agirlinlove

it is funny what you learn in the most unexpected places…

I don’t do a lot of things

and it’s not out of fear

it’s this voice in my head that’s been there so long I didn’t even hear it anymore.. it usually just pops up when I want to do something for me, for fun, because I may like it and it says nope

and I listen to it

so I may like to eat that apple but if I’m not starving and it’s not dinner time, snack time, lunch time, nope

there is a cafe I may think looks lovely, and the decor is nice and the smell is nice and I want to stop and it says ‘nope, you can go through the drive through and save time”  (save time for what save time in general, like saving aluminum or paper bags) (I may add to myself, it’s too cool for you, those people are trying to be hip and why should you or they wont’ talk to someone like you just to be sure I dont’ do something nice for myself… stick it in good and hard, twist the knife a bit)

so I was getting ready to go to ny and was in the store looking for the perfect sweater and I see a coat I love and I am NOT going to try it on because I have a coat (I have one coat) but the trip made me feel reckless and when the voice told me not to try it on because (does this sound psychotic… hummm it’s not a voice in a different voice it’s just me if you were worried) I dont’ need a coat I like I have a coat that works for work and clients just fine, I said to it, “well I ‘ll just try it on that can’t hurt”  So I did and asked my son what he thought

that is the perfect winter coat for you mom it looks beautiful you should get it

and you know what I bought it

and felt guilty about it for a week

but then I realized

that the voice was there constantly, so constantly I didn’t even realize it until my son pointed out the obviosu.. the voice isn’t protecting me, it isn’t keeping me from doing anything rash, or hurting myself or hurting others, the voice is just a frightened old lady who thinks that if you follow rules, any rules, more rules the better and suffer a bit, you’ll be doing ‘it’ right  doing what right?

that old frightened lady doesn’t know what the “it” is she’s supposed to be doing and is just scared so saying no works it’s comfy and perhaps safe.

I am finding that with practice I can stop from not do something because it’s a lovely thing.

and that is super lovely

I’m working on the new copy for my new website and I’m working on myself, and I’m working on combining my personal work and my client work (as much as possible) and in all this working I’m looking and it seems like some people can sum all their stuff up into a few lines, a few likes and sometimes they sound so fucking hip, like, that kinda 2000 something postmodern blogger hipster speak that is, well freaking catchy.. If I could reduce down my meeness to I like the fall and the spring and a pithy catch phrase I would .. but I probably wouldn’t because I don’t believe in that.. I don’t believe in much really except people can’t be reduced to that, people shouldn’t be reduced to that.. and isn’t that what marketing is really, the lovely reduction of whatever it is you want to sell into a demi-glaze, sweet, strong and brief…

I am perhaps to non-descriminating.. maybe .. I don’t think that recycling is going to save the world, though I do it, I don’t think that black and white photographs are better then colour photogaphs, it depends upon the frame of course.. and that’s maybe why it’s hard for me to lay a line and tell anyone I won’t cross it.. I won’t ever only take images in natural light, I won’t ever only take photos with created light, I take photos with the light that is there and I find light that is amazing and I use it.. I don’t always like vanilla, I don’t always like chocolate, I can’t say that organ donation is the only way to go because I was a 16 year old asked to leave my mother on life support for up to a week and I couldn’t do it, I don’t feel guilty about that, I’m a buddist and think any unmindful killing is horrendous but I loved the movie gladiator.. I guess my problem isn’t that I can’t boil myself down, I probably could.. it’s just if I did it certianly isn’t hip, or catchy, it isn’t pithy or wise, it ends up sounding like a beatles lyric, be love.

I want people to be themselves, to grow, to try things, I want a life for me that is open to mistakes and joys and I want to create images that move, that show life’s soul, that show people as they are, and as they are, as they truely are, is beautiful regardless of the light or the processing.. it bypasses space and time, it peels away the layers that we create to protect ourselves from life or living.. I work always to keep those layers, like clingy barnacles, from forming..

It’s so popular right now for photographers to talk about how they shoot “real” “be real” “be you” and then they tell the clients what clothes to wear, and they take them to places they would never go (or it’s editorial and people are either blank Arubus cows or california freepeople young and ‘alive’) and they take their photos and I have been guilty of that.. But I suppose I’m trying, not to make people look like something amazing, but to look amazing as themeselves.. to be really real and know that this is the person their mother, their fiance, their brother, their daughter loves, as they are and that they are beautiful

sum that up in a little sauce…

I better go to sleep I’ll most likely delete this in the morning