Beau Miles has published a book. Now would you look at that cover photograph? I sigh. I admit, I’m a fan of his Youtube videos, my favourite being Run the Line: Retracing 43 km of hidden railway because it touches on history. But often, after watching any one of his videos, I want to go out and shoot my own adventure. I get a feeling akin to jealousy…
While thinking of this post, I started wondering why I found Beau Miles particularly inspiring, and thought of other YouTube videos I’ve enjoyed, a bit dismayed to come up with Casey Neistat’s channel, which I followed for awhile when he was living in New York. I panicked a bit… Aren’t there any women’s channels I like? Yes! In fact, Bernadette Banner’s vlogs on the subject of Victorian and Edwardian dress offered a fascinating glimpse into corsets, for example. And Ariel Bissett introduced me to “book tube” a few years ago. Liziqi blends a kind of tireless productivity with almost graceful romance in her vlogs, in which furniture is built, fields are sown and harvested, harvested materials are transformed and every day ends with an extraordinary meal.
So what is it about Beau Miles that I find so inspiring? I think there are two things: the first, is a sort of recklessness unfamiliar to me. I was raised with carefulness. That’s neither good nor bad, and I don’t mean Miles goes and risks his life for views. Rather, I think, I grew up feeling like things around me were fragile and that things had to be handled properly. This lent itself to ideas of perfectionism and scarcity. So, when Miles assembles things using found materials for example, the viewer gets to feel both the freedom of experimentation and a mastery of the tools that are handled. The results is therefore satisfying without being caught up in ideas of perfection. The older I get, the more I am intrigued by this idea of patina and lived-in spaces. (I mentioned that here.) Eventually, there comes a point, I think, when you’re not striving for an ideal image but rather, having acquired experience over the years, skill replaces self-consciousness. And this brings me to the second point. I think Beau Miles is an extraordinary storyteller. This is something you can glimpse in an interview he recently gave here, specifically, when he says: “As a storyteller, I know that you can come across a bit more loose and ad hoc and it’s just a bit more fun that way. But in my heart of hearts I kind of know what I’m doing.”
If you are unfamiliar with Beau Miles, I highly recommend his videos! See if you find them as inspiring!