"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in."
- American Beauty
There are times when I feel like I have missed my calling. Like I should have been a writer or a photographer, or a film maker - though I am not very good at any of these things.
Sometimes there is just so much beauty in the world. So many small moments that create such a fabudonkyulous world that I feel like there should be some way of recording them. Of possessing that beauty. Memory seems inadequate at those times.
I find my artistic skills just as inadequate at imparting those feelings, and I'm not really a poet (despite my enduring love for the haiku) and as you may have noticed from what I have shared with you on this blog - photography is still outside of my skill set.
I feel like my body fills up with so much feeling, and I am so incapable of expressing it, that I just sit around feeling emotional, and inadequate. Moments like these are given to us to make something out of them, I am convinced, otherwise why would we have them? Inspiration to creation.
One of my favourite
"I get so damn tired of feelings sometimes, the
way they crash over you, threaten to drown you, and then slowly recede,
leaving you wet and stinking and covered in seaweed. I think that in my
next life I'm going to come back as a robot that's incapable of feeling
obligation or regret. I think that that would be nice."
I guess that is what is means to be human, and even more so what it means to be suffer from mental illness, though I don't feel that us 'touched' folk have the monopoly on intense emotions.All I know is that I adore this side of the coin. The feelings before the plug gets pulled from the bath and you slowly get heavier and heavier, and colder and colder. The joy of beautifully real things. The pretentious feelings that make people film paper bags dancing in the wind.
My work is small and certainly not profound by any definition of the word, but I want you to know that I have aspirations. That my work, especially the things I do for myself, are my way of trying to tie up and own a tiny part of why I think that the world is lovely, and hopefully share that with you.
Don't get me wrong. Life is dangerous and awful too, and that makes me just as emotional - and I make art then too... even more than when I am absorbed by the beauty ...
I am glad that Ky is studying film, I hope that he gets to share his vision with everyone of the worlds in his mind. I am glad that there are people out there who can write the way I wish I could and film and photograph moments that reflect the feelings that I have.
Like this guy.
We Were Wanderers On A Prehistoric Earth from James W Griffiths on Vimeo.
I never intended this blog post to be as ... emo (?) as it turned out.
Editing it now seems disingenuous so I won't.
