Kevin Harry
@Kevinharryphoto on his front porch.
-Theatre-
Kevin and I have a lot in common. We come from theatre/music land but also have this passion for photography and entrepreneurship that drives us to work harder for our community. We want to give back and spend all our time working for the arts.
Although he has a day job, I knew personally that not being able to see and capture the people and community he cares most about was very hard. I’m so glad he wanted to commiserate with me.
Interviewed 6.3.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: How are you?
Kevin: I'm doing, I'm doing well. I'm maintaining. It's a scary world, obviously, but doing the best we can.
Casey: How are you feeling today?
Kevin: I feel a little more empowered. I will readily admit that I had some really severe lows. And I'm not usually somebody who's really moody about this stuff. But when you're looking at a snapshot of the world and seeing where people are, but also seeing the people that are directly involved in your life and they have a completely different take, sometimes they're not seeing quite what you're seeing. It is sometimes a little disheartening because you feel like you're in a position of hopelessness.
But at the same time, you'll turn on the news or you go outside and you see people that really care about change or really care about things that don't necessarily "effect them". It wasn't that long ago we went out and did a clean up job. We were down at the Omni Hotel, which butts right next to the CNN Center. And when I got there, there were only three of us. And people, just citizens, were walking down the street with push brooms. It's like, "Hey, can we jump in and help?" And it was really one guy. And once he did it, next thing you know, we had fifteen people in a building sweeping and cleaning up.
And to kind of give you an idea of just how tedious this work was. We had to fill up bucket loads like, you know, bucket loads of ice, excuse me, glass. And take that down this little ramp down to the dumpster, which is in the basement of this hotel. And we had to do that for two buildings. It was just crazy. But this also goes to show you the spirit of the community and that there are still good people out there in the world and people care. There's light at the end of the tunnel.
Casey: You've always struck me as a person who's generally positive.
Kevin: I'm human. Right? I don't live off of rainbows and unicorns, there's real-life that hits you in the face as much as you try to, "Oh, that doesn't concern me. I'm just doing my thing." You can't avoid it. And I think that if there's any lesson that can be learned, and this could be at any civil rights or human rights case, is that if you're silent about it and you just go about your business, whether you want to, it's going to affect you somehow. It affects your families, can affect your friends, your co-workers in some way or capacity. So there's a way that we can get ahead of it, help in a way, pushing things that are in a more positive direction. And that's what I'm going to do.
Casey: How is your family holding up?
Kevin: Our family is rather dispersed. We're really the only ones here. I think, for the most part, they're good. If you live in places like D.C., you're probably a little bit more tense just because D.C.'s sort of the baseline of politics here. So their take might be a little bit different than maybe a family in Texas or for me down here. But for the most part, they're doing what they can to maintain.
Casey: Is everybody healthy?
Kevin: Yeah, they're healthy. We've had some peripheral friends that have been affected by the COVID 19. But for the most part, most of us have been fairly hunkered down. I'll go out for necessities, but that's it.
Casey: What have you been doing since mid-March?
Kevin: I've got the day job thing. I've been fortunate to be able to do that from home.
One thing that I've been doing is I've been finding ways to either stay creative or to educate myself in one way or another. So if that is learning and trying to pick up a new skill set, if it's like in photography, "All right. I want to try something completely different that I've never done before." I've done that.
Some things that we, me and my wife have done, is we've started cooking. We don't really cook together really well. But we started cooking and picking up new dishes and like, "Oh, OK, let's try this. OK. That's cool. Let's try that" kind of thing. Because we're so busy with our day-to-day lives, we ate... It was like one of those quick eat in front of the TV and go to sleep kind of thing. As we spend more time together cooking and more time together just doing stuff that we haven't done, just because of our schedules in a while.
But we often joke that our relationship was built literally for eight years in a 300 square foot apartment. When we first met, that's all we had. We stared at each other all day long. So our relationship was basically road trips and doing goofy stuff at home. So this is sort of reverting back to those days when we're kind of having to stay here, but kind of keep the mind active, work out and do walks with the dog and connect with neighbors in the safest way possible, and kind of go from there.
