Ever since I was a child, I have always had a warm feeling when I thought of sipping hot tea with frozen hands, in front of a fireplace, which, if you stare at it for a long time, almost hypnotizes you by the ever-changing dance of the flames. There is something strange about the fact that for most people, it is such a relaxing experience, perhaps symbolizing the warm prenatal protection and the accompanying comforting feelings. Even better if we can share this experience with others, or have a faithful companion who has been with us forever, our four-legged friend, our dog.
For some people, these are almost parts of everyday life, namely Kyle Finn Dempsey, whom I found on Instagram.
Kyle pointed it out that maybe we need these experiences because our everyday lives are not about this, but with a good chance about automatisms that do not make us particularly happy; going to work in the morning, coming home, do the shopping or housework, etc. We are under stress, smaller or bigger, or our lives are extremely hectic. Kyle travels with his truck around Berkshires, Massachusetts and introduces the fairy tale world we dream about. He captures this wonderland in the form of videos and photos.
It is very difficult to stand out on Instagram nowadays, it is not enough to have beautiful pictures, or perhaps even to be breath-taking, because we get hit by so much stimuli that it is very difficult to produce content that keeps us interested and, for a moment, makes us stop scrolling the feed constantly, our brains get hundreds and hundreds of impulses every minute, so in the matter of catching attention the limits are higher. Sometimes I watch others beside me on the subway, curiously looking into their phones, just wondering what they are looking for, what engages them and what stops them in the feed, and I have experienced that they rarely stop for a moment, as if the goal was to process an enormous amount of visual content, not to stop at something that really touches them, and to spend time experiencing it.
Not only does Kyle delight his followers with stunningly cosy content, but he also creates an atmosphere with the visual world he captures, which makes us imagine feeling the warmth of coffee between our palms, sitting on the terrace of a chalet with lights, starring at the snowfall.
In addition, Chesterfield, Berkshires, Vermont and Maine counties in Massachusetts bring us so much colourfulness and adventure that we want to get there once in our lives. Season by season, the countryside reveals its faces; in the fall, millions of colour variations dazzle us, reflected by images made by drone, fresh, unlikely green colours dominate during summer and spring, and nature changes according to its new role in winter turning into a cruel realm of snow and ice, which makes the landscape untouchable.
The Berkshires
By the way it is not worth approaching these isolated small wooden houses without proper equipment. However, Kyle's videos go beyond the photos, presenting us a world which we are almost obligated to watch on the couch with a warm blanket and a glass of mulled wine. The visual world of videos has a sophisticated vintage feel, with subdued colours, beautiful settings, practically like an art movie. We almost become parts of his stories, we are there ourselves, discovering snow-covered paths in the woods, the snow crunching under our boots and we discover small, hand-built wooden houses hidden in the depths of the forest, which sometimes lack luxury and we may also have to collect wood for the fire in the fireplace. Unusually, Kyle tells stories for each video to add colour to this beautiful visual world. These stories, like a therapy, take you to another world where you can seamlessly become one with these narratives. His stories keep us in front of the screen and are incredibly calming.
However, we also get to know the personal stories of the creator's life, we can be parts of the chain of events that shaped Kyle's life, and the short films show guidance and inspiration for things we need not to give up on our dreams. They show the kind of endurance that won’t last forever unless it is based on a strong passion that you can build your whole life on. They also show that there isn’t always a smooth, straight way to make our dreams come true, but we always have to believe in what we want.
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