Stopping a train of thoughts
August 15, 2010 – 7:58 pmYou’d have to be superman to put the brakes on a locomotive. As much as I like to believe in the strength of my own mind; my birth certificate will confirm that I wasn’t born on Krypton.
I read an interesting article today about how to not think. I liked it’s comparison to the habit of over thinking, to a steam train without any brakes. It was sparked from a conversation I had with some friends at lunch about how impossible it would be to not think about something. I recommend having a look at the article above; it suggests that instead of replacing a thought with another one – the best method of not thinking is to allow each one to exhaust itself naturally. As much as I enjoy thinking, there is something to be said for moderation.
If you wait long enough, something strange will happen.
August 9, 2010 – 3:11 amIt’s some line from a book, so don’t get your hopes up. There were a few good ideas floating around in it. “If you wait long enough, something strange will happen” was one of them. And I truly believe that it will. You might be waiting a really long time for anything spectacular enough to register in our highly expectant minds, but something will happen, and it will be strange.
We all live with the winds of unexpectedness blowing in our faces. At any moment, it could pick up a fence and hurl it into our life’s path. There are illnesses that we have to deal with, confrontations with other people outside our bubble (no matter how big or small your jail cell may be), bonds with friends and family members that are stretched out and in need of repair, and other more uninvited inevitable truths. And you’d think that with the sheer number of lessons we’ve dragged ourselves through, we seem to keep forgetting what we’re trying to learn. Which makes me wonder just how much a part of the experience is in the lessons, as well as the result.
I guess it’s easier to keep doing what you’ve always done. The lessons are easier, you’ve already seen the answers for this test a hundred times before, so you continue to score a B grade (somehow you always screw up a little) and life goes on. And if you wait long enough, something strange will happen. Something strange that will kick you sideways. It might not hurt, but you’ll certainly be dizzy from the experience.
But it’s not just about the result, it’s about taking part in the lesson.
(… I wish I could have convinced my school teachers to listen to me on that one.)
Preaching to the Choir
August 3, 2010 – 11:48 pmPeople I know don’t regularly talk about things that freak them out about life. Either they don’t ever feel that way, or they choose not to speak about it. If they never think that deeply about life, then perhaps either they suffer from idiocy or they are gods. If however they do worry, or panic, or wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats with a cyclone of thoughts tearing through the paths of their brain at light speed; I can still only speculate about the reasons they might withhold this information from the world around them. I’ve said before that we can only share a limited amount of the information that passes through our brains; if our mouths and minds had a race, we’d be left blabbering at the gun, while our heads would be running backwards through the finishing line. So ahead of paranoia and worry, we choose to express cake recipes and conspiracy theories, hilarious anecdotes and the behaviour of TV celebrities, weather reports and lolcats. Taboo topics don’t get a mention because they are taboo, and topics are taboo because they not easily talked about. Bring them out in the open, I say. Be less selective about the things that come out of your mouth and so will other people. The worst that could happen is that you’ll offend someone, the best could be life changing.
I asked my girlfriend when the best time to do my thinking was. She said “in the shower on a Sunday night”. So I did. And this is what I came up with.
Hidden Beauty – Part 2
July 31, 2010 – 3:52 pm
Hidden Beauty
July 28, 2010 – 2:21 pmDuring a conversation with my father, I stumbled across a magical decision guide. If you’re human, and you’ve ever been faced with the task of making a decision, then this may be of interest to you. To demonstrate; I’m going to use my most recent conundrum; “should I put a giant dollop of peanut butter in my cereal?” For some this may be an easy decision, for others it could keep them awake at night. It’s just an example. You may like to substitue this for any choice you decide to make.
If we simplify the equation down into two parts, we have the choice to either do something, or not do something. We all do this so effortlessly, that perhaps we forget that we actually have this responsibility to ourselves. The difference however, lies in what comes next. From the action or lack thereof, we can either learn from it or choose to be ignorant.
So combining these two rules, we get four unique permutations; 1. Do and learn. 2. Do and don’t learn. 3. Don’t and learn. 4. Don’t and don’t learn.
There’s no right or wrong way to approach each situation, but you do have the option of at least the four choices above. It’s up to you to decide which one you do, but personally I’d avoid numbers 2, 3 and 4 whenever possible. The only situation where number 3 would come in handy, is if you’ve already done number 1. And I can’t for the life of me think of a situation where I’d want to not learn from a choice that I’ve made, which places 2 and 4 into the lazy pile.
Sometimes I struggle with the tools that we’ve been given to simplify and complicate our understanding of life. Often I wonder if I’m using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail.
The photography classes that I was arranging fell by the wayside. Regardless, I continued with the theme of ‘Hidden Beauty’ and the compositional element of ‘Filling the Frame’. I chose to Do and Learn. I did the photo assignment and learnt about brush strokes.
Then I put the Peanut Butter in my cereal and learnt that every bowl of cereal from this day onwards, will always contain this amazing breakfast ingredient.
I do X so you should do X
July 13, 2010 – 4:40 amI confess to watching this years series of Big Brother. From a few too many hours of third-person social analysis, I started to wonder about how people place their expectations on other people. It seems to be based solely on how they do things themselves. There’s a whiff of pride in every decision that people make, that is driven by the conviction of the validity of their feelings.
