Archive for posts on Art and photographs

2009/2010 Thursday, December 31st, 2009

2009 has been a strange and brilliant year for me. It started with an ending, when Katie broke up our four-year relationship. It was devastating, yet entirely the right thing to do, and, as it turned out, 2009 was the best year of my life (so far). I’ve visited the US, Holland, Scotland, Spain and Denmark; I’ve walked from Petersfield to Brighton. And in between each of these I’ve been in this beautiful city of mine, Oxford. I’ve befriended people from six of seven continents. I’ve discovered a hundred things about myself - my sexuality, my dreams, my fears. I’ve had my mind read and my pulse stopped and drunk the best cup of tea I’ve ever had (all in the space of an hour). I’ve chased thieves down the alleyways of Barcelona and danced at Parliament Square. People keep telling me I’ve been on BBC News as well as Have I Got News For You.

I had two resolutions in 2009 - the first of my life. One was to go permanently vegetarian. This I succeeded in. The other was to write Katie a letter every week. It would have been strange to have succeeded at that one.

I have lots of resolutions for 2010. My friends tell me they’re all cliches, but they’re sincere. Most of them are just things I’ve been meaning to do and the opportunity to do them seems to have arisen at the end of this year, but I am resolved to do them nonetheless:

Go vegan
I’ve been steering myself towards veganism since July and, despite a massive lapse in December (due to trips to Copenhagen and my parents’ - shh don’t judge me), I hit veganism at the beginning of November. In 2010, though, it’s going to become permanent, and I’m going to throw myself into learning to cook well.

Read
Ever since I got hold of The Wire I’ve stopped reading in bed, which means that - apart from policy papers and invoices - I’ve stopped reading altogether; and I miss it. I made a point of finishing The Wire before Copenhagen so that, when I returned, I could get back to the habit of burying myself in a book before snuggling down for the night.

Get creative
I used to take photographs and record music and write stories and I don’t any more. So let’s have some more of that again.

Learn Spanish
You know, it’s the second most spoken language in the world. And it’ll set me up nicely for COP16 in Mexico (estoy bromeando).

Run a/two marathon/s
Not really a resolution as I committed to it months ago, but running both the Paris and Berlin marathons is my Big Challenge for 2010.

Find someone to cuddle
2009 was the first year of my adult life that i was single and it was immensely good for me in ways I wouldn’t have predicted. But now I’m ready to find someone to cuddle again.

No flying
I took 10 flights in 2009 - 9 of them after beginning my job in the Climate Change Campaign team… So this year I’m taking none.

Keep campaigning
I’ve made so many friends and found so much meaning in campaigning this year, and I can only see that passion and energy growing in 2010. I’d like to start physically campaigning on more than just climate change.

It’s going to be an exciting year…

Here’s a meme about 2009, for those who are interested.

Posted in Art and photographs, Books, Climate change, Oxfam, Oxford, Paris Marathon 2010, Personal, Politics, Trailwalker 2009, Travel, USA • No comments

Magic on New Year’s Sunday, January 1st, 2006

Anyone who was paying attention to my “power cuts are pretty” entry might have guessed that last night I went out taking pictures of fireworks. I hadn’t thought most of them had come out very well. One of them wasn’t very inpsiring until I rotated it 90° - and suddenly it became one of the best photos I will ever have taken. I have no qualms about being arrogant here - it’s pure chance that it turned out this way - but this photograph is quite amazing.


The Fairy and the Comet

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Power cuts are pretty Friday, December 30th, 2005

We had a power cut today. It happened as I was walking home from work. I hadn’t brought my camera with me (and I take my camera everywhere) because the weather was really awful on the way in and I thought, there’s no way I’ll be doing anything besides getting indoors very very quickly. But on the way home it was quite nice, and as I walked back all of the lights went out. All of them. The streetlamps, the lights in the windows; the stars were already hidden by the clouds. I was so annoyed that on this one occasion I hadn’t brought my camera.

I can’t remember the last time that we had a power cut. Apart from this one, of course. I’m not that old. Power cuts are pretty because the whole house - the whole street - becomes something totally different. Everything is lit by candlelight and it’s dim and flickery and magic; it smells different for the same reason; it sounds different because there’s no music, no television; all you can do is get out the board games and play Monopoly by candlelight. Well, it doesn’t sound much, does it? But it’s wonderful.

I think there should be a day of the year when everybody switches off their electricity and gets out the candles (and the Monopoly set) and has a power-free day. You could cook your dinner by firelight outside. If you wanted to make it into something meaningful, you could even give the money that you save to people who can’t afford anything so luxurious as electricity.

Go on, you know you want to.

