Foolish gibberish
“Tonight Raf and I are drinking the last bit of whiskey we bought at a little whiskey shop in Norwich. When we were offered a taste I went to pour it myself and kind of got my hand slapped by the proprietor. Then I pretty much gulped it all down like a barbarian. I was that American.”
I have been really quiet over here, and I really don’t know what to say about that. I think when I stop posting on my blog regularly the void is filled with other things. And then dust starts to settle.
After blogging about my questioning of the “Spark Joy” method of de-cluttering I went down a rabbit hole that I am still in and I would love to write about it. So stay tuned for a post about that. And I really need to do some kind of year end wrap up post, because this is happening very soon.
In the meantime, here is a Holga shot from my most recent roll. This is the last recent photo I have in my Flickr photo stream so I need to get to developing and scanning some film so I can share some more!
I’ve been listening to a recording of Macbeth. I’ve read and heard and watched this play a dozen or more times (as I’m sure you have, as well). This morning the “Tomorrow” speech caught my attention:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
It struck me as very zen.
The ego does not like this speech at all. When I first heard it I was all, “wow this is depressing.” But when you lean into it you realize that it’s true. Our lives are an act on a stage full of sound of fury, but really what does it all mean? When we are gone we are gone and our act will be done. It kind of hurts the ego to realize this. The ego wants to be remembered. The ego wants a shape.
And yet we still act because we have to. Because we are human and that is what we do. We go through our lives with sound and fury because we are compelled to do so.
I love that this speech is so dead on and true and a gut punch to the ego, and it’s spoken by an actor on the stage.
I’ve been wanting to do a series of portraits using my Holga and have been working on it half-heartedly for the past year. I’m not very good at asking people if I can take their portrait so I’ve let a lot of opportunities slip by. But I can usually count on my photography friends to say yes. So here is a small series of portraits that I took the day I got my Woodblak camera (which I shared with you last week). These were all taken at Cathedral Park in St. Johns, Portland.
As I was finishing up the roll I had a problem with winding the film and something weird ended up happening to my camera, which resulted in the light leak. I am really hoping I didn’t break my camera!
Regardless, I am pleased with how these turned out and I really want to do more of them.
In late August I was on a meetup with some of my pinhole photography buddies and we found ourselves at Blue Moon Camera And Machine. Somehow, I ended up with a Woodblak camera. It’s a beautiful camera, carved from a single piece of wood and made locally in Portland by Kurt Mottweiler. So, honestly, it wasn’t a hard sell.
A couple of days after I bought it he had a sale on his website, so he very graciously offered to outfit my new beauty with a leather strap. I said yes, of course. I paid a visit to his studio (which was amazing) and we had a nice chat while he added the strap.
Here are a few photos taken with this camera. These are only the first roll shot through the camera, and I used Illford FP4. I wanted to shoot black and white because I generally don’t get my color developed until I have a enough saved up to make it worthwhile to either make the trip into Portland or buy some developer and do it myself. I like the shots a lot! I have two rolls of color in my queue and I can’t wait to see how they came out.
The camera is a dream to use. If you are interested in learning more about these cameras, or what else Kurt is up to, you can visit his website here.
Blatherskite 