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passing by

Focal points in my life. A bus station, a song, a smell' the feel of a woman's hair across my chest.. I once wrote that photographs are a external form of memory that's draws those moment back to the present.. But these memories are fleeting, they are past, there physical presence has passed by. A touch has no presence anymore' but the idea still provokes an intense emotional response.. Do these events in our life persist or do they only exist as long as we hold them close to ourselves.. Well I know the answer to that, just wish I could believe that world was more beauty than cruelty.... Some that has past belongs in the past, yet it persists in our present mind, thus it must live on through for a brief instant.. A candle that continues to smoulder after it has been extinguished... I wish I could bring the past with me... I may just be drinking too much and wallowing in wants and memories.. To my older self I was to take this opportunity to say the following: your an awful asshole... And to my past self: you really are a fucking asshole...and to my self presently: good luck..

What was trying to say? Ahh memories suck because they pass by and the traces they leave are ephemeral...

a passing storm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagining a future presently

Are our hopes and fears, real material things or are they constructions of future scenarios that may never come to fruition? When I dream or imagine the future possibilities that lie ahead of me, am I in fact ignoring present opportunities that are tangible and real in favor of imagined scenarios where my dreams are fluid and changing. Why do we constantly, and by we I infer me, live in our future times, rather than embrace all the possibilities of the here and now. Is it the legacy of reading Hamlet as a teenager, the procrastinator, the idler, the man without presence in the moment, incapable of doing and acting upon a whim. If words are wind then hamlet must have been the equivalent of a force 5 hurricane. Actions define us, define the possibilities seen and unseen that present themselves to us along the journey through life, why then do I prefer inaction to action. Am I not merely limiting the future me, by hoping, for a future that cannot be achieved without a present I. Maybe I,m just spoofing myself, I have been know to do that, but still I think even the obvious things in we can find ourselves lacking. Only on reflection,a reflection that is bound by a time limit, can we look inwards and ask ourselves, am I the man I wanted to be? Is that man a reality or a myth? Can I in my own self be true? What would the poor wee gossum think, would he take the time to reflect upon the obvious and challenge the everyday, speak just to hear the sound of the undulations of energy passing through the air. If words indeed are wind, as I believe they are, are they not akin to the sounds of the sea, the great body of water working upon the shore, energy realized, action taken, beauty revealed. God I love the sea, how can anything man can say reach the level of purity that the sea speaks. To be present in the company of the ocean, to breathe it in and let it overcome you, it is one of the only things in life that comes close to the primordial sense of presence in the moment. As Joyce put it: "the sea , the sea, the snot green sea, the scrotum tightening sea". It just makes you want to wade in and drown yourself in its power and raw energy.

Coming back to school, primary that is, after the summmer holidays, we would always be asked to write an essay about MY SUMMER HOLIDAYS. Now summer holidays in my house consisted of staying at home and building tree house and damming same streams in the countryside, so I would always lie and wrote about my day at the seaside. Jesus I never saw the sea until I was about fourteen years old, and me a Pisces. this is all beside the point I originally started out upon, but is that another way to say that were we find ourselves presently is only a set of choices that will lead away from where we are and towards where we will be. As an exerscise in writing this may not be my strongest effort, however, why would I ever start writing if I knew where I was going to end up, much the same as live experience, enjoy the ride. It was fun while it lasted. G

Burlington rooftop

Courtesy of Orla Mitchell

Motel life

The Personal Made Public:

Just sitting down to a beer and thinking about my expiences with photography. I have been away from the camera for some time now, shooting bits and pieces but not where I want to be in terms of the work I want to be making. I,m in Canada and no excuses will do anymore. What is photography to me, everyone has their own view on the subject but the more I think about it, I think we all see photography in the main stream as the external image we spent to the world of our innermost and everyday experiences of the world around us. When I think about the important images in my life they always tend towards those of the characters i have encountered through my life. The only image I ever really took of my father shortly before he died, the instance of that image to me, as my only personal record of the man. The four years I struggled with mourning for him, the work I tried to make in honor of his life and it's influence opn the man I perceive myself to be today. That image of my father is sad in more ways than once, he doesn't present the image of health or happiness, yet all through my life I regarded my father in terms of his strength and his easy going attitude to life, his laugh, his quietness. He was a man of few words, yet when he would come home from a nights drinking with my mum, he would always wake us up to tell us stories of when he lived in Roscommon with his family, shooting ducks on the way home from the pub, his first drink with his dad; a pint bottle of macardles. Second in the images of my past are the images of the women I have spent my life with, they never age, they stay exactly as I first picture them, they are timeless, the memories may tell a different story, yet the photographs only reveal their beauty and their presence. The photograph is "the girl in the winter garden" , Roland's Barthes mother, is truly what I am trying to describe. The photograph mains outside of time, yet still bears witness to the " this has been" it cannot be disputed. Yes he did exist, yes she was beautiful in her own way. The photographs beauty is that of stillness, the moment remains and the voices have faded. It is the quintessence of the external memory, it is available to us at a moments call, it evokes the moment, it stirs the emotions within us. It is nothing more than the very personal inner experiences contained. Yet the means of unpacking it remaisn within the grasp of the individual. The photograph will always strive to be more than a mere object of memory, yet that is where it's powers lie. In opening the private moment to the public view, yet what is contained within may well remain outside of the publics understanding/empathy.