Last week I went to Cape Banks a couple of times to walk.
The first time I was able to capture this photo of a magpie whilst it perched on a sign at sunset.
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.
I hope you enjoy.
Steve Martin and some other comedian had to appear on some show. They had to work as they didn’t have enough money, and they had to work a lot.
Someone asked Steve Martin and the comedian he was with to do a gig beforehand, but they could only offer an hour due to the upcoming show, which was fine, and they were going to get paid.
So anyway, they start performing and they’re singing Sonny and Cher’s “I’ve Got You Babe”, and it sounded like the original, and it was incredibly emotional and moving. Here were these two comedians (and there was a third) performing this song and they were struggling to make ends meet, and I was witnessing this, and I started to tear up.
Then I woke up.
About a month ago I wrote this rambling essay that I might refine at some point. Not sure.
It could do with a lot of editing, but I don’t plan on editing it for readability, nor publishing.
This was written in one go after thinking about writing something on where I am in relation to gaming these days, and I guess I’m thinking a lot about if I’m exiting the overall gaming culture.
I hope you enjoy.
—
So I sent a photo of my partner and I doing this pedal car thing to a friend and he said something about having adventures, and it was a nice, silly little message, and it made me think about things, and I wanted to give a thought-out response.
I love gaming. I love how much potential it has, but if I had to choose between gaming and the outside world, it’d be the outside world, no questions asked. Gaming is something that we can interface with and interact with, but I can’t smell the trees or the land in a game. In a sense you can, in that your controlled character does, but yourself cannot, and so it’s merely an enactment of the action of smelling, experienced and left to the imagination to properly fill out the action, and you know, that’s fine. People enjoy that, and so do I, but it’s not something I’d want to live with if I had to choose one or the other.
It’s choosing between two experiential forms, the one in which I exist is the one where I value my ability to move freely, despite my various injuries. I value my ability to engage in motion and move through space and a thin, invisible medium that surrounds me. Gaming presents a fantasy that often is quite interesting in that they seldom aren’t snapshots of a greater world, but it’s a very controlled experience in which the imagination needs to work… which is fine, but the potential for gaming remains there and it remains underutilised.
There are some people who are seen as being geniuses in gaming, but I don’t think we’ve really had one yet. Perhaps someone from Nintendo, or someone else out there, but for a medium that has been around for as long as it has, it’s really good at capping itself on a few defined tracks. At the same time, a new one emerges here and there, but even though video games can be viewed as art in an art form, too often it is that they are obsessed with entertainment, even when reaching for a deeper meaning. As such, they often function as a springboard of sorts.
But then you have developers like Bethesda, who keep failing to make a game, but they keep on trying. They keep trying to build these worlds that make sense, and they keep getting so close before they miss the mark, and it’s frustrating, but it’s also engrossing. There’s a reason why Skyrim is still beloved as much as it is, and there’s a reason why people still enjoy Morrowind. There’s a reason why people keep talking about Halo 1 through to 3, and there’s a reason why people still argue over Final Fantasy (nearly all of it), and it’s great. It’s great, because these are things that have touched people and these are things that people have been able to buy into. They see what is presented and they go further into it all,
I love that stuff, and I really love the Hoenn region in some of the Pokemon games. It appeals to my love of nature and my love of the marine environment in a way that few other games to, and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t want to exist in that world, but that world doesn’t exist, and I can’t make it happen. I can’t put myself into that space; I can only project myself onto an avatar that exists in that space as it is represented by programming. For some, that is enough, and to be fair that is enough for me too.
But if I had to choose, it’d always be reality. I can go and see the stars, and I can go and listen to the ocean at night. I can look at my plants, and I can touch the flower petals, and I can embrace those that I love and care about, and I can be sad and hurt and commiserate with them too. Gaming, of course allows that kind of stuff, but it’s often in the discussion of the experiential rather than it itself, because for all emotional rending entertainment provides, it is a highly linear experience.
But I wouldn’t criticise someone who would choose that, because if that’s how they want to interact, so long as it’s healthy, then who am I to throw stones? There are plenty of people who don’t have the same kind of freedom of movement that I have, and not everyone gets to even choose to just fuck off to wherever.
Two of my friends, D-Man and MB; every now and then one or the other, or both I get to come over to my place, and we’ll just have tea and hang and talk shit and converse. No plans beyond that, and it’s a nice thing, even when the heavier stuff comes up. Sometimes my partner is there; sometimes she’s not. It’s just about being within each other’s company and taking it easy, and seeing where the conversation leads, if it leads anywhere at all, and it doesn’t matter. I’m thinking about how I engage with my friends, and how this small thing is a big thing because we’re just embracing each other’s company, and when we have so little availability in the world, to be able to clear things and make that time and make it happen… To have that kind of experience with gaming… I don’t know if I can.
