You Will See Me.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Skyscapes
I don't write much these days. Taking photographs seems to have taken the place of words - I say what I want to say with an image, or a stream of images. Sometimes though, the two go together, I take an image and as I see it appear, the words start to jostle and prod for attention. Today in the city where I live, we had a remarkable sunset. The colours changed minute by minute as I made my way home from the centre. I always have my camera with me, and as I stood taking photographs of the sky, people streaming past glanced up briefly, short bursts of interest as to what I was photographing. One woman though, stopped. "I never noticed that!" she said, "thank you for making me look."
That's the thing - we don't look up. We stare ahead, and sometimes down. We miss all that natural beauty - nature performs free aerobatic displays, at times we have, for free, a sky full of glitter, of fireworks, of ruched satin. In winter, we get shiny skies sometimes. Filled with swoops of distant starlings, it is a silver sheet dotted with dark clusters of marcasite. Split, sliced in half, there is cloud and clear sky. As the sun shines onto the cloud from the inside, we get something like the ceiling of an Arabian prince's Bedouin tent. Looking down gives you dog shit and gum spattered pavements.
I'm currently working on producing a 365 of sky photographs, all taken from my top-of-a-hill bedroom window. There are many things wrong with my house, my view is not one of them - a beautiful, fantastic gift to wake to every morning. I think about how many people over the centuries, have stood at the top of this hill and looked out over the hills to the sun and the sky. The view stays the same for us all, yet ever changes.
We should look up more. We should.
I don't write much these days. Taking photographs seems to have taken the place of words - I say what I want to say with an image, or a stream of images. Sometimes though, the two go together, I take an image and as I see it appear, the words start to jostle and prod for attention. Today in the city where I live, we had a remarkable sunset. The colours changed minute by minute as I made my way home from the centre. I always have my camera with me, and as I stood taking photographs of the sky, people streaming past glanced up briefly, short bursts of interest as to what I was photographing. One woman though, stopped. "I never noticed that!" she said, "thank you for making me look."
That's the thing - we don't look up. We stare ahead, and sometimes down. We miss all that natural beauty - nature performs free aerobatic displays, at times we have, for free, a sky full of glitter, of fireworks, of ruched satin. In winter, we get shiny skies sometimes. Filled with swoops of distant starlings, it is a silver sheet dotted with dark clusters of marcasite. Split, sliced in half, there is cloud and clear sky. As the sun shines onto the cloud from the inside, we get something like the ceiling of an Arabian prince's Bedouin tent. Looking down gives you dog shit and gum spattered pavements.
I'm currently working on producing a 365 of sky photographs, all taken from my top-of-a-hill bedroom window. There are many things wrong with my house, my view is not one of them - a beautiful, fantastic gift to wake to every morning. I think about how many people over the centuries, have stood at the top of this hill and looked out over the hills to the sun and the sky. The view stays the same for us all, yet ever changes.
We should look up more. We should.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
FaecesBook
Well it is, isn't it?
I've decided that it is time to snap my addiction to BookFace. It is a time snatcher, a motivation muncher, an anger creator. For some time now I have berated myself for coming in from work, scrolling down my news feed and discovering that before I knew it three hours have passed by and my house is still a tip. I wake in the morning, look who is on chat, waffle about not much (unless it's Jenny, then I laugh, and think). I waste three more hours looking at my friend's cousin's dog with mange, then I go to work. Leaving my house, a hastily tidied tip.
I was recently subjected to a colleagues photographs of a recent holiday - "my suitcase!", "My right flip flop", "my left flip flop", "pre party drinks" (yes, actual photograph of a group of glasses) "my airport chair" (sad face) ". I have spent far too long hiding, blocking, deleting those that offend me (far too many in my intolerant old age), raging about the fabulous argument starting upgrade of messaging "Message seen at: 10:05" *glances at watch, 10:10, RAGEHUFF*.
I can't stand the bad spelling, the poor grammar, the hashtags imported from twitter (why???), the inane groups, the ego massaging, the mortification of seeing my kid spew a volley of f-bombs to her friends - "they're only words mum!"
It is words, and photographs, and cartoons. All the things that I like, only on twatbook, diluted and diluted and diluted of all meaning and sense and beauty, until it is nothing that I like. "Hey, read this poem! (followed by shit, terrible poem, liked by 25 people, gushed over by the 5 of those that could be arsed to leave a comment. Instagram? Stoppit.
Please. Really.
It is too instant. I am losing my ability to disseminate, to consider, to learn, to concentrate, digest. I have always been one to want to know everything about something, right this instant. But, I used to care enough to swallow that impatience, and slowly learn.
I find it hard to read a book these days. I feel as though Pesk is vanishing.
