Not the best photo of this hill but I think it worked out, at least in terms of framing.
This is Hat Hill. I don’t know why this is hill is known as Hat Hill, though I’m sure I’ll find out at a later point in time when I go back here to take more photos.
There’s something idyllic about this view. It may have to do with the clouds. Not sure.
I hope you enjoy.
This is pretty much as it is.
I was trying to think of something and nothing came so I wrote about trying to force something out when I’ve nothing. The result isn’t anything good, but it works.
I hope you enjoy.
—
I do not wish to try and force
And so I push and force some more
The nozzle does not drip
I cannot reach the pipes
But I keep on trying to get something out
There’s not a sound so I reach in
I try to pull at something
Even though I can see it in there
It remains out of reach
And I keep trying to force it out
One listen for this one.
This is a song I’ve wanted to write about for a while but I feel it’s one that I wasn’t sure I could do well. I think I may have been right about that hesitation, but I imagine that I would have done better had I waited a while longer. Improvement with time and all that.
I think the issue here is that whilst I do get an idea of the song across it took a while to let go, and even then I didn’t let go enough. I think that, other than not being a strong enough writer right now, it also has to do with having strong familiarity with the song.
Jesu’s “Deflated” is from Opiate Sun. The version I wrote about is the demo version which was featured as a bonus track on the Japanese release of the EP. Personally I think the demo version is more interesting due to what was removed for the final version, but maybe that addition didn’t work beyond the demo. It’s also possible that Justin Broadrick was concerned about an overabundance of “solos” on the EP, hence the lack of additional guitar doing something above the main melody on the final version.
I hope you enjoy.
—
Guitar rings out whilst bass drifts low and percussion stomps. Soon vocals find their way in and seem to float among it all and melancholy finds its way in. Together all the sounds lock into each other and follow a rhythmic flow. They keep it all together through their descent and drift and move with a sense of ease.
Eventually there’s a sort of pause and additional guitar seems to move and phase above the pause. It goes up, down and up and here, there and everywhere. The other sounds have a brief pause before they look once more at descending. The new guitar stops and the descent commences.
Keys now appear as the original guitar, bass and percussion keep their steady pace. The keys highlight and accentuate and something maybe dreamy and fragile, and certainty comes forward. Soon that new guitar returns and once more it ripples and phases, and calmly howls, and everything seems to grow increasingly overwhelming.
Climactic, yet calm this is and it just envelopes all and pulls something out, and touches in a raw manner. It continues to do so, even when the percussion and new guitar pull away, leaving a few sounds to linger on until the song ends.
Another self-portrait.
This was taken at the same time as the one I shared yesterday.
Last night I decided to look over some of the self-portraits I took and play around with them based on the parameters I used for processing a variant of one of them. However, with this one I used parameters for a stuff around I did on a photo I took for a gig I shot near the end of 2022.
It’s quite stylised, I think and that I like. Not anything amazing but in a way I think it raises thoughts about sense of self and identity. At least, that’s what it makes me think of.
I hope you enjoy.
The morning drudgery rears its ugly head once more, but of course I’m just complaining so this can be disregarded.
Feels like it will be a warm day. Feels like it will be warm and humid and so once more I will find myself locked into some sort of combat with the weather. Whether I am or not is difficult to completely confirm at this point in time, but I feel it will be the case so it is likely to happen. That’s how it all works and so that is how it is working today.
I think I need a vacation from everything. Just step away from society and the world and slip into another reality for a while where money isn’t a worry and I’m not half a paycheck away from a bad time. That would be nice, but I don’t think I’d be able to relax as I wouldn’t be making money whilst on vacation.
I think I need a more stable job, really.
I think I need a lot of things, but what I really need to do is not sit here so much. Not good for the act of engaging in the process of motion. If I’m sitting here all the time then I’m not doing much of anything really, but sometimes I conjure worlds and in those conjuring of worlds I’m creating some sort of fantasy in which I could escape to, but I don’t want to necessarily escape, though I guess with what I said just above I do want to escape. Not sure where to go from that, really. Kind of covers all the bases.