Casey: Talk to me a little about what you've been doing creatively and how you've been staying motivated.
Kevin: I've always been a fan of diversifying your skillset. I came to Atlanta with a single focus of just being a singer, and that kind of slid into being an actor/singer. I kind of slid into other areas. So I'm writing more. I'm starting to pick up scriptwriting cause I'm writing digital shorts. I've picked up a little bit of video editing, so I'm doing that.
From a photography standpoint, one of the things that I'm really doing is trying to appreciate print work more. So I'm going back to some of my old work with the new retouching eye, and taking that and printing that. I'm worse at the business side, but I've actually updated my website and got this thing going on. I'm starting to blog now and areas that still feed what I am and what I like to do, but are just different than what I did, where I'm not just going out and singing a song or just going out and shooting a picture or doing that kind of thing.
In light of the events that have been circulating, I've even started to drum up ideas of types of portraiture work that we could do that helps get the point across, but also puts a human face behind all of it. You know, people that I personally know kind of thing. So that's been interesting and surprising that I've got a fairly good response to it. Like people are coming up with ideas and pitching those to me and that kind of thing. So there's a lot of stuff there to kind of keep it busy and keep it creative.
Casey: Are there days when you just can't?
Kevin: Yeah. All the time. Less than a week ago, I literally felt mentally drained, emotionally drained, and felt just paralyzed by that. When you think about the COVID 19, you can't go anywhere, can't do anything. And then with everything else going on with the Black Lives Matter movement, you kind of feel like your voice needs to be amplified in other ways. Or maybe you kind of feel a little guilty about maybe me taking pictures doesn't feel like it's on message. If it feels frilly like you're not really paying attention to the important issues. Everybody wants life to be back to normal. And I think the whole point of why people fought to not be sequestered in quarantine and why we want to get on the other side of quarantine, why we want to get on the other side of the movement is because we want to have a life and be able to enjoy things like arts and sports together. Like everybody wants that. Right?
So it took me a while to get out of that funk. To be honest with you. And it was a struggle, a real struggle. And then I realized that I shouldn't apologize. There are people that prior to me have gotten spit on and hung on and died, just to have a right and have access to resources, and be able to do what I enjoy doing. So I kind of got over that, slowly but surely, and started, now that they've lessened the COVID 19 restrictions... I started to pick back up on the headshot work, a little bit of portraiture stuff. Just still, I'm not going full-court here, but doing a little bit here and there. It's helped very much with my psyche and kind of what I like to do. But at the same time, same breath, there's other people that are equally affected and are reaping the benefits of that.
So I think that anybody during this time frame finding ways to keep yourself active, whatever that is, is a good thing. Whatever that is that sparks their passion and makes them happy.
Casey: Do you have any new rituals or habits or sacred spaces that you've developed in this downtime, this quarantine, that you've enjoyed and want to take into the post-quarantine world?
Kevin: I don't know if it's so much as a routine or ritual, so to speak. The one thing that COVID has forced me to do is slow down and appreciate the things that are around me that I already have, versus trying to keep up with the Joneses. Learning that what you say no to is equally as important as what you say yes to. So your most valuable asset is time.
The beautiful thing about the COVID, is it allows us to reconnect with family, reconnect with friends. But in a way very different way than you and I would normally do if we're busy. Let's just say, for example, this world was full and everything was "back to normal." We're living in such a rat race. Things are going by fast. My life consisted of work and sleep, really. And then occasionally, if I had time, I could do a show. So there's one thing that I've learned is just really slow down a little bit, take more time to develop those personal relationships. And it can manifest in weird ways. It can mean we're doing yoga. One of our favorite things that we love doing every Sunday, doesn't matter, we're out on this porch in the morning. We're not really doing anything with digital media. We're just sitting here with books and magazines, drinking coffee, having pastries, and enjoying the simplest thing.
It is being able to sit on the porch, without fear or without concern, if you will, in this little small pocket of what we have and enjoy ourselves. And I think that's kind of what we fight for is just that little snippet of peacefulness, both spiritually and mentally.