I understand the need to believe in yourself, but why should it dominate the judgement of the people around you.
At a guess, I’d say it was just a force of habit, through years of practice of judging yourself on a never ending basis. So when it comes to forming ideas about other people, the easy path is always available. But to try to come to terms with the simple idea that someone else believes different to you, takes a lot more energy.
I’m considering a tattoo, made up of all different pieces that I will construct over the years, constantly growing into something more solid and wise. Each piece will be a lesson that goes up to make the belief system that I choose to subscribe to, as opposed to the one that was necessarily dealt out.
I don’t want you to subscribe to anything I do or believe, but I do want to hear about how you run things in your part of town. I went shopping in mine today, hence the ‘shopping spree’ images.
London Games
June 4, 2010 – 5:15 pmWhenever the need arises to venture into London, I play games. They’re mostly designed to keep me amused, but also produce the side effect of keeping me sane inside my own little floaty ego-bubble.
The first; is to see how long you can survive in the concrete jungle without tutting, frowning or kicking anyone in the heels as they cut you up through the sea of human traffic. Thankfully, there are strategically placed power ups along the way; 90% in the shape of amusing advertisements. These can usually distract you long enough to make you forget that you care about something you shouldn’t. The remaining 10% are presented in the form of human interactions… these are the really good ones which can save you from the most stressful of levels – they’re definitely out there, I saw them myself, but you just have to stop looking at the floor and the adverts and you’ll find them.
The other; is to try to not think about other people’s lives. I’m shit at this game. Robert Winston says that one of the most stressful things you can do is to walk into a room full of people. The number of judgements that we make towards others seems proportionate to the number of people we have in our field of vision, and the number of judgements we make about a single person is phenomenal in the first place. So when you’re walking round a Big City, where people are bursting at the seams trying to grasp at the floating pieces of identity that are lost in the vanilla ocean of existence… well… it all seems to just add to the importance of being able to be good at this contest. You’ll notice that lots of the characters in the game has discovered sunglasses in order to create a sort of invincibility for the duration that their eyes are hidden; personally, I’ve never liked using cheat codes since Action Replay decided to Poke around inside 8-bit consoles. So, with the midday sun threatening to burn a new hole in my retinas, and the impact of the other contestants becoming stronger; I buckled to the comfort of a Brighton bound train, stuck next to the fat 50 year old business man, spilling the high end of his shitty-disco music from his tacky iPod headphones and drumming along with his fat fingers and his fat smile. It reminded me that I need to get better at this game; that or I need to get some sunglasses.
Custom Textures
May 23, 2010 – 7:47 pmSome people call it research, some call it browsing the web; I prefer to be a little more honest. So when I was stalking my new favourite artist (Jarosław Kubicki), I stumbled across an inspirational blog entry. It described the artists personal philosophy towards art, and I believe that his originality and style shines through in his work. The first point he mentions, is the rejection of stock photography. When I produce artwork and I want to add texture, my usual workflow would be to visit stock.xchng, download a high res image and then sit back and marvel at my laziness. While it solves the problem of having to create the image myself, it introduces a few less than ideal aspects to my work.
- It’s not 100% original
- I may not be legally allowed to claim complete copyright to my work
- I rely on hashing together other people’s styles to create my own
- I inevitably make compromises when choosing between images that exist in the stock.xchng library.
My skills as a photographer are more than competent to create textures that are equally as good, or better than any I could find on a free stock photography site. So today armed with my camera and a hangover, I did a texture shoot around Brighton. I look forward to one day having a vast collection of my own images to use, but for now… here are the results:
Epinephrine
May 20, 2010 – 1:53 pmUncontrollable and irrational adrenaline. I don’t miss you when you’re gone, so why turn up in the first place? If it’s to protect me, I think you need to stop and look around. What kind of situation am I in where I need protecting? Perhaps you’re just bored and haven’t been out in a while, so you need to take a walk every now and then…. stretch your legs.
Adrenaline… can we come to some sort of arrangement, where you tell me that you want some exercise, and I get the leash that’s hanging by the front door and run around the park with you? It’s just that if you come out while we’re having a nice meal at a restaurant… well, it sort of spoils the mood for me. And today, all I wanted was a nice walk in the park and to sit down and read a book. It seems like you had other plans. Or were you sleeping, and someone trod on your tail? Well, I’m sorry about that, but there are better things to bark at, I promise you.
Maybe you want me to dangle myself off a cliff a bit more often? I could swing from treetops, dodge traffic or run barefoot through a crack den. Would that be exciting enough for you? Living life on the edge could be the answer. But that’s a bit too close to death for me right now. If only I could give you some kind of emotional pager, and beep you every time I’m in need. In fact, when was the last time I really needed you? There was that fight I got into in 2005… but… wasn’t it you that started that in the first place? Who knows, perhaps you’d been listening to alcohol for too long. You guys should definitely stop hanging out.
So I suggest a compromise. Give me warning in future. Any kind of warning. Tear up one of my favourite shoes. Give me the sad eye/whining combination. Go to the bathroom in my closet… anything… just give me some kind of sign. Once you do that, we can work something out. I’ll listen to you and we can work better together as a team.
Yours sincerely,
Consciousness.