Well, now that that is out of the way, where do I go from here? I want what is risky for me to take right now and so I’m sitting here and just trying to think of a way to get out of this bit of writing. Maybe looking for change was a bad idea. This is unfamiliar territory and I know not where I can go from here.
Actually, I do know where I can go from here but it’s all scary and that is not something I want to deal with right now. This is not worth the risk. It is not safe. It is not worth the trouble. Take me back to where I feel I am more comfortable. I want to ramble on about things that don’t matter and I want to ramble about things that do matter.
Of course, however, there has been no change whatsoever but I am claiming that there has been change and so therefore I get to complain about something else, but I digress.
I don’t know what to do from here and I don’t know where to go and this is all scary and so on and so forth and I think I’m just going to try and find a rope that will lead me out of these new and exciting frontiers that are ripe for exploration.
The time it took to write five-hundred words: 05:25:76
Alright, so this seems to mostly be about discomfort so I’m going with that.
I feel I got really close to making some sort of point and then veered away, which was silly.
Written at home.
Fatigue rears its head once more but I can get through it. I can persevere.
Wind and all that, sitting here, feeling warm, feeling cool, feeling a lot of things but the day contorts into shapes I do not recognise. Suddenly it is no longer a day but a series of shapes and now I don’t know what to do with myself.
I guess I’ll just sit here and think about shapes for a while.
Of course that has no practical purpose right now but these shapes are floating in front of me and I need the day to come back so I can deal with work as work is here and I need to take care of it and get it out of the way and I don’t know which of these shapes it is contained within, so… I’m feeling a bit screwed.
I guess there is a practical purpose for thinking about shapes right now.
Anyway, I don’t know how to get them back to being a day and I don’t know how to go about doing anything about this. Most of my thinking will be trying to work out what the shapes are and in doing that I might just be able to find the answer to the problem which will be a key for the lock, but there is no lock so it will be a key for the day.
I can’t sit whilst working this out as I don’t know where my chair has gone and there’s not much of a floor, but I don’t quite like the idea of floating whilst doing this either. Sure, I’m not going anywhere but I don’t feel as though I’m anchored and it’s not a pleasant feeling, let me tell you. It would be more pleasant if I happened to be floating in the sky and there was a breeze behind me and I was going places but that is not what is happening here. What is happening is that I’m floating in nothingness and I’m trying to work out how a day managed to turn into a series of corporeal shapes.
What will happen when the next day comes? This is going to cause a few issues. Surely there are others in the same situation as I am but I cannot see them. There isn’t anyone here that I can locate, but I can’t quite go anywhere, or at least it doesn’t feel like I’m going anywhere so I could very well be here on my lonesome and that is less fun than I would hope.
These shapes are ones I do not recognise and I’m not sure if I could describe them in a way other than that they have a form. They are here in front of me and I don’t know how to make them become the day again and it’s all rather annoying and frustrating, and also a little hopeless. Some sort of despair.
On the plus side, I think they’re quite interesting.
The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:24:85
It was early into this that I realised that I needed to veer away from what I was writing and so I did. In terms of something better I don’t think it paid off, but it was a learning experience of sorts.
Most, if not all writing can be a learning experience now that I think about it, but in this case… anyway, yeah.
Written at home.
I often get strong praise for my photos and I’m glad people get something out of what I’m doing. With that said, I need the praise translating into paid work far more often than it does. Without the income
I’ve been thinking about calling it a day and selling the camera gear. I’ve been taking photos since I was around thirteen, so I’ve had a pretty good run. I love photography, but if I were to stop now, whilst saddening, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. However, as said here I’ve decided to kind of tear it all down and rebuild, so to speak.
I think that, regardless of one’s experience, you’re never too good to relearn stuff and rethink your processes.
With that all said, here’s a photo I took recently. I was playing around with self-portraits and motion. I could say that I’m exploring a sense of self, but with this photo I don’t feel that that’s quite the case.
This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s “Monochrome Madness” for this week. Participating is pretty straightforward and something I recommend. If you do, then include the tag “monochrome-madness” in your post.
If not participating, then at the least check out Leanne’s photography as well as what other people submit.
A lot of what people are submitting will likely end up here.
