Gardening
I have a small south facing basement yard which provides some protection from the increasingly common violent winter storms sweeping in off the North Sea and tearing at my house. While replacing 70’s rose coloured cement paving with timeworn granite setts (Scots word for cobblestones) salvaged from the nearby beaches I discovered the yard seems to have been hewn from solid rock. I had to get a sledgehammer and crowbar to break a few extra inches of rock to accomodate the setts, hard work that I enjoyed. It was interesting to be reminded that the house was directly sat on the planetary crust.
Ever since experiencing a significant tremor in Los Angeles a decade or so ago I have been more conscious of this sense of the earth, the particular tremor was in the form of a rolling wave and it was a lot more unsettling than you might think to be in a building that suddenly rocks like a boat in heavy swell. Talk of that experience reminds me of the pleasure of lying on your back on hard ground looking up at the sky- occupying the boundary. Its something you probably have not done for a while but I recommend it- no tablets, phones, go-pros, headphones etc, just lie down feel the gravity look at the sky. Seriously I recommend it.
Actually gardening
… I have been wrapping my backyard herbs in bubble wrap to provide them some protection against the winter storms and heavier frosts and snows we are also now experiencing. I have also been adding a little bit of lime because my father pointed out that most herbs originate in the mediterranean where soil is limestone based- I think this was the explanation.
This is now the second time in 60pages my father has been mentioned which is odd as I don’t see so much of him. I will mention my mother who is dead. She was a big influence in giving me the foolhardy confidence to set out on the risky but interesting courses I have set in life. She was in her own mind a rationalist but I remember late in life she told me that she was convinced that as a young women walking along a cliff top at night the ghost of her mother had grabbed her and prevented her mis- stapping over the cliff. This came as a big surprise to me, the kind of surprise that makes you re calibrate what you know about someone. So to death, which of course is tied up with gardening and growing things and parenthood. I saw a local band called Mersault play recently and they had a song about a man who insisted he be buried face down, it was I think a gesture of defiance, if he was going to hell he wanted to see where he was going. Funny though just how intensely deviant the idea of being buried face down seems. A couple of years ago I was in Mumbai with a member of the Parsi community who was bemoaning the way habitat destruction and pesticides were causing a collapse in the vulture population such that sky burials were no longer really working. No connection, just interesting.
The quantified self
I find myself writing for 60pages or perhaps writing at 60pages whoever you are. There are no metrics but I suspect that on twitter or facebook it would be possible to start measuring our relative success against one another and I suspect those behind 60pages of seeking a hit no matter what they say, I don’t do either Facebook or Twitter but I do have a Flickr account. I started posting pictures to Flickr in part because I wanted to engage with one of these sharing based phenomenom to see how it felt from the inside. Wow does it bring out the compettive and addictive id.
… hang on a moment my Blackberry is blinking at me- a girl called Danny has just emailed to assure me she is a cute girl who likes to fuck strangers and can we get started? “Come in to me!” she says.
. … anyway the thing with Flickr is that it also no doubt has an effect on the photos I take and alarmingly it could be affecting the way I see- there is small group of people about whom I know nothing whatsoever who follow my Flickr stream – PJ80, headbavany, booji wooji man, neil johansson, tapatim amongst others who have used Flickr to crawl inside my head such that when I take a picture I sometimes find myself assessing whether they will like it. if you pay for your Flickr account you can avoid ads- which you can see Flickr regretting they facilitate, they would much rather you didn’t pay and took advertising. If you pay you also get quite detailed metrics in real time on who is viewing your photos which is pure metrics porn. The quantified self is apparently a movement of people who believe that by using metrics to monitor everything about ourselves we can bootstrap the human race on to an accelerated evolutionary path, at least that is what I am going to tell you they think. Time perhaps to turn a lot of things off.
Grayson Perry recently eulogised the sound of Lego in his Reith Lectures. It turns out there is a lot of Lego on Flickr and some of it is extraordinary in the way that the models are so far away from being the objects they portray but at the same time so strongly capture the essence of the object. Nonetheless my Flickr hero is Vince who is a lineman and takes pictures of his favourite power poles in the USA or perhaps Vertyn Electric who is a power pole scale modeller, perhaps the worlds only power pole scale modeller, one of his poles is here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/31462250@N03/10363716816/in/photostream/ for him its a business, for me its outsider art.
The terrible truth which I would never share with anyone is that I am serious about photography. Because I am not remotely interested in all the things that go to create good photography or good photographs I have been able to mask this for quite some time. I realise that given the thinking that goes into seeking out balance, imbalance, line,volume,colour, resonance wihtin the frame and my adherence to in camera framing and abhorrence of post camera cropping I am either serious or ill. I enjopyed posting my sketchbook to 60pages and inspired by that I now have a post 60pages sketchbook at http://thecementbeach.tumblr.com/ a leagcy of 60pages, a trace after they switch it off. The photos were taken with an A0 size print in mind- a currently entirely imaginary physical iteration. ( thecementbeach is fortuitous poetry- it combines beach- where I live – and cement in honour of the LaFarge cement works nearby- thinking up a URL that is not already taken is such a modern struggle.)
