Cemetery Pure

You look into his face and your third eye opens up as if from some latent slumber and a pressure builds as clarity ensues like the moments of an untimely wake up while deep in a dream state. This is a man entrenched, consumed and ensconced in a level of spiritual purity that requires ceremony and offering for every task of the day, washing, eating changing clothes, all is a careful meditation. The imposition of this energy is literally palpable.

On this day the task was something of a finality to the burial process, brought on by a promise made by a relative of the deceased. The promise was fulfilled as the conditions of that contract were upheld and this elaborate ceremony ensued.

The aura of these events has the intensity, festivity and intense reverence of A wedding a Birthday party and a vipissana retreat intertwined in an exceptionally obscure way. Everything runs in  perfect synchronicity, including the mood. A very curious experience indeed.

Waiting for the Light

The day is defined by its light, generating a myriad of moods in its intensity or lack thereof. The light that warms our skin, just five minutes before it splays and refracts into the rigidity of our atmosphere, was created in the intensity of fission and its raucous ferocity. Something born of such violence casting shadow and light on our moments, our lives, capable of creating clarity and confusion simultaneously is nothing less than an ongoing phenomenon.

So I straddle my bike and blast my way to an impact zone in hope of documenting something more impossible and intriguing than magic, as it strikes a location, bustling with serenity and takes control of its mood like a hypnotist in a hurry.

In Contrast, in another time in another location and from a variable source, the light did this to my attempt to capture and contain its invasive nature. Linking these micro seconds locked away is the proximity to an ocean and…. Nothing more.

Light, it’s an interesting concept to say the least.

Drive by Shooting

Bali has changed, radically. It was inevitable as we all know and those who live here see it ravenously digesting itself and reconstituting that matter into something different, its origins strewn amongst the waste but still prominent, hiding behind a curtain of pseudo westernisation. This is most prominent in its southern regions, a victim of its own success and phoenix like quality of literally rising from the flames to begin a new path to destruction in a different sense, the uninhibited pursuit of wealth instead of happiness. But amongst this renovation of thought and form lies a new beauty, oxymoronically, a beauty in its ugliness.

Bali has changed, radically. It was inevitable as we all know and those who live here see it ravenously digesting itself and reconstituting that matter into something different, its origins strewn amongst the waste but still prominent, hiding behind a curtain of pseudo westernisation. This is most prominent in its southern regions, a victim of its own success and phoenix like quality of literally rising from the flames to begin a new path to destruction in a different sense, the uninhibited pursuit of wealth instead of happiness. But amongst this renovation of thought and form lies a new beauty, oxymoronically, a beauty in its ugliness.
Images taken by various photographers hide these changes and try to create a sense of the antiquated Bali; the way it was before we came and became solo colonials (read my blog titled so, to fully understand this phrase).
I say embrace this change in all its filth and gluttony and see amongst it the facets of human nature that cannot be changed, only then, through acceptance and understanding can we re-asses the past to forge a different existence in the future, one without regret.
As Socrates put it “pleasure is something that is not temporary but survives time and is pleasurable now and in the future” Paying great heed to this axiom could save mankind from the regret of literally paving paradise to put up a parking lot. Jodi Mitchell, the Prophet, we the uninvited guests throwing concrete around and fashioning it into something we deem pleasurable until we realise that 50,000 other people are doing it and seriously blocking our view.
So here’s what I did, I got in a car and shot from the comfort of the rear passenger seat covering a great many kilometres in search of beauty, I found it everywhere. Here it is.