Capatalism, Movies & Tangents

It's funny, the concept of cinema, how something so ugly has to happen to create things of such beauty. Hollywood wins the battle sometimes by perpetuating the visual and mind numbing torment, a reflection of itself, but sometimes something so profound eclipses the failures and makes the existence of such self centred madness seem almost invaluable to humanity.

 I wonder if the donations from the most shallow consumerist societies, to the poor, even put a dent in the armoured cataclysm of their destructive nature. The truth is no, it doesn't. There is no glory in donating in a way that doesn't even allow some discussion as to the occurrence of altruism within the transaction.

Hollywood, fuelled by consumerism, inspiring the aspiring to positions of mass consumerism in reward for debauching their creations of insightful entertainment, benefits us in a way that maybe a well produced theatre production would. Theater, a purer form of entertainment for the sake of art and without the cash incentives that attract the ego maniacal greedy fucks swooping in like vultures with aspirations of generating enough corpses for the world to chow down on and having only one seat at the table. A strange yet obvious metaphor for greed and excess, but if we say it enough times it might sink in long enough to implement an inkling of change and eventually..... Hope.

Everything is connected in the strangest ways, which, on a positive note, means that change is actually very easy if it begins in the correct place. Where is that place? Well, if you want to de venom a snake, you don’t pull it out of the stomach or the arse, do you.

Connectivity

As life succeeds itself through the process of time, relentlessly and without consideration for those who wish to  relish a single moment; I have become aware of an incomprehensible, space time ignoring, rubber-like fibre connecting me with those most important to my journey.  What a sentence that was... with a nice milky clarity to it. Ambiguous yes, but when you become aware of it the ambiguity dissolves like two plinks and the fizz of your hang over cure.

These connections seem inescapable; I'm trying as we speak but maybe their relevance cannot and will not be ignored. They connect me to people, situations, memories, patterns, the unlearned lesson and life rebounds me back to these effectors. It appears they are not done with me yet. I’m completely sure those in question are completely unaware of the magnitude of their influence. As am I.

I have a Theory. Here it is:

My theory is that in this life we learn from those who learn from us and if we don't get stuck in the interconnectivity these relationships propagate, we progress rapidly and without limit. The necessary capacity one must have for this process is acceptance, accepting that you have learned and taught what was available to the two interlocutors involved and excepting that being consumed with everything around the interaction, the purpose of this phase, and gelling with it on an unnecessarily permanent basis, will impede your progress. Maybe this is why some religions believe in many lives and reincarnations, too much to be expected to learn in one lifetime by a fair God anyway.

Breaking these attachments is hard and unnecessary, wives, children, friends, loved ones etc.... I suppose I'd like to be able to manage them differently, without jealousy or resent and hope and belief in the abilities of all around me. This is hard I Know but one day, maybe we’ll allow each other to excel, to realise aspirations experiences, excitement and adventure, just like we hoped for others in the first place. Well, those we love. Let’s just hope it was happiness and satisfaction we wanted for those we love, otherwise we’d have to question our definition of love and re write the list of those dearest to us. Eventual the list would dwindle like a star at dawn and realisation might overcome you as you realise you’ve scratched off your own name aswell.

What a fine & irrelevant rant this is... necessary only to clarify my own thoughts and to seek out those who believe in the process and give them hope that their decision to achieve their dream and fight for their desire was right, despite the resent of those who love and care for them. The saying goes if you love something let it free... so love it as it is, in its entirety and not as a possession with obligations.

I hope I can do this. I really do. but at the moment I'm consumed with the idea of the freedom it would give me if everyone else did it for me... let me chase down my dreams and aspirations of enlightenment, very selfish but the world has a way of teaching you every side of the task in hand, showing every point of view and gauging your reaction. Sometimes, you here it laughing at you and when you realise why, you laugh at yourself too.

-If you connected yourself to bungees of varied length and torsion, to things of varied distances from where you stood right now, in 4 dimensions, feeling the strain of those connections while you were fixed in place awaiting the release, what could be described as the beginning; where do you end up at the point of entropy, after bouncing around between situations like life sped up?  Balanced in the middle between all the forces around you…..

