Music

Life and Music Are On My Mind

Life, Photography

My birthday is on Sunday, and I’m getting old. I can’t think of a better theme for this post than a graveyard. 😉

All kidding aside, this is the only photography I have to offer this blog at the moment. My photo mojo has waned a little this year. This is from the roll of Holga shots I took when I went on the photo meetup in January. My plan was to shoot portraits with my Holga, which I did. But they didn’t come out great. I may post them next week and talk a little bit more about it. In the meantime, here are a couple moody shots of the graveyard from that day.
gravesite gift

Lone Fir Cemetery

A little story:
About an hour ago I was talking to a former coworker who has retired. She’d just learned, from another co-worker, that my birthday was this weekend and asked how old I will be. I gulped and said it out loud: “49. I’ll be 49.” And holy shit. It was hard to say that number  (It’s hard for me  to type that number). I told her that it was difficult to face the fact that I am in my last year of my 40s. She just kind of smiled and said, “you’ll get over it soon.” And she had a look of wisdom in her eyes.

When I walked out of the library for my walk this was the first song that popped up on my iTunes. An odd bit of synchronicity. 🙂

Pinhole in the Library: Cleaning Up

Photography

This is the last of my series of Pinhole In the Library photos, the final image that I had printed for the library’s art wall. This was another one from my “One Pinhole A Day” project from last year. I wanted to pinhole myself cleaning up after storytime, curious as to how all of the movement would look as a pinhole image. I liked the result!
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Geeky Bits:
Camera: Ondu MK2 6×6
Film: Portra 160
Exposure Time: 1 minute 33 seconds

As I type this my muscles are aching. It’s winter and I’ve been running early in the morning in the dark. On Wednesday I was trucking along gleefully when I tripped and very dramatically landed and skidded on the sidewalk. I laid on my back and stared up into the stars as I regained my composure. When that happened, I sat up and looked myself over. I wasn’t bleeding. So I got up and finished my run. But my muscles have been achy ever since. And then this morning I was running (after the sun had risen) in the cold. I slipped on some ice and my leg muscle cramped from the act of bracing myself for a fall, which I didn’t do (thank goodness). So this evening I am sitting here feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck and realizing I should just run on the treadmill until winter is over.
With all of that in mind, here is the musical soundtrack to this post. Which really is more about the video.

A photo and some rambling thoughts

Photography

First, more pinhole in the library!

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This is one of the photos I printed to have hanging in the library this month. The photos were hung the other day and it was really awesome to come to work to find my photos the ones featured on our art wall. Kind of surreal, actually. In an wonderful way. 🙂

Now for the musical soundtrack for this post. Honestly, this should be a different blog post because the song has nothing at all to do with the photo. The only reason I’m posting it is because it’s been an earworm for me the past couple of days. I woke up crying yesterday with this song stuck in my head after a dream in which David Bowie made an appearance. I am not sure what it was all about but it did leave me feeling sad and foggy brained all day yesterday. I am feeling much happier today but have been thinking about what was going on in my head yesterday. I realized that this week (a couple of days ago) marks the 8 year anniversary of my stepfather’s death, so I think there has been some sadness seeping through. Which is totally fine. As I was on the elliptical machine today I thought: you know, I hope I never stop feeling sadness for those that I love who have passed on. They deserve to be remembered and missed.

And now the song. It’s a great song.

Geeky Bits
Camera: Holga PC
Film: Ektar 100
Exposure Time: 7 minutes

And the world drags me down

Music, Photography

I got in my car this morning to go to the gym and She Sells Sanctuary was playing on the radio. Oh, how it made my heart happy to hear this song! It was my favorite song when I was a young adult. And even today, I love everything about it. And I think it is a good theme song for me because, damn. I feel really dragged down by the world lately.

Here’s a photo for photography Friday.

It’s a pinhole self portrait made with my zero 2000 while eating lunch about a month ago. Happy Friday!

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Lemonade

Music

My friend made a remark about the Beyonce album Lemonade. This reminded me that I’ve been wanting to listen to it since it came out. I have never gotten around to it. I knew I wanted to give it a serious listen since it has received such great reviews. After hunting around for a free version I could stream and coming up empty handed, I decided to just download the whole thing from iTunes. I don’t usually download entire albums without hearing the songs first, but I trusted that this would be worth it since it’s already a classic. Plus, the album came with the video album and, being a child of MTV, I was sold. I love me some music videos.

I listened to the album twice since yesterday and watched the video album. I love it. I think it’s brilliant.

Since I’m currently involved in a slightly obsessive Sylvia Plath kick, I can’t help but make comparisons. Plath wrote her most brilliant work in a fit of rage as she dealt with her husband’s affair. Sadly, her story doesn’t end well. And it’s even worse that her husband completely disrespected her by making money off of her work posthumously, not having to decency to even publish her greatest accomplishment in the way that she clearly wanted it. But that is a rant for another time.

Beyonce’s story is different. Here is the story of a strong woman who works through her trauma and ends up a stronger woman on the other side. The album is raw, and emotional. I love it.