Maybe the older I get, the more I don’t want to couch so much of my life around gaming, and maybe that’s it. I don’t know, but I know if I had to choose, it’d be the outside world and not the inside one, because the inside one doesn’t speak to me the way that the outside one does, and there’s such limited time. The day doesn’t rest, and perhaps neither do I.
Gonna try and race out a few words of non-wisdom. Got nothing, but gonna try anyway.
Listening to music. Sitting. Rambling. Trying to get the thing done. Wondering if I will have enough space and silence to get the thing done. Not really wondering anything. Who knows what will happen from here.
It’s a fine day of misery, and yesterday’s walk was a miserable one too. It was wet and rainy, and a bit dangerous too, but that was fine. It was what was needed at that particular juncture, and so I’m all okay with it, and all that stuff. I’m okay with not having the best of times all the time. Kind of have to be, you know? But this one was nice in its misery.
The waves I saw were massive. The ocean was surging and heaving against cliff sides, and the wind was equally powerful at times. Rain fell in clusters, and the sense of relent was only temporary between its brief bursts.
It didn’t get too heavy, though. The wind was a different story, however.
That’s all there is to say about yesterday. Heavy weather experienced without a jacket, and the umbrella was rendered useless. Just got wet and walked along a bit of coastline and saw massive waves. Experienced the power of nature. Will happily experience again whilst feeling like crap.
Now I sit here inside and safe from the weather, though it’s not raining. That’s alright; that’s nice. I keep on going and I charge forward into the safety of a chair, and I keep on going after that, and all is well and all is good, but all is boring. But I’m safe, so I’m good. I’m comfortable, and comfort is a nice thing to have.
Or… is it?
No, it is, but one should try and remain restless where they can. Comfort frees up time, and that’s time that needs to be used, though relaxing is also a good thing to do. Need balance; can’t go too hard one way or the other. Or you can, but you need to not go too far. Need your health where you can get it.
I think I’ve said all that I can say today. I’m trying to think of things, but I’m just tired and I need to write and I’ve nothing coming out. Should probably finish writing about some things that I started and dropped. That’s a good use of the time that I have.
Only have about two minutes before I need to be back at my desk, however, and so I’ll just probably stop this. I’ll probably go back to my desk in a short moment. Get some water, get back to work. Do the things that I need to do and carry on until I go home and then I’ll do the same there. But we’ll see what the future holds. Perhaps there will be no carrying on, but rather a little bit of carrying off, which would be different.
The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:16:71
Good speed. Not great writing. I feel that perhaps it’s too scattered.
Written at work.
Another one of those photos that shows cleared land.
Considered a necessity, and maybe it is. Maybe it’s not.
I hope you enjoy.
One listen.
I’d been meaning to ramble about this song for a week or more now. Didn’t get around to doing so until now. Probably should’ve done it sooner as I think a bit of what it could’ve been has been lost. That said, I do think this gets across an idea of the song, albeit a bit of a loose one.
Bluelighter’s “At the End of the Road (Ruins of Lemuria)” is from Golden Sun: A World Reignited. The album is a tribute to Motoi Sakuraba’s (桜庭 統) soundtracks for Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age, and this song in particular is based on the theme for an area called Lemuria.
I hope you enjoy.
—
A quick click of keys and a gentle rock, and it loops, then descend, and the keys press carefully. They put forward something akin to relief, perhaps, or that moment before relief.
The space fills with more keys, and here everything is presented. It is relief, and it is gentle, and full, but soon the pattern changes and it shifts toward the dramatic and the revelatory.
Keys are pressed with force, and the notes alternate before fading away in a rise. Once more gentle and now less overtly emotive. Now fragile, perhaps fading. The moment holds in the space.
The keys play low again and flow, and move toward another sense of revealing, and they pause for a moment. Once more back into a flight of the dramatic and overtly emotive, and they move and speed up, and find that strike that seems to indicate another lightness.
The keys retain the drama, and they curl and flicker up, and pause before rolling in full. They flow, and pause yet again, and shift back to fragility. They float in stillness, and drift along, and lower, and drift out their final notes as the song ends.
Just a duck surrounded by reflected sunlight.
I hope you enjoy.
This was taken a while ago. I was going for a walk early in the morning, took some photos.
Not sure what I was thinking when it came to processing this one, but it’s nice enough.
This is my submission into the three hundred-and-seventeenth Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The theme for this one is “Walking the Neighborhood“.
Gigs often are fun. Not always, but often, and so was this one.
The host of the Lens-Artists challenges cycles weekly between the following people:
Tina is curating this one. The next one is curated by Patti.
I recommend participating in the challenges as they provide a fun way to interpret theme. If not participating, then at least you should still check out what others of the Lens-Artists community are submitting.
I hope you enjoy.
Stupidity Hole 