Balanced. You’d probably feel quite relieved too-

I hope none of this makes sense. If it does then see someone about it ;)

Pivotal Moments

A journey began and ended in the space of 8 Days. This journey fluctuated between travel and adventure, excitement and despair, elation, confusion, delusion and perfect moments of stunning beauty.

Yogyakarta to Solo on a 1969 Honda S90a, train to Surabaya, Surabaya to Malang Malang to the Bromo attempt and the hospitality of the Head of the village, in a place where the Sunsets on one volcano and the full moon rises on the other. Back to Malang, off to Probalingo to pick up a '74 CB100 to split the weight of two on a 42 year old bike and on and on and on......

The taste of Bali in the dark of night seeped through my taste buds to my soul and an eruption of elation emanated profoundly from my essence, my being, Me, alive in this world. The cascade of stars that blurred with subtlety overhead magnified the significance of our existence in the universe, well, to me anyway. I felt alive with the sense of adventure, the new, the unseen and the things we had seen along the road.



Coming soon: 90 Reasons to Ride 


Movie, Photography & the Bikes that made the journey possible.....

Focus on the Blur

After shooting my Berlinfra red project, I've discovered the possibility of having a dedicated digital camera for infra red which reduces the shutter speeds to those of standard daylight photography. I was shooting from 15 - 30 seconds depending o the time of day. Looking at the clarity and sharpness of other photographers work in infra red I craved that sharpness in my images, craved the lack of blur.

After consideration and the continued development of my film photography I've decided to appose this direction into sharp clean hyper focal images but why: the beauty is in the blur! I love to allow the wind to paint dreaminess into the willows by the rivers and let long shutters speeds smooth rippled waters to a surreal state of calm. clarity and sharpness is proven by observing very close, the image in question. mankind have been looking closer and closer at the world for the same reason, Clarity. maybe it's about time we stepped back a little, or a lot and enjoyed the image in it's entirety, allowing the beauty of the blur to pacify our lust for perfection.

I'm off to another realm for a journey and an adventure. I will bare the above in mind throughout my peregrination of Indonesia.... Jogyakarta to Bali by road.

Myriad

There are so many different way's of expressing yourself visually. So many that the most important start for me was to see as much as possible and make mental notes of the effect that certain styles have on your psyche... emotionally being the most important for me. On absorbing these visual wonders that rest comfortable on your soul, they slowly affect, inspire and develop you style which in itself, is dynamic.

For me the return to film, researching it's many formats, it's myriad of options is forcing my synapses to fire in exciting patterns and stimulating my drive. I love this excited sensation, the anticipation and smooth transition of the raw image into a work of art.

What lays ahead is a trail to my creative potential. What litters the past is the works I will create enjoy and leave behind for others as I resume my quest for the beautification of the world.


Should be fun at least ;)

Solo Colonials

We are curious creatures, human nature creating a plethora of contradiction in action. These contradictions seem embedded in the battle between our idealised self and the actual way we react and continue our broken, decrepit patterns of failure.

In this statement of confusion, brought about by the process of the solo colonialist, I hope to outline the Idealism versus the actuality of our actions. Case in Point:

Any given westerner, in family or alone travels to create a reality, a justification of existence, through pleasant experience and growth, mental or spiritual. Along this path we find a place that feels more like home than anywhere and causes one to drop anchor. To transition oneself from a life of endured necessity based on the hope of one day having the life we idealise. Yet we bring an unseen baggage with us, a putrid toxic, conditioned mind that sets stumbling blocks plentiful in paradise’s gardens.  I will introduce a new phrase that jumped into my brain during in introspective moment, this “consumer guilt” not dissimilar to catholic guilt in its deep rooted subconscious, cancerous, negative, systemic nature seems a root source of losing ones self when already found. Or so you thought.

And so it begins, making hell of paradise.

“How can I stay in this place I love, survive in the way my travelling has accustomed me?”

I will bring with me the woes of my past life, the process of business, social interaction, networking . I will build and create and aspire, advertise and become immersed in commerce because less is no longer more when you fall back to the rut you ploughed and briefly climbed from just long enough to see how life could be.