Casey: Do you think you'll be able to keep it up?
Kevin: I think so, yeah. I think so. I don't see any reason, unless something really super-sysmic happens. I don't see any reason why we couldn't. Yeah, even just this morning, my wife was reaching out to me and asking, what are the other things that we can do? What other things that we can do to help other people besides ourselves? There's people still affected by the COVID 19. There's people still affected by issues pre COVID 19. There's still people affected by what's going on in the world, as far as the movement is concerned. So finding ways that we can extend and even recognize within that how we've been privileged to be what we want to be and be in the positions we are - how we can extend that to other people and how we can help other people that aren't as fortunate.
So some of the things that we've been able to do - we volunteer at a drug rehabilitation center called Davis Direction in Cobb County. It's for people that are struggling with drug addiction. I've been able to donate photography work for them as well, both from a fundraising standpoint, but also for their subjects that are there. She does job counseling, career counseling, for the people that are coming out of the program. We're getting ready to join the NAACP. We're just finding other ways to extend the olive branch so to speak.
Casey: Looking back, what do you miss that you think will come back and what do you miss that you think won't?
Kevin: We keep hearing the term new normal. I don't know what that means, I don't think anybody knows. I think that the biggest thing that we're going to miss initially, is that social aspect of being able to get together and sit in a theater and watch something and enjoy it together. Or sit in a large sports arena and enjoy something together. Those things were designed specifically for people, regardless of your socio-economic background, supposedly, to be able to sit in a room or sit in an arena and enjoy the same thing without anything else thrown into the mix. So I think that's gonna be the biggest thing that I'm going to miss is that interaction on a larger scale. Simply because I'm fairly gregarious. So everything I've done, it involves people.
I don't know if I'm really, really good at sole isolation, where I'm just going to paint and I'm never going to see anybody again. I think even if you are that person, you still need outside inspiration. You still need to have something that spurs that inspiration. But at the same time, it also makes us a little bit more cognizant, cautious.
I went to my dentist not that long ago, and I joked, I said, "Hey, I don't have to wait anymore. I have an appointment. I can actually show up, and then when I show up that's the time you see me." It's something that's kind of an unfortunate, but weird kind of thing that I've appreciated. Maybe going into a store and it's not so crowded. People are a little bit more aware, from a hygiene standpoint, and wearing a mask and washing their hands a lot. So there are some positives. Granted, it's not something we're used to.
But I think we're a very tough country. We're very flexible. Human beings are very flexible. We can adapt to pretty much any scenario, some for good, some for bad, but we can adapt. You're younger than I am, so I feel I can say this to you. You've lived through several pandemics and epidemics. You just were too young to realize that you were living through them. Somehow we got through them on the other side. One of the core differences about this particular one is that people are a lot more aware, a lot more connected, a lot more woke. They're a lot more intuitive than maybe years past where it was kind of something you could throw away a pandemic that's not happening in your country. "Oh, that's in Africa. I won't have to worry about it." But this is happening everywhere.
Casey: When do you think theater and concerts and those big communal gatherings come back?
Kevin: I don't know if anybody can answer that question. I can see that this would be something that maybe a couple of years from now where we can really comfortably sit in a room together and do. I think outside concerts will still be a thing. People need that release. They need that way of expressing themselves and connecting and coming together. And those are very easy ways to do that. I don't know. We've already proven now that you can still have the movie theater experience, just not in the movie theater, with all the streaming that's going on. It's not death to the entertainment it's just readjusting how entertainment is being presented.
I live in the generation that you had to wait a certain period of time for a program to come on TV. And now we have streaming. And it's really more about I go home and I know my show is going to be there. So theaters and concert-goers and musicians, have to just figure out what that alternative looks like. Who knows? It could be couch concerts. Throwing ideas in the air, but let's say hypothetically, Bruce Springsteen says, "I want to hold a concert in my couch in my living room. It's a little bit more intimate, but you pay X, Y, Z amount, and I'll stream. I'll talk and interact with my fan base, and kind of go from there."
