“If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?”
-Gloria Steinem-
It has been a six month long daydream of mine to make 5 second long videos, where I put my feet and other objects in the various shoes I find around the world while I intone a cooing…
“Ooooh, shoe”.
This vision did not come to me flatfooted, footloose and fancy free. It came after weeks of brainstorming on how my colleagues and I might produce a 365 day, 365 minute, 365 episode soap opera about clowns.
As a storyteller one of the considerations I must make in the stories I tell is their length. Our attention span as a species has been battered. There are days I have trouble just paying attention to single words. As I write this very story, I forget what it is I was talking about.
Uh?
What?
Uh?
Who?
“Ooooh, shoe”.
The narrator of our video series is someone enthralled with the shoe. They are no historian, the value of shoe to them is present moment only, awe and delight in the moment of shoe. No shoe variety can go without recognition and praise. Give me loafers and sneakers and sandals and heels. Show me cleats, clogs, cross trainers and crocs. Slip-ons or strap-ons, any shoe I can put on. Shoe is an endless variety. I press record on the camera and a left foot goes into a shoe.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
A right foot goes into a shoe.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
A small foot, a big foot, a hand, or a finger. Broccoli, wasabi, pickles, peppers and pastrami. I hatch an egg from the shoe. I plant a cactus in the shoe. I shove a shoe into a shoe inside of the shoe.
Shoe becomes cover.
Shoe becomes home.
Shoe becomes TV.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
A friend told me last week that anxiety lives in your feet. This is why I run every day. I want to beat the thoughts that hinder me into submission. I want every step forward to be a boundless gait into an endless future.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
The earliest shoe was a sagebrush bark sandal, proof that man in 8000BC was likely a hippy or a beachgoer. In the following centuries most shoes were made of dead animal.
We wore bear feet to avoid being bare foot.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
What if my shoes could think? What might my size 14 black leather velcro strap orthopedic say to the worn bright blue and orange running sneaker camped out on its head.
“You stink!?!”
What might my foot say to the laces on the shoe’s tongue.
“Hold me tight?”
“Ooooh, shoe”.
The shoes in my house have become sentient.
They have taken to taking themselves out on night walks, sharing philosophy while they shuffle quietly across the broken asphalt. My yellow anaconda cowboy boots smoke hand rolls and whistle towards the moon. My baby blue hiking sandals cough a little as they hang in the hammock, beach sand chalking their rubber lips. I got two bright sneakers that keep to themselves and dream of an old mountain walk in slippery small towns. The two pakistani handmade slippers, braided leather to split between toes, are tucked forgotten in a wicker hamper, long since hoping they might get shown to the world again.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
The type of shoe I wear says a lot about me. Possibly not enough about itself?
My high heels and dress shoes tell me I’m fancy, while my sneakers say I’m a casual hang. My slippers tell me I’m cozy, my sandals I’m lazy. My unworn unboxed 1993 white and red Air Jordan’s sleep in my mom’s hoarded basement hoping to make me money someday. I got wedding shoes from ten years ago waiting for another occasion special enough to wear a barely fitting khaki suit. All these shoes are holding my thoughts and memories.
What should I make of all the shoes I’ve outgrown, run through or tossed out and forgotten? Have they outgrown and forgotten me as well?
“Ooooh, shoe”.
I wish I am shoe. I hope that I am a pair, so that I may be worn. Few walk with just one. The ideal of shoe is two. I must be both so that I may be. I wish also to be new, so that I may be seen at my best. Is this misguided? Is the best version of me alone in a store waiting to be bought? Or am I best out there on the feet of the world, shielding them from the pain of earth's tiny sticky dried-grassy-spiky-weed-things that leave the skin with endless annoying painful pricks.
What good is my life unworn?
I might see nothing if I’m left inside of a box.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
OK.
I am shoe now.
I have a sole.
I’m available for most feet (online but not in store). You can wear me every day. I am plain colored, unobtrusive. Look down and see me. Set me on your shelf. Take a sharpie and write your name on my forehead, that way everyone will know I am yours.
I kiss the earth.
I caress your foot.
Please wear socks, for your skin feels too intimate and oily. I will grow old and wither. You can keep me forever, but you will need to replace my parts. I am hard to wash and easy to wear. I am silent without you, hiding small thoughts like little rocks in the forgettable unfindable corners within me.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
Will you remember me when I am gone? All the hikes we shared?
How about the time we went to the park together and sat on a bench to feed the ducks at sunset. You took the water from the pond and held a cloth with your peach leather fingers, wiping slowly the dirt and bird mess from my banana white tip. You blew on me, drying your clean to my stain, and you set me next to you on the ground, faced to the feathered show.
You slept on the bench above me, your snoring patterned like waves as the wind and sky grew darker and more settled. The birds had long since left when we gathered and took a night stroll to your favorite place to wind up. Whiskey filled your breath as you bent and unlaced me before bed.
You kicked me in a corner, but then politely took me by the shoulder and set me with my partner, left shoe, right at the door on a mat of wooly dry mud. The lights went off and you went to bed and I thought about what a great friend you are, taking me everywhere, sharing your time and adventures with me.
“Ooooh, shoe”.
Anyhow, here is the first of those shoe videos I promised.
Shoe me.
“You cannot put the same shoe on every foot.”
-Publilius Syrus-
…thanks to and and for your help picking out my shoes…i wouldn’t be a Foote without you…all photos taken by the fingers on my hand feete…
“Is the best version of me alone in a store waiting to be bought?”
This is what I like best about your writing. I’m reading along, and you have me thinking you’re just goofing off with words, and then a line—tucked in among the word play, the banter, and the holding of words curiously to the light—strikes into a deeper level. That’s cool.
A devastating critique of corporate greed in the shoe industry and a timely call for responsible shoe stewardship in our culture of runaway shoe consumption.
Just kidding, I love your style man! And you know what, I did listen to the end of the recording. Fun stuff. After all the setup the little video gave me a legit laugh. 🙏