So, from the ideal of a simple life in beauty- and in unison with like minded peers, slowly but surely we recreate the life we left behind in the place we chose to hide from it. What could possibly inspire the free mind to propagate such catastrophe?  The answer?  Fear.  Fear is a powerful enemy, an enemy with many ploys and tact’s to recruit your cognitive processes and employ them only in undermining your quest for paradise, the paradise in your mind not the view from your window.

Evidence of this?  The Kuta, Sanur and now to canggu, triangle. Slowly filling up with the confused, the bin of dreamers, refuse of hope, vortex of beauty. Stand in a bank or a traffic jam and observe the confusion and lack of calm in the eyes of the ones that came for freedom and created their Jail. But this is not to be confused with those who create their life from their passion. those who dear are clearly visible and inspire us to dream of that life. They are here and they know who they are.

It’s hard to admit failure though. It’s a long way back for some, to the wrong decision that crept slowly in, fuelled by greed, steadied by fear and executed by its conscious justification.  Are they lost or do they live in the same hope that in maybe just a few more years,” I can leave this place and relax my life and I won’t want for anything, I can be happy, truly happy”. Lost, is the answer.

For me, with this dilemma clearly in my mind, I can hope only to steer round the potholes and not get stuck in with the traffic on a road leading to a place I definitely do not wish to reside.  Some may say I have coasted for so long, and it’s true I feared chasing down my flawed dreams once more due to the repercussions from the first time I charged down this bright but narrow alley, blinded by the lights and the glory I lost sight of myself and found my mind in a dangerous and callous state.  I sat on the sidelines, an observer of society, living off its convenience and contributing nothing but currency to its engine or mass.

I feel like we are so far from the way things could be, a world where everyone only does what they love and never under any circumstances compromises this ideal. A society like this, driven by passion and excitement, bereft of resent and conciliation would leave humanity caked in happiness, surely. The question is, are we here in this life for happiness and contentment or just experience, Our mistakes as important as our successes to our spiritual growth.  If so, then this world, with so many opportunities for both, is a playground, a university of development. Let’s hope that the pursuit does not leave us in furrows so deep that we will never see the beauty from the hilltop.

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I aspire, Like Socrates, to become indifferent to the spoils of consumerism. Through this channel only, it seems that happiness may be sort as consumerism in its nature is constantly replacing and updating the wants of the masses. Anyone experienced in the woes of unrequited love understands fully the lack of happiness in continual want. 

So contentment is what I aspire to, happiness my goal and I will begin each process with this in mind and avoid the temptations and justifications of habit that lead to the very unhappy destroying the beautiful, outside and within.

But First I need to buy some lenses….. Old ones though. How nice to want what’s already existed for so long but be indifferent to anything other than its function in perpetuating splendour ;-)

Cities of Delusion

I recently arrived in singapore, a place I only visit out of necesity. deflecting the deluge of pro consumerist society led me into an introspective and hypnotic state. in this state, within an almost perfect machine of mankind, an epiphany of sorts entered my head. it was something along these lines:

When we submerge ourselves in a world of distraction through over work and unnecessary want, we are removing ourselves from the world.

Inside an air conditioned car distracted by anything and everything, we are not in touch with the living world.

Absorbed and consumed by uninspiring visual media in our homes be it TV, Face book, Blogger we are not in touch with anything in the real world.

There is something inherently wrong with this, and it seems driven by a fear of reality, of ourselves of the mirror of silence. Thinking of this causes me to spiral in an introspective melancholy, the cause mimicked by the result. So, to aspire to something real, these  ideas crossed my mind.


Walking and camping in the forests content with the sounds and sights therein, we are in touch with the world.

Sitting in the water for 4 hours enjoying the spoils of it's beautiful rhythm, we are in touch with the world and a it's acute reality.

locked into the interactions of other humans, face to face, heart to soul, feeling each others emanation through words and body language and tone and gesture, we are in touch with humanity.

In photogtraphy I wallow in the grey between the extremes, striving to show beauty in what we've created, mimicking the minds of those of delusion.... But I do this in the hope that one day people can find another beauty in life, another peace, another way. It seems like civilisation took a wrong turn two thousand years ago and was too stubborn to turn back. now we are lost.

Maybe I can 'Heal by Photo'........... I can certainly try. Images can be a powerful reminder of our failures.


Coming soon. The images inspired by this inner turmoil.