hiraeth

this is a post about the longing for home. a slow wander through my home. my childhood village, where my parents still live. it reveals more and more of itself to me with every passing year. the place i thought of as stifling and empty is chock full of fascinations, nostalgic twinges, old friends come to remind me of my exhilarating twenties and new adventures in the wildness/wilderness.
i wonder what part of my future it forms.

serendipity

"That all those marvellous serendipities happened to him there does not matter - they can happen anywhere for those with the right habit of seeing" Lawrence Freiesleben on Mark Cousins in the May 2014 Sight & Sound.
I have been reading S&S a bit lately, trying to make up for having hundreds of the damn things sitting in piles all over the house, unread. I think I might have thrown a bunch away in the recent spring cleaning. But I think I refused to read them because they feel painful, they are part of the block, the procrastination. The information about films being made, when I am making nothing.
Anyway, tonight was a night of marvellous serendipities. I think it might have been Cousins again, in another rendition of S&S, talking about taking his little camera everywhere with him and filming things he sees along the way. This time it was Christmas trees abandoned in the New Year.
I saw things tonight, and I didn't think to film them. But perhaps in future I will.
The Things:
tea-light candles outside a house and a smell of incense. 'pray for us we are moving home' on the card on which the candles were placed. and pictures and postcards of people's faces. the family? and behind me, a pile of clothes 'free stuff', clearing out for the big move. I looked at the faces and tried to imagine what they were trying to tell me. Had someone died? Was there something sad - between the prayers and the young faces on the cards, I wondered about the story.
A man laughing and exclaiming about me, that I was just talking to myself. But I wasn't, I was on my hands free - so I shared that with him. Laughter. I like laughing with strangers in London, it has a quality unlike the friendliness of those more provincial cities and towns. It's an uncommon delight to connect with a London stranger.
A lady who made me a sausage sandwich, even though the cafe was closed, and then proceeded to drop a plate on the floor and yell 'FUCK' in rage at herself. I just wanted to be kind to her, and make it ok, so I did. I know what it feels like to rage at myself. We laughed. And then I left my purse and phone behind and as I sat down to eat my sausage sandwich I had to go back. I would like to go back there and drink coffee some time soon.
The commute to London this morning was delightful. Such stunning scenery and skies, the sun drifting in and out of the clouds as we flew by underneath them. As the sun reached the clouds, the wispy edges formed iridescent rainbow colours, I was transfixed, I tried to film it, in slow motion. Here's how that came out:



I do like Cinamatic, it's allowing me to cut together tiny shunts of music and video for Instagram, my vehicle of choice. Some days I think I am getting there, slowly.
Talking about getting there, slowly - check out this 500ft climb we hunkered down on at the end of a day of Tour De Francing. Bloody hell, that took some mental effort to get up that hill. I'm amazed I can even walk today.



anyway - as always, there must be an image, for the front page of the blog. it's a photo of Yorkshire, after a grand day at the Grand Depart. Well Stage Two anyroad. How lucky I feel to get up to this gorgeous countryside so regularly.

fl00d

ok - so fl00d is up - the whole thing, and Ben and I are talking about what might come next. Something that's part of this idea, preceding and following this apocalyptic moment. I really enjoyed making these visuals and I hear, although I've not had a chance to be at any screenings yet, that people are impressed. Given that I shot it all on the iPhone it looks pretty smooth.

Fl00d - excerpt from EJ on Vimeo.

However, I am now, well, am I without project? I could well be. It's been a hectic month of intensive therapy, emotions, starting the mindfulness meditative program Take 10, drinking Floradix to get some energy (I get pretty anaemic sometimes), jamming with Dan & discussing the potential for a new band with Richie, pondering whether I want to take a sabbatical - a month off and what to do with it, reminding myself to play - by booking a holiday to Morocco with my girlfriends and working on getting fit and losing this extra inch of flesh I'm carrying by cycling - mainly with the aid of ultra-competitive app Strava.

And now, looking at all of this - most of which happened in the last 10 days (96.5 miles cycled in the last 5) - I wonder - did I avoid finding a place to 'make'.

I really struggle with doing much beyond taking the odd instagram photo sometimes. I started this blog by way of doing something about that. I've downloaded a guide to writing a proposal, to get a piece written on the next thing - a road trip documentary I'd like to make, and getting up the vim & vigour to produce Brutal. It doesn't get done.

Annie said something - that I have everything I need to get these projects off the ground - that if I can make The Vagina Monologues in such a successful manner, then I can do anything else, in that same way, just roll along, it was the ideal practice project.

I will think about that today. I will take some time to just write three pages of longhand, morning pages style, about that specifically, and step away from the computer. I'll do my 15 minutes of meditation, and write, and see what comes.