— just to let you know I have now been emailed by Lisa who is also cute , she doesn’t like to fuck strangers but she does dream of doing so and like Danny who got in touch only ten minutes ago is keen to get started. Come in to me 60pages!
Gardening
I have a small south facing basement yard which provides some protection from the increasingly common violent winter storms sweeping in off the North Sea and tearing at my house. While replacing 70’s rose coloured cement paving with timeworn granite setts (Scots word for cobblestones) salvaged from the nearby beaches I discovered the yard seems to have been hewn from solid rock. I had to get a sledgehammer and crowbar to break a few extra inches for the setts, hard work that I enjoyed. It was interesting to be reminded that the house was directly sat on the planetary crust. Ever since experiencing a significant tremor in Los Angeles a decade or so ago I have been more conscious of this sense of the earth, this particular tremor was in the form of a rolling wave and it was a lot more unsettling than you might think to be in a building that suddenty rocks like a boat in heavy swell.
Talk of that experience reminds me of the pleasure of lying on your back on hard ground looking up at the sky- occupying the boundary. Its something you probably have not done for a while but I recommend it- no tablets, phones, go-pros, headphones etc, just lie down feel the gravity look at the sky. Seriously I recommend it.
Actually gardening …
I have been wrapping my backyard herbs in bubble wrap to provide them some protection against the winter storms and heavier frosts and snows we are also now experiencing. I have also been adding a little bit of lime because my father pointed out that most herbs originate in the medditerranean where soil is limestone based- it think this was the explanation. This is now the second time in 60pages my father has been mentioned which is odd as i don’t see so much of him. I will mention my mother who is dead. She was a big influence in giving me the foolhardy confidence to set out on the risky but interesting courses I have set in life. She was in her own mind a rationalist but I remember late in life she told me that she was convinced that as a young women walking along a cliff top at night the ghost of her mother had grabbed her and prevented her mis- stapping over the cliff. This came as a big surprise to me, the kind of surprise that makes you re calibrate what you know about someone.
So to death, which of course is tied up with gardening and growing things and parenthood. I saw a local band called Mersault play recently and they had a song about a man who insisted he be buried face down, it was |I think a gesture of defiance, if he was going to hell he wanted to see where he was going. Funny though just how intensely deviant the idea of being buried face down seems. A couple of years ago I was in Mumbai with a a member of the Parsi community who was bemoaning the way habitat destruction and pesticides were causing a collapse in the vulture population such that sky burials were no longer really working.
The quantified self
Its is interesting that you find yourself writing for 60pages or perhaps writing at 60pages whoever you are. There are no metrics but I suspect that if you are on twitter or facebook it would be possible to start measuring our relative success against one another and I suspect those behind 60pages of seeking a hit no matter what they say, I don’t do either Facebook or Twitter but I do have a Flickr account. I started posting pictures to Flickr in part because I wanted to engage with one of these sharing based phenomenom to see how it felt from the inside. Wow does it bring out the compettive and addictive id.
Hang on a moment- a girl called Danny has just emailed me to assure me she is a cute girl who likes to fuck strangers and can we get started? “Come in to me!” she says.
… anyway the thing with Flickr is that it also no doubt has an effect on the photos I take and alarmingly it could be affecting the way I see- there is small group of people about whom I know nothing whatsoever who follow my Flickr stream – PJ80, headbavany, booji wooji man, neil johansson, tapatim who have used Flickr to crawl inside my head such that when I take a picture I sometimes find myself assessing whether they will like it. if you pay for your Flickr account you can avoid ads- which you can see Flickr regretting they facilitate, they would much rather you didn’t pay and took advertising. If you pay you also get quite detailed metrics in real time on who is viewing your photos which is pure metrics porn. The quantified self is apparently a movement of people who believe that by using metrics to monitor everything about ourselves we can bootstrap the human race on to an accelerated evolutionary path, at least that what I am going to tell you about them. Time to perhaps to turn a lot of things off I think.
Grayson Perry recently eulogised the sound of Lego in his Reith Lectures, it turns out there is a lot of Lego on Flickr and some of it is extraordinary in the way that the models are so far away from being the objects they portray but at the same time so satrongly capture the essence of the object. Noethelss my Flickr hero is Vince who is a lineman Vertyn Electri wh is a power pole scale modeller http://www.flickr.com/photos/31462250@N03/10363716816/in/photostream/ for him its a business, for me its outsider art.
The terribkle truth which I would never share wiht anyone is that I am very serious about my photography, because I am not remotely interested in all the things that go to create good photography or photogrpahs I have been able to mask this fdor quite some time. I increasingly realise that given the thinking that goes into seeking out balance, imbalance, line,volume,colour, resonance wihtin the frame and my adherence to in camera frame and abhorrence of post camera cropping \i am either serious or ill. I enjopyed psoting my sketchbook to 60pages and inspired by that I now have a post 60pages sketchbook at http://thecementbeach.tumblr.com/