Posted in Art and photographs, Misc • No comments

Some thinks, unedited Friday, November 4th, 2005

I love November nights. It’s sad that so many of my friends have vanished, and especially sad that my girlfriend isn’t here with me, because I love to be out at six, seven, ten, midnight when it’s so dark outside, and there’s a real chill in the air, but somehow everything is still peaceful. The kind of atmosphere that you only have to smell to feel happy to be alive. I like it when I get on the train and it’s lightish out, and I watch the sky disappearing so that when I step off, it’s evening time, night time, and I can walk home in the bizarre daydark. But I wish that there was someone there with me, because what I really love about doing things that I love is sharing them with people that I love.

Words are truly amazing people. They are the sort of friends who constantly introduce you to new friends, and it’s very rare indeed that you’ll find a bad word. Some of them are a little eager (such as the word “little”) and get tiresome after a while, but others - such as “deliciously” - are constant companions, always knowing precisely when is the right time to turn up and offer their services. When you know the right words, you can really go places.

I love film. I love the fact that with a cut or a frame or a light or a sound or a fade or an expression or a single word, I can say so much to you, and you probably won’t even realise it. It makes me feel very smug indeed. I love even more the knowledge that some of you will realise it, and go and do the same. I love Lester Burnham simply saying, “I’m great.” I love Nameless the hero’s revelation that a warrior’s ultimate act is to lay down his sword. I love Amelie’s tears as she realises that her fantasies are exactly that. I love the cut to black as Leonard Shelby asks himself, “Now. Where was I?”

Katie is coming to England tomorrow. She’ll be here for a week. Seven days and seven November nights.

I love a good resolution.

Posted in Art and photographs, Books, Films, Misc, Personal • No comments

A night in the life… Sunday, May 29th, 2005

I have a bad habit, and a good imagination. My brain likes to wonder what I would do in horrendous situations, so every so often I find myself imprisoned for a crime I didn’t commit, or one that I shouldn’t be imprisoned for, or I’m being tortured by underground fundies. The things that I intend to do in my life are going to gain me some enemies, and they’re the kind of people that I wouldn’t want as my friends, but that no-one would want as their enemies. These things all whirr around in my head some nights as I lie in bed, and they make me feel sickly inside.

At three o’clock last night, I turned on the light because I’d heard something, and I spotted a big black ugly spider in the corner. Yes, apparently, I can hear spiders. The elusive little bugger kept running to places where I could’t quite get him, and for half an hour I chased after it, waited for it, stood staring at it, until it vanished into my heap of film equipment. Pissed off, I put my pillows at the opposite end of the bed (so that my head was as far from the scene of spider as possible) and tried to get to sleep. A few minutes later, the dawn chorus started - the blue tits that live outside my window have just had little blue tits and their singing is the most tuneless screaming you could imagine - and I wondered if this would be my first sleepless night.

Later, I realised that yesterday had been May 28th: exactly one year since I finished school; one year since I had my first vodka shot; one year since I got drunk for the first time. And in that year, a lot has happened.

In January, I fell in love. This comes first because it is the most important thing I will ever be able to say I’ve done. The sweetest, prettiest, funniest, loveliest most wonderfullest girl in the world loves me! It brought tears to my eyes to think about it, I’m so fucking happy.

I love you Katie.

A few days ago I discovered a chord that was new to me. It instantly became my favourite chord. It’s utterly amazing that something so simple, those six notes played together, can be something so beautiful, and it reminded me that there is so much potential in absolutely everything; in the most insignificant of things. You have no excuse. I have no excuse.

Last October, the first box set of the Complete Peanuts collection came out. This may seem unimportant, and perhaps it is. But I love Peanuts, because it’s funny because it’s real. Charlie Brown and Linus and Snoopy and Schroeder and 5: they’re all me. Charles Schulz drew Peanuts for 50 years, the last half of the 20th century. He died hours before the final strip, announcing his retirement, was printed. His biographer said, “His life entwined to the very end with his art. As soon as he ceased to be a cartoonist, he ceased to be.”

Everyone should be this way.

I got to sleep at about five o’clock. When I turned on my computer to write this down, it wouldn’t let me online. Maybe I’m not supposed to be writing this. Maybe I’m supposed to be out living the next year. But I’m here, writing, because this is what I do; I tell people what I think.

A lot has happened to me this last year, and most of it is too uninteresting or too impossible to articulate for me to write it down.

Today is May 29th. It’s a year since all of this began.

What’s going to happen this next year?

Posted in Art and photographs, Books, Personal • No comments

Love’s the greatest thing that we have… Saturday, November 6th, 2004

(I’m waiting for that feeling…)

Joining my CD collection yesterday was another “best of” CD, and I heard for the first time since I was twelve or thirteen a song that I’d fallen in love with then, and fell in love with again instantly yesterday. That song is, I think, my most favouritest song of all time ever, and it is Tender by Blur.

Please, for the sake of the well-being of humanity, go and get a copy of the 7:39 version of this gorgeous song right now.

Thank you.

Kin
x

Posted in Art and photographs, Personal • No comments