As for photography, here's my image of the day. Taken from the skybobs, the cable car 'airline' from Greenwich to the Royal Docks. I loved how the boats looked so little from above. Such a lovely peaceful day, I didn't worry about a thing.

elsewhere

I've been away in the belly of the video editing beast, putting together a film accompaniment to this amazing soundscape composition by Ben Eyes.
I'll share a little snippet of it here as I've really enjoyed filming and editing it, and am rather proud! Hopefully I'll be able to post a full version soon, we're talking possibly about showing it somewhere in London as well, so watch this space...

Youtube has compressed it hideously! For a much nicer looking version watch it on Vimeo HERE

The password is fl00d

and the image of the day:

Japanese Maple leaves in Peckham Rye Park, which is a beautiful hidden treasure of south London. We had a massive bush of this in our garden at home in Wales and it looked like a big furry monster in certain lights! 

legs eleven

i'm pleased that I keep posting, so far. it's a few days, but it's a start.
today has been hard, emotionally. and I sometimes feel like life just keeps throwing things at me so I can't get my head together to sort anything else out but the drama.
but i did write a bit of music today, and i did write to a guitarist and ask him to play with me, and I did sort out going to an open mic night in a couple of weeks, so...
i think the next step is for me to get a song finished, i'm always only allocating enough time to get half a song done - maybe I need a whole Sunday to myself. maybe next Sunday I can get Eyes to collaborate / help.
Anyway - photo of the day is this one:

and not because it's especially creative, as I figured if I got close enough for the photo I wanted I would have been thrown out of Trafalgar Square. But - that is an amazing statue that I have walked past a hundred times, and it is beautiful - look at the sharks at his back, amazing. and also I shot a video of it - that's here.

I have another video to share. This lady's legs were mesmerising against the wet pavements so I whipped out the iPhone - and I found it fitted nicely with the half a song I wrote today. So. yeah - i'll post it:

 

xx

clipped

I have a video, today. As opposed to an image. 

Hipstamatic issued a new app called Cinamatic to produce short square clips, it's pretty nifty, very simple, it has one filter I really like so far, but with the option to buy more, just like Hipsta.

So here's the best clip I shot today:

Trying to persevere here and get something up here as often as possible. I'm always collecting evidence, just want to set a little more time aside than I have on a weekday and make something a little more combined - music/film/words. keeping on keeping on.

edit: I suppose it's good that I also always have to find a photo for the post so that an image appears on the home page. so here also is a photo:

this is a picture I took sitting next to Eyes during a day of self-congratulatory coffee drinking festival attending. it's my kind of picture. the lit blue lamp, the little sliver of giveaway tent, the cable line leading you in or out of the image, and the emptiness - when all around me were drunk & overly tanned people in this year's 'Cosmo says what you ought to wear to a festival garb'. :) 

and I only say that for effect, it was a pleasant day out. Look at the sky!

song of the day: Roscoe by Midlake, think I listened to this at least 100 times today

mish mash

because I heard something interesting today I felt I had to post. although it's been a full on day at work so I haven't photographed or filmed anything. so i'm going to post a picture of the yellow fields I passed on the weekend on my way to Leeds, just gorgeous:

So - on that interesting thing - a nice young man called Tom said to me today (as I sneezed in his general direction) that the pollen count in London is higher than ever, and that even people who don't normally suffer could be affected. Again, it's difficult to know where one picks up these tidbits, but it felt immediately like something for the blog.
Here's the 5 day pollen forecast for Milwall FC: http://bit.ly/1njPFMT

Song of the day. I'm So Afraid by Fleetwood Mac:

I was 7 months shy of being born when this was filmed. Love this band.

making a start

today I thought - wow - I learn so many interesting things. most days someone teaches me something new, so I felt like putting that here, on a blog.
what I am also hoping to do, is gingerly begin to share some of my creative ideas too. I had grand thoughts of making a film a day and so on, but I'm just going to make a start right now and see where we go.
So - this evening I went to a residents meeting in this beautiful church in Lorrimore Square. The sky was incredible as I was driving over - the light was shining behind the clouds from low in the sky and creating a dramatic contrast between the blue and the white.
In Croydon this afternoon I learned that the interesting facts being shared with me were unfortunately untrue, which is a shame. The proposition was that neither yorkshire puddings nor battered fish originate in the UK, however I couldn't find a decent source online to verify or refute. But it was a fun conversation all the same.
A fact that did turn out to be both true, and fascinating, redeemed the chap, who also told us that Pocahontas died just off the coast of Gravesend.
I love Gravesend, it is just the right sort of strange, and I must visit again some day.
In other news - song of the day comes from Jamie Cullum's show, which I caught on my drive back from Croydon earlier.
I give you Roberta Flack singing Compared To What.
Delicious...