I keep clicking onto my newsfeed to see updates. I get alerts - send Paul some coconuts for his farm, join Sue's army of avengers, help spot Pamela's hidden mystery, bake cakes in Tracey's cafe FUCK OFF.
I lost my eyelashes to racism, as my beautician outed her bigotry in an instant blaze of rage. I did, really. The (hitherto quite lovely) woman who beautified me every month, posted that she voted BNP, after the horrendous killing of the Woolwich Soldier. How could I have not known that about her? That she was filled with ignorant, racist hatred? Because the thing we talked about as she coloured and fixed, was facebook. She must have known her opinions were a bit dodgy, she focused all her postings on photos of her in wellies at a million and one festivals. No BNP rallies though. I cancelled my next appointment.
Othertimes, facebook makes me laugh, as I marvel that my erudite pals are fans of The Oatmeal, Dexter, Abba Tribute Bands. These are things I don't know about them, either.
Scrolling through Facebook is like hiding in all of your pals wardrobes. It is standing against a wall with a glass pressed to my ear, and I don't like it.
Lately, it makes me despair more and more. I see slights where there are none, and I am now not only too lazy to write a letter, I am too lazy to send an email. You don't use facebook IM? Chances are I don't speak to you often then. How terribly lazy facebook has made me.
I am addicted, and I am beginning to despise my drug. I have no doubt I will return - all my photographs are stored there, but I'm changing at least that, slowly, by returning to Flickr.
Much like when I stopped watching television, and started doing (as instructed in the 70's) something much less boring instead, I shall keep doing less boring things instead, until the addiction is gone. I still barely watch TV, but now (20 years later) when I do, I enjoy it. I actually just bought one for the first time ever. Get me! So, I am certain I will return, but only when I don't care about it as much as I do.
I have picked up watercolours, I am making things. It really is, much less boring, and I am not drawn into sadness or anger anywhere near as much. My actual friends send me a text message, call me - I've had more phone calls today than I got in the whole of last week. No longer will colleagues I barely know, know me far too much. No longer will I dread seeing the man I still adore change his status to "In a relationship". No longer will I be privy to stuff that means more than it should, likewise stuff that I don't really give a shit about will remain unseen.
When the addiction is broken, or when I can bear the wilderness no longer, I will go back.
In the meantime, I will get over not being able to post to my status - "I just saw a crow mid flight with a MASSIVE pretzel in it's beak!"
Instead, I will photograph it, paint it, blog it or write a poem about it (move over Ted Hughes).
And, breathe.
PS - my house is no longer a tip. May even get the staircase stripped at this rate...
I've decided that it is time to snap my addiction to BookFace. It is a time snatcher, a motivation muncher, an anger creator. For some time now I have berated myself for coming in from work, scrolling down my news feed and discovering that before I knew it three hours have passed by and my house is still a tip. I wake in the morning, look who is on chat, waffle about not much (unless it's Jenny, then I laugh, and think). I waste three more hours looking at my friend's cousin's dog with mange, then I go to work. Leaving my house, a hastily tidied tip.
I was recently subjected to a colleagues photographs of a recent holiday - "my suitcase!", "My right flip flop", "my left flip flop", "pre party drinks" (yes, actual photograph of a group of glasses) "my airport chair" (sad face) ". I have spent far too long hiding, blocking, deleting those that offend me (far too many in my intolerant old age), raging about the fabulous argument starting upgrade of messaging "Message seen at: 10:05" *glances at watch, 10:10, RAGEHUFF*.
I can't stand the bad spelling, the poor grammar, the hashtags imported from twitter (why???), the inane groups, the ego massaging, the mortification of seeing my kid spew a volley of f-bombs to her friends - "they're only words mum!"
It is words, and photographs, and cartoons. All the things that I like, only on twatbook, diluted and diluted and diluted of all meaning and sense and beauty, until it is nothing that I like. "Hey, read this poem! (followed by shit, terrible poem, liked by 25 people, gushed over by the 5 of those that could be arsed to leave a comment. Instagram? Stoppit.
Please. Really.
It is too instant. I am losing my ability to disseminate, to consider, to learn, to concentrate, digest. I have always been one to want to know everything about something, right this instant. But, I used to care enough to swallow that impatience, and slowly learn.
I find it hard to read a book these days. I feel as though Pesk is vanishing.
I keep clicking onto my newsfeed to see updates. I get alerts - send Paul some coconuts for his farm, join Sue's army of avengers, help spot Pamela's hidden mystery, bake cakes in Tracey's cafe FUCK OFF.
I lost my eyelashes to racism, as my beautician outed her bigotry in an instant blaze of rage. I did, really. The (hitherto quite lovely) woman who beautified me every month, posted that she voted BNP, after the horrendous killing of the Woolwich Soldier. How could I have not known that about her? That she was filled with ignorant, racist hatred? Because the thing we talked about as she coloured and fixed, was facebook. She must have known her opinions were a bit dodgy, she focused all her postings on photos of her in wellies at a million and one festivals. No BNP rallies though. I cancelled my next appointment.
