All At Sea

Greetings folks - today's post is titled both literally and metaphorically.

So let's deal with this 'ere schtuff: 

Photographically, since last October I have felt all at sea. 

It is a weird feeling - part despondancy; part carn't be arsed; part unenthusiastic and part just plain uninterested, and it is a horrible feeling. 

I've been blogging on this 'ere platform since 2012 and I have most of the time found something to say, but I dunno - it's like I've run out of words or something.

In Ursula LeGuin's fine book 'The Furthest Shore', Ged our erstwhile mage travels with a companion to the cities of the dead and finds them mute, both physically and aurally.

For life is all about noise and silence all combined, about laughter, tears, pleasure, pain, loss, regret and hope; but in the lands of the dead, he only finds people going about their business as they might have done whilst alive, but doing so in silence and under a darkened sky.

All life is gone, save the repetitious travails (in a way almost like the Zombie/Shopping Mall thing in Dawn Of The Dead).

When I was younger I found Ursula's description  of the land 'over the wall' both strange and frightening; but now having read it, gosh, ooooooodles of times, I find it to be the most profound description of the silence that accompanies death (as in a house becomes emptier; a once loved contact turns a corner and is gone) and also, indeed (metaphorically) the silencing of all artistic endeavour. 

When I put that and my feelings together in a good ol' early morning thunk, I felt silenced, and not in a good way, because in a good way you can fight it.

This mortal coil shuffles along. 

I am currently surrounded by cancer and age, befudelment and an over-reliance on all things technological.

The world seems intent upon chasing itself up its own backside and me with my little pictures? 

Well we seem pretty insignificant really. 

'Photography', this massive movement of people all a snappin' and a sharin', well it isn't my photography. 

Maybe it isn't yours either, but we can do little about it.

Pretty maudlin eh, but that is the way it has been, and it isn't uncommon! 

Anyway, to these ends, I felt a huge urge to escape and go to a place I only rediscovered about a year ago but have been back to many times since. 

It's a small ex-fishing port along the Angus coast that has the most wonderful derelict old harbour and weird stone formations. 

I've posted photos from there before.

I like it for its NOISE.

The waves can be truly wild there with a great wind whipping in off the North Sea. 

I don't think I've ever been there in 'benign' conditions, and certainly last week. though the sun was out, the wind was punishing and icy.

In other words, it was great!

My mood in the drive out from Dundee was a weird one though.

I was listening to Richard and Linda Thompson's 'I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight' - it's an appropriately weird album - part English/Irish/American/Scots, with harmoniums and brass bands and Thompson's wonderful twangy playing and part longing for change and things that were.

 

For the first track there is this lyric:

Dirty people take what's mine, I can leave them all behind

They can never cross that line, When I get to the border

Sawbones standing at the door, Waiting till I hit the floor

He won't find me anymore, When I get to the border

Monday morning, Monday morning, Closing in on me

I'm packing up and I'm running away, To where nobody picks on me

If you see a box of pine. With a name that looks like mine

Just say I drowned in a barrel of wine

When I got to the border

When I got to the border

A one way ticket's in my hand, Heading for the chosen land

My troubles will all turn to sand, When I get to the border

Salty girl with yellow hair, Waiting in that rocking chair

And if I'm weary I won't care, When I get to the border

Monday morning, Monday morning

Closing in on me, I'm packing up, I'm running away

To where nobody picks on me

The dusty road will smell so sweet, Paved with gold beneath my feet

And I'll be dancing down the street

When I get to the border

When I get to the border

And I think the Thompson's border isn't a physical one, but a metaphorical one, because the lyric is sort of part 18th Century young man running away to sea; part the freedom of The Great American West; part dowdy Great Britain in the 1970's; part Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket.

The only way Thompson's 'singer' can truly escape is in his head and through drink and even death.

 

And the more I thought about that I realised that the freedom of thought that comes from drinking (or whatever) and a profound awareness of one's own end (not that end Simpkins!) is a fundamental part of human-being. 

Death and beyond is a means of escape - yet the border also appears to be hope.

What a dichotomy!

Sorry for getting all serious, but music runs through me like Blackpool (sic) runs through a stick of rock - I like to understand why musician's say the things they do. I also like to think it incredible that music can span the breadth of shite on a pavement, to the stars.

From the crass to the profound; from sheer annoyance to an uplift of the soul.

So driving and listening and reflecting on my own malaise, I realised that it was pointless feeling down about it. 

