One Year Vow of Silence for Nashua Yale Grad

NASHUA, NH -- In his 21 years, Greg Hindy has been a man of many obsessions.

He talks about them now in retrospect because he's so over the trappings of his over-achieving youth – a trajectory of hard work and high ambition that led him to the top of his graduating class at Nashua High School North four years ago, and pushed him to be among the top cross-country high school runners during his four years there. 

He went on to attend Yale University, where every other person on his dorm floor had, like him, been valedictorian of their respective graduating classes. 

That was the beginning of what has been a series of important realizations for Hindy.

"It's was freeing. It makes you feel like you've arrived at a place where everyone's good at school, so that doesn't have to be your thing anymore," Hindy  said. "I didn't really do any worse, grade-wise, when I worried less; I just worried less about it, and that helped me in other areas."

He can talk about it now because, in four short weeks, he will begin a new obsession, one that includes a one-year vow of silence.

Hindy will walk from New Hampshire to California, a one-year trek that begins July 9 on his 22nd birthday, ending on July 9, 2014, in Los Angeles.

Along the way he will take photographs using an old-school field camera. He will have pocket money for food, and will haul anything else he might need with him for survival, following a southern route to avoid cold weather. 

If he needs to communicate with someone he will rely on pre-written cards or an emergency notebook. Not talking is one of the important rules that elevates his year-long walk to California, from tedium to performance art.

Explains Hindy on his Kickstarter page, which he used to successfully raise $8,000 in about six weeks:  

I am not looking to do a performance in front of a live audience, I am doing something that will mostly be appreciated after the fact. Part of what makes it a performance is that it includes adhering to strict rules, which are designed not for fun or convenience or for the purpose of taking better photographs, but for the purpose of making a statement as an artist. This will involve a significant amount of physical and mental endurance, as well as integrity. The photographs that result from it will be taken under these conditions, and it is my hope that this embedded context will color them in a way that gives them more meaning. I think that anybody who can understand the performance and draw meaning from all the silence and the walking will be more than rewarded by photographs.

He says he has no regrets about his four years at Yale. Although it didn't lead him down a preordained path, it helped him find some clarity.

"I floundered for a little while trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life – pre-med or grad school for cognitive science, which is what I majored in," Hindy said.

"Halfway through I kind of started to transform a little bit and come to a new perspective on how I see things. A lot of that had to do with falling in love with art and realizing there could be  something I could do with my life that wasn't just another thing I'm obsessed with, but something I had passion for," Hindy said. 

Hindy is dedicating this experience to performance artist Tehching Hsieh, whose work became inspirational to Hindy during his art studies. Hsieh is known for various one-year projects, such as shaving his head and punching a time clock every hour on the hour, taking a self-portrait each time he punched the clock, ultimately creating a six-minute movie, his growing hair marking the passage of time.

Hindy says the ritual of following rules and parameters for one year is relevant in his own life, and his own obsession with beating a prescribed system to achieve academic success.

"I found it all very unsatisfying. In high school I had the idea that all my studying would become more satisfying at a higher level in college, and come to mean more to me. But I didn't find the course work in college to be any more meaningful. It seemed like a never-ending cycle – work hard in high school so you can work harder at college and then work harder at whatever the next level is," Hindy said.

He's looking forward to spending one year of experiencing life within the silence of introspection. He will make a video before he leaves in which he explains his objectives. Then, no more words until he gets to the other side of America – at least, that's the plan. Like all art, it will be subject to change based on what Hindy discovers along the way.

"I'm interested a lot in the passage of time and the way people can change, and I think controlling variables and saying I'm going to be doing these specific things makes the video part more interesting to me. I'm so curious to know what the outcome will be at the end. I'm going to abstain completely from all reading or writing," which includes not making any notes about his journey.

Normally, that's something that would worry him. But that is where the photographs come into play.

"The fact that I'm worried about it, afraid of a year passing and I haven't been reading books or consuming the culture I've been so focused on my whole life, that's an important part of this experience," Hindy said.

He is deliberately using a cumbersome camera to track his journey.

"The reason I use it is because it takes time to set up. You have to put a dark cloth over your head to use it. I use one sheet of film at a time, and it turns out that I have an amazing memory of every single picture I've taken with that camera. The photos remind me of what I was doing that day, before and after, so I think of the operation of the camera itself as a way to help me not forget what happens to me," Hindy said. "I'm interested to get home and go through the pictures and write down everything I can remember about each picture."

He is not sure where he will be, one year out, except that he will be several thousand miles from Nashua with a year's worth of photographs to analyze.

His family is supportive – especially since they've had time to get used to the idea. Of course, they will worry. But Hindy is confident that he will return with a greater sense of himself, and his place in the world.

"I see it as a project that really is the beginning of my career as an artist. I think that I've definitely gotten people confused, especially people from high school. I wouldn't have gotten to this point if I hadn't gone to Yale. If I hadn't been at a college with such a competitive  environment, I wouldn't have wanted to find my way out of that," Hindy said.

"There's a certain urgency everyone has at Yale, to figure things out and succeed, to see every kind of person succeeding in different ways has led me to a place where I want to carve my own path," Hindy said. "If I'd been at a college that would have challenged me less, I would've stuck with whatever I came in doing."