Othertimes, facebook makes me laugh, as I marvel that my erudite pals are fans of The Oatmeal, Dexter, Abba Tribute Bands. These are things I don't know about them, either.
Scrolling through Facebook is like hiding in all of your pals wardrobes. It is standing against a wall with a glass pressed to my ear, and I don't like it.
Lately, it makes me despair more and more. I see slights where there are none, and I am now not only too lazy to write a letter, I am too lazy to send an email. You don't use facebook IM? Chances are I don't speak to you often then. How terribly lazy facebook has made me.
I am addicted, and I am beginning to despise my drug. I have no doubt I will return - all my photographs are stored there, but I'm changing at least that, slowly, by returning to Flickr.
Much like when I stopped watching television, and started doing (as instructed in the 70's) something much less boring instead, I shall keep doing less boring things instead, until the addiction is gone. I still barely watch TV, but now (20 years later) when I do, I enjoy it. I actually just bought one for the first time ever. Get me! So, I am certain I will return, but only when I don't care about it as much as I do.
I have picked up watercolours, I am making things. It really is, much less boring, and I am not drawn into sadness or anger anywhere near as much. My actual friends send me a text message, call me - I've had more phone calls today than I got in the whole of last week. No longer will colleagues I barely know, know me far too much. No longer will I dread seeing the man I still adore change his status to "In a relationship". No longer will I be privy to stuff that means more than it should, likewise stuff that I don't really give a shit about will remain unseen.
When the addiction is broken, or when I can bear the wilderness no longer, I will go back.
In the meantime, I will get over not being able to post to my status - "I just saw a crow mid flight with a MASSIVE pretzel in it's beak!"
Instead, I will photograph it, paint it, blog it or write a poem about it (move over Ted Hughes).
And, breathe.
PS - my house is no longer a tip. May even get the staircase stripped at this rate...
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Aaaand another one gone and another one gone, another one bites the dust.
So, HMV is about to be no more. The biggest of all the high street music retailers, joins Tower, Our Price and even Woolworths as it finally falls to the floor, beaten to a bloody, pulpy death by the piracy revolution, and the lure of mp3s, Mr owneverything apple and it's iTune store, Amazon and it's track for 10p, have they killed the disc? After all, no one really wants a bulky piece of anything anymore. Some people tried to whip up a retro love for the 7" vinyl single a while back and grainy photographs of old Dansette record players adorn Facebook's reminiscent groups, but really - who wants to make space for them, or worse, for the hardware that takes up more than say, 4" these days? Who wants to have a shelf full of - well, full of anything? The Kindle says - no more books. The mp3 player says - no more CDs.
No more arguments about the arrangement of CDs - should they be sorted alphabetically by artist or album title? Or genre? (answer; alphabetically, by artist. Last name only.) No more inviting in ones latest limerent fancy and watching with bated breath as he or she casts a surreptitious eye over your music of choice, wishing you'd put the Best of The Carpenters in back to front, and left Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures askew by the player, casually of course, not deliberately placed for that justontheoffchanceheshemaycomebacktonight.
Mind you, neither will there be the saddest cardboard boxes in the world sat by the front door as your ex leaves with half your collection, insisting that he/she bought that TalkTalk import album (thanks David, actually, *I* bought that. I bet you still have it, you arse).
Books have gone the same way - no more "Anna Karenina" left artfully abandoned on the bedside table. A leatherbound kindle doesn't have the same look of studious intelligence, the same smell, or the same fallingopenatafavouritepassage way about it. No one can point at your copy of "Andy Kaufman - Revealed!" on your kindle, and flicking through it, casually ask "Can I borrow this?" thus prompting a joyful realisation that this person wishes to return to you (Or, steal the book). No, you can't borrow my ebooks. Not unless you register your own as Pesk's 4th Kindle, and send it, whizzing through the ether in a maze of vowel and consonant to your own ereader.
Sigh.
The first single I bought, was Spacer's Magic Fly. I'd had 7" singles gifted to me throughout my childhood from my fabulous Uncle Robin (R.I.P) - the opening bars of T. Rex's "Ride a White Swan thrill me to this day, the last he passed to me was The Knack's "My Sharona". And Aunty Belinda and I used to loll on the floor at Grandma's house with her collection of KTel soundalike albums, picking up the needle and moving it back onto Pilot's "January" over and over again, rattling and creasing our copies of Popswop and fab 208, going over and over the lyrics until we were word (if not tone) perfect.
