aaron farley photographer: Kuwait

I went to Kuwait a couple months ago.. to cover the Operation Myspace show. I'd never been to the middle east before. My feelings on the whole experience are all over the place. It was pretty amazing, although I didn't get to experience much of Kuwait, other than the airport and the road to the army base, it was pretty surreal. We were only there for 48 hours, and a bunch of those hours were spent waiting around for sound check and talking to soldiers about cameras, ipods, drum sets, and X-boxes. Within 15 minutes of being on the base, we had seen a movie explaining the history of the base, summing up both gulf wars in that time, while interspersing GW explaining our fight for freedom, and then it was off to the firing range. They had everyone in our camp excited about shooting and killing (fake enemies, with fake ammunition) within the hour. The guns at the range were all hooked up to air compressors so the sounds and kick were real. It was all i could do not to shoot, cause I love shooting guns, it just felt a bit weird, shooting terrorist vehicles, on a video screen in the middle of Kuwait, within minutes of being there, so i just decided to watch. All the soldiers and everyone on the base were amazingly nice and I had great conversations with a bunch of people. The show was what it was, the Army LOVES Disturbed, and the Pussy Cat Dolls. And Jessica Simpson was a flop. Z-Trip's set was mind blowing! He had everyone freaking out over his metal/breakbeat set, then ended it up with a slow number, interspersing Jello Biafra's famous quote.. "We support the troops more, because we say bring them home!!" and everyone was cheering and crying, super intense! Gave me a bit of hope. And to end it all, on the flight home we flew over Iraq at dawn and there were plumes of smoke wafting through the desert, which made for beautiful photos, but I'm glad i was 30,000 ft up in the air. I feel for all the people over there, everyone has there own reasons, and I suspect that most of them would love to be home instead. Hopefully that will be soon.