Feeling a bit glum this evening as my situation is now becoming something of a worry. Still, everything passes and all things improve as a matter of the natural course of life, or so I have found! It’s just that this period of immobility is tending to linger rather too long and I am concerned about ‘issues’ of age and other things!
On a lighter note, I have been helping Mr N to cut the grass in the churchyard today which is always an enjoyable get away. We also went up into the tower to re-set the church clock just as a team of ringers started up! The sound in the bell room was defining but standing just a few feet below the very large bells as they swung through 270 degrees at very high velocity was quite a scary experience. I’m sure I could feel the whole tower shaking with all of that mass in motion!
The weather has turned a bit dull but it is a pleasant spring-like dullness, fresh and scented air at a very comfortable temperature, ideal cycling conditions. Last weekend I rode up to Timperley to see Brother and SIL, always a most enjoyable adventure and my first proper long ride of the year. Toby and I ended up riding all over Hale and then mooching around the fields at the bottom of Shay Lane / Ash Lane were we used to play as kids and I just wish I had a camera with me then.
Photographic activities are slowly moving along and I have an idea to do some more B&W of the locality, just waiting for the right sky at the right time of day with the sun in the right position for desired effects on some of my planned shots! I feel a strange dual pull to both comply with more traditional forms of photographic reportage but also to bend the rules and try to find or develop my own unique style and then stick with that. Many have defined my approach as ‘multi genre’ that means that I don’t have any readily definable style but instead just happen to evoke other styles by accident when the mood, subject and camera settings take me! Still I tend to cite Brandt, White and occasionally Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham as inspirational sources. I think these old school art photographers really did set out the fundamental agenda for the creative photographer and there are few I can think of since that have really added to the kind of approach that most interests me. One, which puts a great deal of emphasis on subject matter transcended by technique. I only wish I had gear that was capable of f64 Group levels of finesse!
Total Mileage: 10,098
I’m still quite enjoying the abundance of free time and the sense of not having to rush along with things or avoid certain things altogether because of a need to adhere to a certain hierarchy of events / chores / activities through the weekend. I spent most of the afternoon lazily returning from a trip to Macc. This time cycling back along the Bollin Valley Way but taking all sorts of exploratory detours and looking for photo opportunities. I really do need to record more of my experiences with my camera.
Last week was a particularly difficult time for me both emotionally and physically. My new-found loneliness is not getting any easier and I do miss Gill and the boys such a lot. Sometimes I find it hard to get motivated or inspired to be creative. I was also struck down for the fourth time with the most appalling acute toothache resulting from yet another smoking and stress related abscess. The situation could have been a lot worse when I discovered that my local dentist had ‘struck me off’ due to missing a couple of previous appointments. That was back in the days when I used to feel such a strong commitment to my employer that I would even go all the way into Manchester with chronic tooth pain just so that I could make sure certain ‘clients’ where up to date. Of course, it’s not clever, or heroic, and I feel a return to the days of union lead contempt for this kind of corporate sycophancy is long over due. Fortunately, I did manage to get treated by the NHS emergency centre in Macclesfield. Then re-register with another practice in Macc and hey presto, my new dentist said that he can treat and restore the tooth that others said would have to be ripped out and all at a very reasonable NHS cost, viva the NHS! Yet another smoking cessation is one of the more positive side benefits of the recent dental malaise and this abstinence appears to be ongoing. I’m really going to quit once and for all this time!
I managed to miss all of the local snow bound photo opportunities due to the general discomfort of the last few days not to mention the groggy side effects of painkillers and antibiotics. I had in mind a few shots up in the fields in virgin snowfall conditions, my solitary footprints disappearing into the distance, that sort of thing, existentialism in the English landscapes no less! These would then be infra red processed in B&W. It may still be possible to do this as yet more snow is forecast.
