first time, the future saw me back.
What if everything we have understood about time is wrong?
What if the past and the future and the present all happen simultaneously, in a way that allows for all of it to be connected, and for us to support ourselves at critical moments in our lives?
What if there is a link to be created between all versions of ourselves — past, present, and future?
When I was 18 I experienced a phenomenon. Importantly, this was my first experience where I got to have a hand in creating a work of art that would author another phenomenon, this one, the CAYC photo.
(PROVISION. What I propose is simple yet also complex: all “nows” happen simultaneously and at this time human beings have evolved to a point where we have the psychological capacity for being in relationship to and with all “the nows” that make up the moments and totality of our life. What more, this effect, literal and metaphoric, is genuine and impacts the present (our now). Essentially, as human beings we are able to communicate with all versions of ourselves past and future, and they with us, as they and we are all occurring now, and this phenomenon in turn does have authentic authorial and editorial impact on this our present.)*
(*For the sake of discussion I am defining phenomenon in this context by building from my philosophic appreciation of such ideas as “time consciousness” (Husserl, Heidegger) and “experiential inventory” (Cottle) in our consideration of spacetime and our personal relationships to/with “the now”.)
The result of that experience is this artwork, the CAYC photo. This is the photo that captured the moment I experienced the phenomenon. CAYC is a work of art and, by extension, it that it has led to a phenomenon.
“The best things in life are never captured.” This idea, that we can’t photograph or video exceptional moments of being alive, adequately conveys the idea that that which is [the genuinely special or wonderful] is by its very nature beyond the reach of our use of technology.
And, for the record, for all the experiences — moments, and encounters in my life that I would classify as, well, miraculous — by and large, it has in some sense proven to be true. In other words, the magic of life is shy.
To which I can now say: Except when it isn’t. Except when it’s intentional.
BACKGROUND TO CAYC PHOTO. The reason this photo exists is because it was part of an assignment that my Pinellas Park Senior High School peer (and fellow creator) Jeff Domke was completing. Jeff Domke is (and continues to be) an important peer to me, and he and I — and our mutual friend Jeff Conover — were such good friends largely because of our shared love for the arts, fashion, music, and for creating.
On the day the CAYC image was taken and captured, Jeff Domke and I set out to drive to somewhere in unincorporated Pinellas County, Florida, where he let me set up a number of shots which he began shooting. The day felt larger than ordinary. It very much felt charged.
What I most recall from this exact moment that the photo was taken is how I felt. Setting it up, I was oddly informed about this shot. Getting into place, I felt a strange tingle. It felt vague, uneasy, and unusually centered.
Then suddenly I felt everything.
(PROVISION. Media like photos and video are essentially “screenshots” of the now, a screenshot with no more determination to what state that moment of the now is in than a photo (a ghost) of wherever it is we are reading this is to the actual moment you are experiencing your now.)
(In this case, the CAYC photo is basically a drawing of an active version of the now that is in operation for me in the photo. Our now, his now. All of us existing in our nows.)
The exact phenomenon the CAYC photograph captures is me-then looking forward into my future — and being open in a way I recalled my entire lifetime — and perceiving the vastness of what is right there ahead of me leading to this exact moment here in the future ie our present, being inverted by me-now (and onward) looking back and delivering to him a single important message from a place of confident certainty ie the now-now.
The message and the instruction he receives:
“Look beautiful.”
The thing is in that moment me-then had only an inkling of what such an instruction could even mean. How do I “look beautiful”? At that time, in that moment, it was yet beyond my capacity to even imagine myself looking beautiful. What is beautiful? I would then immediately ask of myself.
Here in the future-present, Me-now understands all that. For me-now, “look beautiful” is what happens when I reflect on What is Beautiful inside of me as well as What is Beautiful within others. Specifically, what I think of today when I “look beautiful” is how one other person made me feel.
Which is how it came to be that from here in the future I showed 18-year old Mike Mongo “beautiful”. I did it by thinking it to him and showing him.
Specifically, what I showed him was Cody.
In my lifetime, Cody is the first-ever person to receive and return the real love and admiration I gave to them. It is my thinking on that, on Cody, and on that experience and that love that I learned over my lifetime to be sending. The pictured 18-year old version of me in the captured moment from the photograph is the phenomenon of an unknowingly beautiful person (me-then) receiving the love we (future-me) send and loving the love and being in awe of the moment and the experience. This is me learning that returned love was on the horizon, and it was everything.
This explains the piece’s name, Calling All You Cody.
Calling All You Cody aka CAYC. Here, Cody gets to be iconic for what is possible of me and for me. And in turn, this moment becomes real and possible for each of us, for all of us.
This is precisely what the CAYC photo is capturing: CAYC is capturing the moment when me, here in the future, is providing the 18-year old Mike Mongo in my past the most vital information they could possibly be receptive to — that love is on the horizon — and I am doing this for me-then from right now here in the future. What more, they are factually confirming that they receive what I have provided by way of my own remembering it.
And yet again, for clarity I will restate was is being captured: What is captured in the CAYC photo and what we all are seeing is the precise moment when I make contact with my past self from here in the future, and do so by communicating their heart’s desire to them after the now (time; moment) it has already come true. I lived this moment. Both then-now (Before Cody) and now-now (After Cody).
Indeed, what makes the capture of this moment phenomenal is also what makes it possible.
It is evolution and it is love.
It is my conjecture that we human beings have evolved, and that the evolution allows for a newly-informed awareness of time, now, and the myriad of versions of ourselves existing in their nows in the past and future. This evolution today allows for this kind of dynamic “transmessaging” to ourselves at specific points of our existing in spacetime, messaging that allows for change to all versions of ourself throughout our personal timelines.
CAYC is me witnessing love, witnessing beauty, witnessing tenderness, witnessing joy, and being informed — by me here-now in the future — of how that seeming miracle is happening is by the transmitting of that information and experience by me here in the future-now (our present) back to his now-then, my/our past. It is possible simply because human beings have evolved and our understanding of time has evolved along.
What the CAYC photo captures is a love of all people ie “All You Cody”. What the photo captures is also a love of the future, for the future, by the future. And that future this love is for is coming from me-now.
With the above in mind, today I contend that for all intents and purposes the CAYC photo is the capture of the presently-new phenomenon of our future selves being in direct contact with our past selves.
And this is how Calling All You Cody aka the CAYC photo is the most important piece of artwork I ever do. It is so until proven otherwise.
CAYC is a screenshot of a now for me that is alive and active and vital, and that for my entire life has been filling me with a reciprocated knowledge that he saw me then, and — to completely spell out the vital, fantastic, and provocatively energetic important point here and now — he is seeing me.
The CAYC NFT is an edition of 1983-pieces available on Manifold.
Special thanks to Snepsid.