The first album I bought was Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene. How I loved that album, played it to death before I moved away from electronica and towards punk. I loved the sleeve (there's another thing - no more cover art - on anything!) and would lay on the floor listening again and again, the swirling music promising something a million miles away from my green bobbly bedroom carpet that gave me static shocks as I slid across it in my popsocks and the neighbour who loved to listen to Errol Brown inbetween shouting at her brother. Jean Michel Jarre was romance, was brilliance, was bloody FRENCH. I bet he didn't have a neighbour called Shazza either.
Last week, my daughter's boyfriend bought me the album again, new, wrapped in cellophane, the greens and blues of the cardboard cover - oh! The beauty, the memories. It sits now on my bedroom BOOKshelf, where I can see (if not play) it. He bought it from HMV.
As the kid that bought the original, I didn't have access an HMV, a Tower Records, an Our Price. I just had Woolworths for singles, and a locally owned shop called Herrick Watson's. They also sold posters, TVs and stereos. There was the dad, all serious and slightly mysterious with his grey hair and stern face, and his son and daughter working the music section with their cool hip BestJobInTheWorld faces on. The shop is still there, but I can't help thinking it won't be for long.
Shame that.
So, HMV is about to be no more. The biggest of all the high street music retailers, joins Tower, Our Price and even Woolworths as it finally falls to the floor, beaten to a bloody, pulpy death by the piracy revolution, and the lure of mp3s, Mr owneverything apple and it's iTune store, Amazon and it's track for 10p, have they killed the disc? After all, no one really wants a bulky piece of anything anymore. Some people tried to whip up a retro love for the 7" vinyl single a while back and grainy photographs of old Dansette record players adorn Facebook's reminiscent groups, but really - who wants to make space for them, or worse, for the hardware that takes up more than say, 4" these days? Who wants to have a shelf full of - well, full of anything? The Kindle says - no more books. The mp3 player says - no more CDs.
No more arguments about the arrangement of CDs - should they be sorted alphabetically by artist or album title? Or genre? (answer; alphabetically, by artist. Last name only.) No more inviting in ones latest limerent fancy and watching with bated breath as he or she casts a surreptitious eye over your music of choice, wishing you'd put the Best of The Carpenters in back to front, and left Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures askew by the player, casually of course, not deliberately placed for that justontheoffchanceheshemaycomebacktonight.
Mind you, neither will there be the saddest cardboard boxes in the world sat by the front door as your ex leaves with half your collection, insisting that he/she bought that TalkTalk import album (thanks David, actually, *I* bought that. I bet you still have it, you arse).
Books have gone the same way - no more "Anna Karenina" left artfully abandoned on the bedside table. A leatherbound kindle doesn't have the same look of studious intelligence, the same smell, or the same fallingopenatafavouritepassage way about it. No one can point at your copy of "Andy Kaufman - Revealed!" on your kindle, and flicking through it, casually ask "Can I borrow this?" thus prompting a joyful realisation that this person wishes to return to you (Or, steal the book). No, you can't borrow my ebooks. Not unless you register your own as Pesk's 4th Kindle, and send it, whizzing through the ether in a maze of vowel and consonant to your own ereader.
Sigh.
The first single I bought, was Spacer's Magic Fly. I'd had 7" singles gifted to me throughout my childhood from my fabulous Uncle Robin (R.I.P) - the opening bars of T. Rex's "Ride a White Swan thrill me to this day, the last he passed to me was The Knack's "My Sharona". And Aunty Belinda and I used to loll on the floor at Grandma's house with her collection of KTel soundalike albums, picking up the needle and moving it back onto Pilot's "January" over and over again, rattling and creasing our copies of Popswop and fab 208, going over and over the lyrics until we were word (if not tone) perfect.
The first album I bought was Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene. How I loved that album, played it to death before I moved away from electronica and towards punk. I loved the sleeve (there's another thing - no more cover art - on anything!) and would lay on the floor listening again and again, the swirling music promising something a million miles away from my green bobbly bedroom carpet that gave me static shocks as I slid across it in my popsocks and the neighbour who loved to listen to Errol Brown inbetween shouting at her brother. Jean Michel Jarre was romance, was brilliance, was bloody FRENCH. I bet he didn't have a neighbour called Shazza either.
Last week, my daughter's boyfriend bought me the album again, new, wrapped in cellophane, the greens and blues of the cardboard cover - oh! The beauty, the memories. It sits now on my bedroom BOOKshelf, where I can see (if not play) it. He bought it from HMV.
As the kid that bought the original, I didn't have access an HMV, a Tower Records, an Our Price. I just had Woolworths for singles, and a locally owned shop called Herrick Watson's. They also sold posters, TVs and stereos. There was the dad, all serious and slightly mysterious with his grey hair and stern face, and his son and daughter working the music section with their cool hip BestJobInTheWorld faces on. The shop is still there, but I can't help thinking it won't be for long.
Shame that.
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