It's all going to end anyway, so why not enjoy it (after all, I'd had a couple of good photographic trips since it had started) - I just had to keep on going, but possibly, just possibly become more serious about my intent and the images I take.

In other words, I gave myself a bloody good talking to.

I'd packed the 500C/M with 40mm Distagon again with the PME prism fitted - honest, though bigger than a small fridge as a set-up, the PME makes an enormous difference to composing with the 40mm, and especially so where I was headed.

I also used the A16 back, feeling that would help me more with landscapey sort of stuff.

Film was Kodak TMX 100.

The cliffs of this haunt are weird in that they're composed of pebbles, both large and small, trapped in rock. 

Now when you start to think of it, pebbles generally start their lives as much larger pieces of rock, which get eroded and smoothed by time and water and weather and they're on their way to becoming grains of sand.

But at some point in their lives, in amongst all that erosion, these pebbles have become trapped and sedimented and layered into still more rock, until through the movements of the planet they've become exposed again and the erosion process continues over aeons.

It's a bit of an allegory about life when you think about it.

And my little expedition - well, it's a gnat's fart in the face of time.

 

Yet it was time that confronted me, both physically, in the cliffs and metaphorically, in the lyrics and in my exploration.

There's a small sea-cave drilled by tides through the arm of one of the cliffs - it's filled when the tide is in, and empty when it is out - no seaweed attaches itself because the current through it must be very strong - it's more land than sea, but it is all sea.

Take me back two or three thousand years and it was probably pretty much the same - fascinating and tight. 

Despite my modern 'gear' I reckon I'd be the same person.

Despite the trappings of modern life - all technology-based - at the end of the day, the feeling was forced down upon me in the dark, that really, all we need as humans, is food, company, shelter, warmth and love. 

It's pretty basic stuff.

(I think I might relish an old-style life - yeah, very hard, physically demanding, short, but somehow sweet - like Thompson's border.

But I love my life and I know I am incredibly lucky to have had the one I have, but I think, if the chips went down, I could live the way people lived for millenia and not really miss a beat.)

I looked around at the cave as I squeezed through, and worshipped as my ancestors would have done, and then I started taking photographs.

Low tide had been around 7.30AM and I as there for 9.30, but it was incredible how my usually care-free attitude was changed by the fact that I could easily be trapped on the wrong side of the cave - I had to photograph fast!

But what's that sound? 

Oh yes, it's the sound of the reels going as you use a biro to rewind that C90! 

Let me preface things . . on the way to the cave there is a small hut - which appears to be an artist's studio, though I have never seen it open - it is always chocca with condensation . . . hence the first photograph - I took three but that one somehow surmised my confused state.

Also AFTER I'd been through the cave (literally and metaphorically) I spent a good hour trying to make sense of the pier. 

The original harbour can still be seen in places - it is from the 1100's and it's there as foundings for latter structures the most recent of which is cement but cement that has been exposed for a huge amount of time. 

Also, surprise, surprise, the local pebbles have been widely used as an aggregate and so are taken from their release from the cliffs and entrapped once again in man-made cliffs . . .

It's all a tad cozmik isn't it.

I've split the pictures into two sections - the ones above being my confused state and the even greater weirdness of pebbles released from their bounds of nature's time (the cliffs) only to be caught up again in man-made time (the harbour).

The pictures below are the cave itself - on the surface it is pretty dull and ordinary under the glare of bright sun, but inside light and time fade into one, pebbles drop and are caught on the next tide to become sand at some point in their future.

The ones still waiting to fall or be eroded by the sea form the face of a man - a man from time.

And the final picture, a denouement: rocks, pebbles, sand, time and the sea.

All moves on - including me.

They are all scans off the original prints which are made on very old Ilford MGRC - because it is so ancient I've had to up the Grade to 4 - you can see the age of the paper in the final print with the mild off grey of the sea - hey-ho - it has to be used up - they're also selenium toned - just lightly.

As usual all notes are written in 2B pencil on the back so if I want to do something 'proper' in the future (though given the cost of 9.5x12" fibre at the moment  - £90 for 50 sheets - it seems unlikely) I'll have a sort of ballpark.

Oh and the TMX was developed in Fomadon R09 at 1+75.

And that's it.

As my old Mum used to say frequently:

Hope springs eternal.

Spring is here, Summer is just around the corner and I am feeling a bit more enthused - I even found myself looking at gear this week . . so things must be getting better.

And on that note, take care, be good, and I shall just leave you with something the late Ken Dodd said:

"You know you're getting old, because one day you wake up and you've got a bald son."

Have a tattyhillarious time missus.

H xx