Nothing To Really Say, Writing Anyway.
Old magazines that I have collected since in High School litter my bedroom on this muggy, rainy turn-of-the-season day. I'm uninspired by the haze of the grey day. I've been sitting on the couch twiddling my thumbs, ignoring the ease of walking down hill to grab a coffee and watch the world go by.
A delivery woman rocks up to the front door with a package for me - it's my new watch. It's sleek, black face and gold hands reflecting my suddenly interested face. I get a message from a friend who asks me to take some photos of her friend who is about to have a baby. I think about it, eager to a) meet this friend who I have heard so much about b) get to know her c) capture a moment for her (the keywords here are "for her" - the way she wants it, but also the way it is). I've been wanting for a while to get back into taking photos. Using different cameras - film, digital, my iPhone, lomo cameras. To fiddle around with switches, not knowing what will result.
If there is something I've learnt from writing this blog and taking photos in the past, it is how much I am interested in the lives of others. Of documenting things, perhaps the way I see them, but with the distance of not being directly involved. And I don't know whether that is necessarily a good thing. I cower from things being written about me, situations where the lens is pointed in my direction. I write and I tell stories but maybe I miss out on being a character in these loose plots.
And now at this café that I sit at, with those magazines surrounding me, a camera balancing on the edge of the table and an empty coffee cup to my right, I consider the solitude that I am currently sitting in. A couple beside me kiss each other hello and with kindness sit and chat whilst they enjoy their coffees. They're gone again moments later. I wonder, in these moments where my head is going a million miles an hour, if having someone sitting quietly beside me readily available to bounce ideas and thoughts off, working on their own source of intellectual enjoyment would be attainable.
We're so shy - even towards ourselves. We don't say enough, and we're not silent enough. We don't entertain thoughts and ideas within our minds and so we are unable to communicate outside of ourselves. Perhaps that is why I write. To entertain ideas. It's not really for an audience at all. Not for gratification, for validation. It's simply to purge thought. Because if it's all up in my head, then I simply do not function. So I write. And capture.