My wife and I had discussed a Broadway theater. They would do a production, maybe they film it, I hate to say this, but maybe without an audience or very minimal audience. And then they stream that. And then you pay a certain, whatever you pay for your Broadway ticket, to go see that. But then maybe there's a surplus package well, "Okay, after the show I get to have a one on one with Audra McDonald. I can talk with her for five minutes and blah, blah, blah, blah.” And they can charge extra for that. You're still supporting the art but you're doing it in a very, very new manner that people are now fairly accustomed to.
Casey: When do you think you as a performer will feel safe going back?
Kevin: That is a loaded question.
Casey: Cause there are theaters doing shows right now.
Kevin: Right.
Casey: Indoors.
Kevin: And it scares me to living pieces. It's interesting because I've seen a lot of audition notices going up in the last three months.
Casey: For theater or for film?
Kevin: Theater. I feel this hesitation in me that I don't know if I'm mentally prepared, but also that there's logistics here that we've never had to deal with before. You know as well as I do, that theater is a very communal, very collaborative, very touchy-feely type of art form that is hard to do when you remove all those things. It's not like a brick-and-mortar corporate job. So I just don't know mentally if I'm really there yet. At least untill we get five or six months down the road, and we get a hold of what this is and get it under control. Because right now that's the biggest thing, is being able to flatten this curve and control it to a point that we know what we're working with. We don't even have numbers, say, "Okay, if we have so many X, Y people in a room. What does that mean?" There's a high probability that theatre-goers are going to experience getting COVID 19. There are places, I haven't seen them in theaters, where they have devices and things that sterilize the air. I don't know how effective those things are, so to speak. But... You know, at least there are places that are trying.
Casey: What do you think you'll look back on in 20 years and remember? What will you have taken out of this time?
Kevin: The biggest thing for me is having empathy. That's the biggest thing is being able to empathize with our fellow human being at the end of the day. And I think that's the center of everything. I think that as an artist, you have to have empathy. Especially as an actor. And be able to at least envision what the shoe is like on the other foot so that if and when, God forbid, we ever have another pandemic or epidemic, it becomes less about you and more about preserving life as we're trying to get back to.
The same thing would go with the Black Lives Matter. Because it's a bigger issue than police. Honestly, the issue is more the police officer kneeling on the back of a black man's neck was definitely a powder keg, but it is a small part of a much larger issue, which is systemic racism. And I was thinking about this today; what we would call unconscious bias that has existed through our country for years. So just being able to put yourself in that position and being able to educate myself to be more empathetic, even more so than I think I am. And I think if you constantly try and constantly have their ears at the pulse of what's going on and other people's viewpoints, doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but just having a firm idea of where they're coming from, you can learn a lot.
It was interesting. I typically like to watch news from a variety of different news sources. And it's fascinating to watch the news from one particular news channel, and another. Part of the most fascinating thing that I saw, and it wasn't so obvious was, the most recent protesters/riots that were going on in Atlanta, were right outside of CNN's door, like right at their door. And if you ever were able to have the capability to go back and watch all the coverage, CNN never really covered it. They covered other cities, Philadelphia and Washington. People that kept the steady stream on that was WSBTV & 46. And the irony of it was the cameras never really left that location, although there were two thousand people in Centennial Olympic Park having this peaceful protest.
So just being able to see the full scope and being more empathetic, I think will help me personally in my day-to-day. You know, when I'm talking with somebody, I'm engaging with somebody, working with somebody, writing something for a character or taking a portrait of somebody. I don't know if you've seen that exercise where there are a bunch of photographers shot this guy who was either an ex-con. And there were some photographers where they didn't tell them they were an ex-con and some photographers they told he was. I thought it was a fascinating exercise on human empathy, really. And also our own personal snapshot of the world, which is always what makes life interesting as well.
So, if I had to take anything away, and I look back, I'm hoping that I am a better person 20 years from now than I was here. I think Muhammad Ali said, “If you live a whole lifetime and you have not changed, if you have not evolved, you have not lived at all.”