One of the highlights of last week was helping my friend Rob with a bonfire in the Churchyard on a rather beautiful winter day. Rob is the village’s entertaining and erudite odd job man, an ex merchant seaman with allegiances to the beat generation and early counter culture ideology who never really sold out! I always think of Rob as a sort of legacy of the 70s heyday of Cheshire (country) living fashion when places like Prestbury would not have been completely devoid of creative bohemians, youthful eccentrics and other colourful characters with maverick anti conservative values. It is these little moments with Rob that help to keep me sane in Prestbury. It is the meeting of minds, the joy of simple pleasures and the shared love of the environment. This is always combined with a healthy dose of often comedic bourgeois bashing and the deconstruction of consumer capitalism (consumer moron culture) with plenty of Jazz and situationist detours not to mention a healthy dose of pythonesque self mockery.
It’s that time of year again, though the atmosphere is strangely subdued.
The Yule tide is going to be a solitary event (mostly) for yours truly this year, though there will be the usual round of get-togethers with brother and SIL which I am looking forward to as always.
My current employment situation could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t for so much support from ex colleagues, something for which I am deeply grateful. Networking opportunities seem to abound and hope springs eternal plus any other cliches that come to mind. An almost lost university friend has come back on the scene too, just before she is off to Africa on yet another amazing and purposeful adventure. Of course, it all serves to illustrate just how dull my existence is in comparison, but it is inspiring in its own way. However, I can’t think further than another technical job at the moment, though as always, the allusive Broadcast field beckons once again.
The noble ideals of situationism have become something of an obsession lately but now I have the opportunity to engage with other like-minded individuals through various Face Book groups. Situationism offers some form of inspiration and hope in the current circumstances. I think it is a golden opportunity to disengage with the ‘spectacle’ of consumerism and become more creative and truthful. They always say that hardship and adversity lead to enhanced creative insight and I tend to think that there is some truth in this, at least on a personal level. At one time the disengagement with the shallow and artificial concerns of consumerism lead to an enhancement of greater cultural and spiritual awareness on a societal level. Though now I feel that we have become too dumbed down, too automated by capitalism and the notion that you are what you own to ever reach the hights of transcendent living. The notion of creativity has been usurped by the ‘society of the spectacle’ to such an extent that now the idea of creativity is just another form of commerce. Creativity as a business plan, or vomit inducing Christmas TV schedule and not a cypher for the enhancement of natural lived experience.
Who knows what 2009 will bring, but we may just see the emergence of some form of radical ideal, or the development of a new cult idea; but I’m not holding my breath.
Music of the moment:-
Emanative When on Earth and Sun Ra When Angels Speak of Love
Emanative is a relatively new find (courtesy Giles Peterson) and a most enjoyable one. This experimental Nu Jazz outfit from London crosses a range of boundaries but their soulful songs are as smooth as velvet. Dear old Sun Ra is guaranteed to provide the perfect accompaniment to the most enchanted and thoughtful moods, enlightening our existence here on planet Earth long after his return to outer space.
Happy Yule to all my occasional fleeting and chance reader(s)
Karen (a very close and dear friend) has sent a post card today praising my web activities! I think she has been more or less oblivious to these efforts during the course of our long friendship that goes right back to college days. Although she is only fifteen miles away we have never the less continued to engaged in something of an ongoing and quite significant exchange of letters. I write many thousands of words each year, and now this “project” seems to have acquired something of a shared semi biographical significance. A veritable repository of crystallized thought constituting an on-going account of a life shared through mutual interests and understanding. It is of course much more significant than these rather tired old weblog entries. I think I am often quite exhausted from putting so much of my writing effort into the wonderful Kaz letters.
No change as of today, the general situation continues to be the same and my attitude and mood is also relatively unchanged, see previous entries, revolution is in the air…certainly in this house. I wonder about the possibility of becoming a green activist? Though, I wouldn’t half mind getting back into the Inland Revenue if only to pursue certain organisations and swoop on even the slightest hint of miss doings. I quite liked the possibility for “righteous” power that came with a job in the Revenue!