I hope you enjoy.
Something I like about getting away from the city is that sometimes you get a sense of stillness and solitude. There’s a sense of stillness in this photo, I think, and there also is a sense of solitude.
It’s a vast stretch of land that’s visible, and yet it’s also a pretty small area. A significant portion feels untouched but there’s visible change from human impact.
In the distance large areas are visible. Parts can be made out but they are mostly silhouettes and present as a mystery. The areas are almost illusory.
I hope you enjoy.
Once more the sound of cicadas reaches my ears and once more it is something that I do quite enjoy. It is nice hearing life out there whilst I sit here and procrastinate the day away until I grow ancient and refuse to leave the room due to being so ancient that I know the room far better than I could ever know the outside world.
The reason why I know the room so well? I’ve thought about and analysed it a lot.
Well, to be truthful I only know the room in one way and that is in the way it makes me think about the room rather than knowing all of its properties, though I’d know some of those too… I’d hope.
But anyway, the sound of cicadas is out there, I’m in here and I’m enjoying the sound they produce, and I wish there were more of them. I wish they were louder and drowning out everything. There aren’t enough trees and there aren’t enough cicadas to hold them, and perhaps there aren’t enough birds to chase after the cicadas.
The light glows outside and it is almost overbearing but it does not drain the world of colour, though I’m not sure as to how it would. Maybe it would if a greater presence of light somehow desaturated colour, but as far as I’m aware it doesn’t; at least not in reality.
I think what I have today is a series of thoughts that run around each other and don’t quite connect, but there still is some sort of relation. What that relation is is not something of which I am quite aware, though maybe I am and I’m just overthinking thinking once more.
Anyway, the street is quiet but the cicadas continue their pleasing drone. There is a light breeze and it is there but it is subtle. It’s more apparent at a distance, but now that I am thinking about it and looking out my window a it more it is apparent that the breeze is picking up. It’s not picking up but much and it seems to change in gradual pulses. It also is not something I’m feeling much of so in a way, at least from where I am seated, it seems more suggested rather than stated. It is seen rather than felt and so in a way it seems more like I’m being told that there is a breeze rather than experiencing a breeze.
The light is changing and it is due to the clouds above. They continue their drift and variance in heaviness, and there are a few holes that escape their grasp, but they continue on as they threaten to release themselves and change into rainfall but they do not. They just change the way the light falls upon this area and they drift onward to somewhere else.
The sound of garden machinery spreads out from some location and it cuts into the sounds of cicadas droning and birds chirping.
The time it took to write five-hundred words: 08:32:79
Very shortly after I finished this the sunlight became much brighter. From the position of my desk I was unable to see where the gap in the clouds that allowed the sun to shine through was, but it was pleasant.
Anyway, a series of thoughts that are quite clearly connected and more of the relaxed variety, I think.
Written at home.
One listen for this one.
Had a couple of restarts early on, then kind of struggled my way through.
I think I was thinking too much about trying to write something that captured the song instead of letting the words come out and it shows a bit in places.
Spencer Nilsen’s “Title Screen” is from Ecco the Dolphin, the soundtrack for Ecco the Dolphin. To be more specific, the soundtrack is comprised of rerecorded tracks from the game.
I hope you enjoy.
—
An oscillation arrives. It is steadfast in its motion, even as another sound quickly passes through. Deep rumblings form underneath and for a moment the oscillation disappears. It comes back for a brief moment and disappears once more. The low sounds continue on with their slow moving and they grow in their prominence. Something above shines and seems to scatter, and comes back and scatters once more. The oscillation briefly returns before disappearing and something else descends.
The focus is now on that descending thing and far above the oscillation comes back in parts, far more distant than before. Percussive sounds sound out here and there, and eventually a pause. Things seem to stretch and appear here and there as glimpses and a new oscillation appears, lower than before. There’s a richness in this deep; it is subdued, but it is there through all the sombreness.
Soon the sounds resume their movement and they keep things low, but not for long. Something rises up and seems almost massive, though it is ambiguous. Something is reaching, reaching upward and spreading out and seeking, but before anything is revealed the sounds stop and the song ends.
Stupidity Hole 