17-11-29

Sometimes you just put your water bottle under the hand sanitizer spout and load it up with alcohol. Sometimes you just steal it from the drugstore, or hospital. Sometimes you mix it with what you have.

Sometimes.

Sometimes daily you execute the same temporary measures. Daily.

17-11-28

Home.

17-11-27

Vices. In black and white.

17-11-26

Mark Twain

I don't know a lot of things.

And I've said it before, my favourite quote from Mark Twain is; “I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.” (First delivered to me by a lovely person in the form of a post card with a photograph of Christo's umbrellas on the front of it)

I also know a lot of things, and I learn more every day. But before I get too deep into this, before this begins to sound like some sort of religious enlightenment, what I'm frustrated with today, amongst other things, is that Blogger likes to destroy the photographs I upload with some sort of filter or compression or something. This, with all the green and red artifacts and noise, is supposed to look like this. Strangely, Flickr, a photo sharing website, does the same thing, filling the photo with green and red artifacts. Look at the pillow, it's a hot mess.

I don't know what to do about that, other than to switch sites?

I don't know.

I mean, WTF Flickr, you're a photo sharing site. Why would you mess with the resolution of an uploaded photograph?

I like this Blogger format. It's been easy. And I tried looking at other formats some time ago, but they all left something to be desired, and it's nice to keep everything in one place, and ten years of photographs is hard if not impossible to migrate.

So. I begin to look again.

I'm not looking for a new phone, or a house in the suburbs, or a 3D television. Taking a photo a day is a simple thing, a good thing, and it would be nice to post that photo in its true form. It's a simple, honest thing that makes me happy. It's therapy. It's a document. It's 18 years of Jamie Livingston's life. (I never thought I'd get half as far as he did, but I did...)

There's a lot of things I need to sort out. And somehow a photo site that very few people look at is a priority. And then other things. Starting with the easy things makes sense. Probably.

17-11-25

17-11-24

Scenes from a hotel. Part 2.

17-11-23

17-11-22

Scenes from a hotel.

17-11-21

Dreams of my Beswick Pony.

17-11-20

17-11-19

The rain has set in proper like. The sound of it on the skylights is soothing, and at the same time, oppressive. There's a weight to the rain. It forces your gaze down. It keeps your head pointed straight ahead and your shoulders tight.

But you push through it. You get a little wet. It's process. Over time some of the shit on your shoes gets washed off, and maybe you come out the other side a little smarter, a little stronger, and smelling a little better. One can only hope.

17-11-18

History.

17-11-17

The Jimi Hendrix Shrine. Ghosts. They are all over this city. The Shrine has moved. The building will be replaced by condos some day soon. And you're left with memories, and the odd photograph.

17-11-16

17-11-15

The ides of November.

17-11-14

I've always liked how the Chinatown vendors blur the line between public and private realms. And tarps. I like tarps.

17-11-13

17-11-12

This punk and I spent the afternoon at the Vancouver Art Gallery discussing subversion and distortion. And then we painted things.

17-11-11

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is."

Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions (1973)

17-11-10

Toy Camera filter. It's like cheating.

17-11-9

It takes years to make such a tangled mess. It can be beautiful but the chaos of it all can be tiring after a while.

There's a bit in the documentary Sound City, which is about Dave Grohl buying the analogue mixing board from Studio City Studios where Nevermind was recorded, where Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Paul McCartney record a song together on that same mixing board after it was reassembled in Dave's recording studio. There are very few times when the likes of Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic can get together and record where it's overshadowed by a guy who might not ever really understand who they are, and the only person I can think of who could be that guy is Paul McCartney.

They record the better part of a song and are working on finishing touches and there's this little bit of discussion that occurs as follows;

Dave Grohl: Why can't it always be this easy?

Paul McCartney: It is.

I saw this movie four years ago in the theater when it came out. I still haven't embraced that simple little lesson.

Easy is good.

Do easy.

Embrace easy.

Don't make it complicated.

I didn't see it when it was there, the easy. I made it hard. I made it complicated. And all that complicated stuff chokes itself to death.

I should be too old to be learning lessons like this still. But at least I'm learning.

Easy.

It is.

17-11-8

Ever get the feeling of deja vu?

17-11-7

17-11-6

Sometimes the place you're looking for is an imaginary place between 1 and 2. You're pretty sure it exists, because you've seen the mail box for that place. But then you're left with mailing stuff to that place. And maybe you get letters back sometimes. But it's still an imaginary place between the places we know.

I sometimes think that place really exists. Sometimes I think I've even been there.

17-11-5

This picture comes up from time to time, in different places.

17-11-4

17-11-3

17-11-2

Chicken and mushroom risotto.

17-11-1

"So let it out and let it in."