Hackleys

Sell your old machine

Boll Weevil by Shocking Blue is a song I wish would play on those odd occasions during a night out that I decide to get up and dance. And don’t we all love the Kinks? All of me does.

Anyhow.It has rained and been cold most of the day, but now I roll back the blind here at Chesapeake and the round and bright orb above has decided to grace us with some rays, which is lovely. Easter starts today and there is no one around. I had to let the painters into the office building today. The head painter Nick just popped his head around the door to say he was leaving. I asked if I was the only one left in the building, because the thought of being alone made me feel a little funny, and he said yes and smiled a dirty smile as if he thought I was asking for some other weird reason. It made me feel uncomfortable, at the very least.

Frea and I exchanged contracts on a house yesterday, which given the nightmare we’ve had trying to secure everything in time was a massive relief but I found that the relief only lasted about 10 seconds before the full force of the decision hit me and I realised we will probably be poor for the next 5 years! No, not really, but it certainly does seem to carry a helluva lot of responsibility. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would say I was a 6 on the “Do I feel confident in this situation?” scale. Right now, with regards to writing this post, I am an 8 on that scale. Perhaps that makes some sense to some of you. One thing I really can’t wait to do is make a start decorating the house in July. Because I hope it will be sunny and warm, and we can enjoy slapping paint on the walls with the windows open and the volume cranked.

I met with a friend of a friend today (Ted) who plans to cycle 10,000 miles around the Mediterranean next year. Wow, yeah sure. Pretty great. He’s interested in conflict resolution, and how it is represented in our visual culture. He thinks that visually we tend to focus on conflict (Robert Capa) rather than resolution (can’t think of an example of a photographer – kind of the point). I was thinking about what he was saying. Obviously, we like the end result if it represents a positive, sellable change (such as a before and after weight loss solution photo) but if it’s just human lives returning to order after a great trauma, it doesn’t seem so compelling. It makes a nice human interest story, but not a great photo shoot. Certainly not to us in the West, who expect health and happiness to pretty much exist as a given in our daily lives. But then perhaps the extension of this thought, is that there are in fact MANY people who are concerned with the happy (or certainly non-conflict) present such as photographers who shoot mundane objects, or poets who write about our day-to-day existence. Is this a celebration of conflict resolution? Perhaps lives without conflict are an ongoing testament to conflict resolution? Ted used an analogy with health and illness but I can’t remember what it was, which is annoying because it was a good one. Something like: you can’t understand peace just by looking at war, just like you can’t comprehend health by dwelling on sickness. Perhaps.